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

ABSTRACT
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’.