Populist Variations on Migration: Floating Signifiers of Mobility in the Context of the ‘Balkan Route’ and the COVID-19 Pandemic

By focusing on the ongoing events of the so-called ‘Balkan Route’ and the Covid-19 pandemic this paper explores how the populist representations of migrants in the Western Balkans rest on specific historically embedded framings of migration. Based on long-term ethnographic insights and media analysis in Serbia the paper explores how the images of (good/bad) migrants tend to play out as unstable ‘floating signifiers’ in particular ways which is grounded on ambivalent perceptions of primarily two legacies and patterns of migration crucial for the region: work migration and forced migration. The paper traces how, firstly, the image of the diligent work migrant loyal to nationalist politics can surprisingly easily turn into one of the irresponsible and threatening figure of the returning work migrant as the very culprit of the pandemic (spreading the virus and taking advantage of the health system). The paper explores how this ambivalent image of the work migrant is based in the particular history and transformation of emigration from former Yugoslavia to Western Europe since the 1960s and its interrelation with populist nationalism. Secondly, I will argue that the ‘usage’ of the image of the ‘Muslim migrant’ along the©so-called ‘Balkan Route’ seems to be ‘flexible’ and ‘variable’ due to the particular history and presence of Muslim populations in the region. The ‘Muslim migrant’ can thus easily simultaneously or alternately appear as subject of legitimate humanitarian aid and freedom of movement (with no reference to religion at all), as well as the threatening ‘Muslim other’.