When IOM first arrived in Bihac, in 2016, Bira was set up to accommodate the unexpected deviation of thousands of people aimed at crossing the Western border with Croatia. The color of our skins, the quality of our clothes and the freedom of our bodies inscribed the undeniable acknowledgment of the different positionality that European staff and non-European hosts of the camp occupied in that space.
The construction of an ‘us’ in opposition to a ‘them’ was pretty clear. In a very visible way, those were precautions intended to protect us from them. Nobody apart from visitors and camp staff was wearing masks or gloves. ‘It is protocol,’ he said, ‘there have been plenty of diseases spreading in the camp and we shall take all the necessary precautions’. The first time I entered Bira, an IOM operator gave me gloves and a mask. I was there with a group of activists and researchers and we were interested in understanding the dynamics of pushback and deportation that prevent people traveling on the Western Balkan Route (FRONTEX 2018) to cross the European Union (EU) border between BiH and Croatia.īira was not the first TRC I visited, but something about it made violence particularly explicit, undeniable and impossible to hide. The moment is 23 March 2018, when I first visited it. Bira used to be a refrigerator factory and is now managed by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) as a Temporary Reception Centre (TRC) for asylum seekers. The place is a huge warehouse named Bira, in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The reflection that will follow in this contribution can be traced back to one moment and one place. Get your free download from E-International Relations.
This is an excerpt from Dignity in Movement: Borders, Bodies and Rights.
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