The blurred borders of the “buffer zone” in the Western Balkans
- routedmagazine
- Jul 28
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 31
By Marija Pavicevic | OMC 2025
The Western Balkans, situated at the intersection of the EU enlargement and migration control agendas, have emerged as buffer zone countries that delegate border enforcement for the EU. In this article, I will focus on the Western Balkan region analysing the practices of circular borderisation and de-borderisation increasingly blurring the conventional distinction between inside and outside.
This research covers the period between 2015 and 2025 and is based on extensive empirical fieldwork conducted in the region. The research draws on more than 60 interviews with a range of stakeholders, including EU officials, representatives of ministries, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, as well as migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. In addition to these interviews, the analysis incorporates official documents issued by the UNHCR, Frontex, Europol, and the European Commission, alongside the legislation and national strategies relating to migration, border management, and asylum.
Blurring the borders: From physical demarcation to virtual control
The process of the externalisation of borders entails a form of spatial reconfiguration in which candidate states are integrated into the EU’s migration regime while remaining outside its legal and political community. Far from being passive recipients of EU conditionality, the Western Balkans states navigate their “buffer zone” status by leveraging their geopolitical position, negotiating both compliance and autonomy within a deeply asymmetrical framework. In doing so, they contribute to the rearticulation of sovereignty and responsibility in contemporary European border governance.
The contemporary state asserts its authority through the omnipresence of borders, extending its reach into individuals’ lives and bodies via biometric technologies and digital surveillance. However, I have observed that borders are not universally experienced. Rather, borders are more restrictive for individuals subjected to migration controls—such as migrants. For others, the citizens with privileged passports or legal statuses, borders often remain invisible. From this perspective, borders are not static territorial lines but mobile instruments of governance that follow and target specific populations liable to control. Since the 2015 "migration crisis", the European Union migration policy has progressively evolved into a regime of outsourced border management at a distance, characterised by the delegation of enforcement responsibilities to non-member states and the creation of so-called buffer zones. The spatial delimitation of borders, stricto sensu, has become increasingly ambiguous in the context of contemporary migration governance.
The integration of advanced surveillance and identification technologies contributes simultaneously to the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of border control. Consequently, border control becomes increasingly extraterritorial, operationalised through what has been termed “remote control” technologies that detect, categorise, and manage mobility long before the physical border is reached.
This transformation is particularly visible in the EU’s external engagement with the Western Balkans, where biometric digitalisation and information systems integration have become central tools of migration governance, facilitated through the cooperation with Frontex and Europol. Therefore, the Europeanisation of the region reflects the phenomenon of functional inclusion and operational convergence, wherein the candidate states are incorporated into the EU’s security architecture as both recipients and agents of outsourced border enforcement.
Buffer zone migration and border governance in Western Balkans
The concept of a buffer zone refers to a geopolitical space that, through non-military means, “protects” the states from perceived security threats. In this sense, the Western Balkan countries function as a shock absorber for the EU, absorbing perceived migratory pressure. The securitisation of EU’s external borders was reinforced after the 2015 “migration crisis”, confirming the Western Balkan countries’ status as a buffer zone “protecting” the EU member countries from “unwanted” migrants.
A genealogy of buffer zone status must begin with the 2003 Thessaloniki Summit, which formally identified the Western Balkans as a distinct geopolitical category tied to the promise of EU membership. One of the objectives of the Thessaloniki summit, has been to introduce the adoption of EU migration policies in order to benefit from a visa liberalisation for citizens of the Western Balkans.
This includes the EU strategy of externalisation of migration, asylum, and borders through instruments such as readmission agreements, cross-border cooperation, and the exchange of data on migrants and refugees.
The borderisation and circular de-borderisation on the Balkan Route
Before September 2015, the predominant migratory route passed through North Macedonia and Bulgaria, converging in Belgrade before continuing toward Hungary, Austria, and Germany. The erection of the Hungarian border fence diverted migratory flows toward Croatia. (See Map 1 & 2)
As soon as the Hungarian border closed on 15 September 2015, the migrants’ route shifted westwards, towards Croatia. (see Map 2 below)
The subsequent EU-Turkey Statement in early 2016 “closed” the Balkan route, resulting in the institutionalisation of pushbacks, border violence, and increased cooperation with Frontex, an indispensable element of the EU’s architecture of deterrence. These restrictive dynamics produced a new phenomenon: a circular migration within the Western Balkans. Migrants repeatedly attempted to cross borders, often being pushed back from the EU states (Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina. When denied access or forcibly returned, many re-entered other countries in the region — North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, or Kosovo — in an ongoing cycle of mobility and displacement. This forced circular mobility represents a form of migrant agency under conditions of containment and control.
The UNHCR reports from 2017 onwards have observed the reorientation of migratory flows toward Bosnia and Herzegovina, often from Serbia or Montenegro. (See Map 3)
As of early 2025, circular mobility within the region persists, shaped by both the EU’s restrictive border regime and the internal dynamics of the Western Balkan states creating the practices of circular borderisation and de-borderisation and demonstrating the shifting nature of borders as well their performative value on migration and border policies.
This article has interrogated the evolving position of the Western Balkan countries within the EU’s external border regime, highlighting the interplay between the Europeanisation of its migration and asylum policies — articulated through the conditionalities of the EU accession process — and the EU’s broader strategy of externalising migration, asylum, and border governance. These processes converge in the production of what I have conceptualised as a “buffer zone”: a liminal geopolitical space wherein practices of migration control are both intensified and decoupled. Rather than constituting fixed territorial lines, borders emerge as dynamic, extraterritorial, and technopolitical assemblages of control, enacted through practices of surveillance, categorisation, and deterrence.
Marija Pavicevic
Marija is a researcher at Sorbonne Paris Nord University, and a fellow of the Collaborative Institute on Migration (CI Migration) of Collège de France. She is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and the EU’s external actions at the Catholic Institute of Paris and at the French Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations-INALCO. Her research focus is on European migration and asylum policies, European external borders, refugees, migration and international relations, migration diplomacy, Europeanisation, and externalisation.
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