Articles | Volume 80, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-425-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-425-2025
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17 Nov 2025
Standard article |  | 17 Nov 2025

“His dead body is in the water right now” – death, survival, and hypermobility along the Balkan Route

Philipp Themann

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„We are making it on ourselves“ – Infrastrukturen der (Im)Mobilität in Bosnien und Herzegowina
Philipp Themann and Benjamin Etzold
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Cited articles

4D: Deceased, disappeared, detained – documenting migrant trail in the Balkans, https://4dtrail.wordpress.com/database/ (last access: 6 November 2025), 2025a. 
4D: Deceased, disappeared, detained – documenting migrant trail in the Balkans, https://4dtrail.wordpress.com/about/ (last access: 6 November 2025), 2025b. 
Agamben, G.: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, ISBN 0804732183, 1998. 
Aradau, C. and Tazzioli, M.: Biopolitics Multiple: Migration, Extraction, Subtraction, Millenium, 48, 198–220, https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829819889139, 2019. 
Bank, A., Christiane, F., and Schneiker, A.: The Political Dynamics of Human Mobility: Migration out of, as, and into Violence, Global Policy, 8, 12–18, 2017. 
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Short summary
The article examines why migrants die in the vast landscapes of the Balkans and describes these landscapes as elements of border protection. When fleeing through these landscapes, many refugees experienced great suffering, trauma, or even death. The reasons for this are the poor conditions in camps and illegal rejections at the borders. The article explains that these circumstances force migrants to take increasingly dangerous routes to reach western Europe or northern Europe.
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