This chapter looks at the intersection of race, gender, and migration in the Western Balkans. Immobilizing mobile bodies from the Global South has increasingly been the focus of criminological inquiry. Such inquiry, however, has largely excluded the Western Balkans. A difficult place to research, comprising countries of the former Yugoslavia and Albania, the region is the second-largest route for irregular migrants in Europe (Frontex 2016). Indeed, EU expansion and global developments such as wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq have had a major impact on mobility and migration in the region. The chapter outlines racialized hierarchies in play in contemporary border policing in the region, and how these racialized and gendered practices target racially different Others and women irregular migrants and asylum seekers. Finally, this chapter maps the impact of such practices and calls for a shift in knowledge production in documenting and addressing such discriminatory practices.
