Transit migration management in the Western Balkans

Abstract

The European migrant crisis has turned the Western Balkans states into the most important transit region from Asia and Africa to the European Union. Being the main recipient of migrants the EU carries an active migration management policy on the territory of the Western Balkan region. The main purposes of the EU’s migration policy are to reduce the scale of illegal migration and reform the asylum system by means of securitization and externalization. In turn, the Western Balkans states heading for European integration are forced to follow all the political decisions of the EU authorities in the field of migration, hoping for an early entry into the organization. However, these decisions lead to an increase in migration pressure on the countries of the region, actually turning the Western Balkans into a buffer zone that performs the function of filtering the flows of illegal migrants.