Re-Bordering the State Through Asylum Governance: Securitarian Neoliberalism Along the Balkan Route

The article investigates the impact of border regimes and bordering processes in asylum governance on the institutional and political boundaries of nation-states. The research was conducted between 2020 and 2024 along the so-called Balkan route of migration. It highlights how neoliberal and securitarian approaches converge in the management of two reception centres situated in critical border areas, namely the Lipa camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Casa Malala in Italy. I define this blend of governance as securitarian neoliberalism and discuss how this mode of governance subjects people on the move to increasingly restrictive and discriminatory policies, simultaneously diminishing states' responsibilities for the violations that arise from these policies. This approach to managing human mobility relies on diminished legal and procedural safeguards, which ultimately results in the widespread violation of migrants' rights and freedoms, a reduction in democratic scrutiny, and the erosion of the rule of law.