In a small Bosnian town Velika Kladuša, just two kilometres away from the EU neighbour Croatia, the ruin of a house is covered by signs in Persian, “everyone is a traveller”, and in English, “burn borders”. Prior to the 1990s wars, this building served as a slaughterhouse but went out of business in the midst of the conflict and after that, fell into decay. When thousands of asylum seekers rerouted to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2018 to attempt “games” – a term used for border crossing – the building was turned into a humanitarian centre with showers, clean clothes, and offering a place of rest. I was volunteering and conducting my doctoral research in this building in the peak of migration transit in 2018 and 2019. My research turned into the collection of testimonies of border violence when hundreds of people weekly reported to our voluntary group to be apprehended in Croatia and forced over a border, often with the use of violence. A few years back, I interviewed a police officer who was in charge of international border defence units across the Western Balkans. He was aware of police brutality during push-backs: “This violence comes from frustration”, he said to me in his office in-between picking up the phone and being notified about new interceptions of diverse refugee groups. “The police officers apprehend the same people many times, and they think that nothing else will stop their movement than beating migrants and destroying their staff”.

 

 

This spring, I returned to the Bosnian northern borders to trace what has changed for asylum seekers on their way across the Balkans to the EU and the UK. After my return, I found many squats that used to shelter thousands of people empty. The current lack of visibility of migration in the Western Balkans was toasted by some international organisations as a mark of success. “There was a decrease of irregular border crossing by 70% in 2024”, cheered the European Commission, adding that these are “current positive trends that resulted from the strong cooperation in the region”. Feeding the idea of positive results, Frontex claims that there has been the biggest drop of arrivals by 58% in May 2025.

This narrative of alleged success comes after millions of EU taxpayer’s money was pumped into the machinery of border work in the Western Balkans. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia received €360 million from the EU budget from 2021. This sum has been used to train and deploy border officials, deliver service dogs and surveillance equipment, such as helicopters, drones, thermal and night vision cameras, or heartrate detectors. The European Commission sent millions more to Croatia to ensure that asylum seekers are surveyed and quickly removed back to the Balkans if overstepping the EU border line. Most recently, Frontex – with the €922 million in 2024 from the EU budget– announced that its standing corps will soon arrive in Bosnia-Herzegovina. To top up this border security architecture, the UK agreed in April 2025 to collaborate with the Balkan states – Serbia and Kosovo – and supply tech.

But does this hugely expensive border management really curb migration and lead to positive results?

Police brutality in Croatia has not stopped migration, but merely redirected the movement from the Western Balkans to new alternative transit passages, including the borders in Romania, Belarus, and Serbia, among other locations.

People smugglers also play an active role in making migration invisible in the official statistics. “I have been taking people across the border for seven years now to different points of the Balkan Route”, Iman* told me in a café in the centre of Bihać. “Now, I drive my clients to Croatia or Slovenia from where another car takes them further. My work is much easier now because I made connections with different people over the years, including high ranked border officers who I pay to pass”. Iman then showed me and a video portraying him driving five people on a forest road, which was filmed just one day before we talked.

As Iman pointed out, the smuggling business is booming and becoming more sophisticated with more people involved, including asylum seekers who are stuck in the Balkan Route for years and have no other means of making money for their own transit. Eventually, people smugglers hide successful games from public sight. This is also reflected in the number of asylum applicants in the European Union, which have been around one million during the last years, dropping down only by 13% in 2024. Those at the top of these lists are Syrian and Afghan nationals who commonly pass the Balkan Route.

But not everyone can afford to be smuggled. A car transport from Bosnia-Herzegovina just to Croatia’s capital, Zagreb (100 km distance) currently costs between €800 to €2000, depending on the smuggler, the number of people transported, and the type of transport, as well as number of border officials involved through bribery. Those unable to pay continue walking across the border and risk further violent push-backs.

Hassan from Algeria is one of many people who does not have money to be driven across the border. “I only had three hundred euros to make this journey from Turkey and used it all for food and buses”, he told me in the main square of Velika Kladuša before he tried a new game to enter Croatia. Hassan explained that his only chance was to walk or hide under buses, which always led to police interception and violent push-backs. “Croatian police hit me hard with a belt in my eye”, told Hassan about his latest game. “I could not see for fifteen days how my eye was swollen. I still struggle to see. Then, they let dogs chase me to the river where I fell. As I was in the river, the dogs were right behind me.”

Hassan is not the lone example of the ongoing police violence in the EU’s borders. I met dozens of people from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, and Algeria who recounted being chased and bitten by service dogs in forests, hit by police batons, kicked, slapped, pushed to the ground or into rivers by police forces in Croatia, with most brutality perpetrated by young officers in their twenties. It is, however, less common to meet pushed back people in border towns. Asylum seekers have been forcibly evicted from abandoned buildings in town centres and moved to the official reception centres, which are often located far away from the public sight and the EU border. One of these centres has been built in Lipa, a village in the middle of forests with a dark past of war violence that had left many undetonated explosives and zero residents. Lipa is over five hours of walk from the city of Bihać, adding to the invisibility of migration in the Balkan Route.

Ongoing border violence and encampments in remote locations are deliberate and manufactured strategies of the European Union’s border security, which do not stop migration but merely redirect refugees' movements to alternative routes and increase reliance on people smugglers.

*All participants names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

First published: 1 October 2025

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