Bosnia: the “game” of borders, between migration and health

Bihac and Vladica Kladusa – Hamid’s wife is already in Germany with two of their children. Instead, he looks at the border of the European Union from an abandoned house on the hill of Velika Kladusa, the small Bosnian town from which many migrants hope to reach opposite Croatia. He will sleep with other families in this house without windows or services, with blankets and mattresses on the floor that have been used for months by anyone who decides to sleep here.

Hamid is an Afghan of Tajika ethnicity fleeing Taliban retaliation, committed to reuniting even the youngest of the family with his mother. In fact, Adel, 18 months old, is in his father’s arms. “I had to go back for her because she didn’t have the documents and it wasn’t possible to give her to my wife.”

Father and daughter could get asylum like the rest of the family, “but it takes two years to carry out the paperwork, I can’t keep her away from her mother for that long.”

So Hamid and the little girl with stinging black eyes will try the so-called ‘game’ on a cold Bosnian night. It literally means ‘play’, but it has nothing to do with a practice for entertaining children like Adel. Instead, it is what the dangerous border crossing and attempting to escape from the Croatian police is called.

The crossing is not that simple and it takes several attempts, especially if you are traveling with a child and are not a young adult male. “Almost no one succeeds the first time,” explains Silvia Maraone, coordinator in Bosnia of the Italian NGO Ipsia. But Maraone also adds that “in the end they all succeed”, which raises questions about the quality of border management and the fact that money could be better spent on policies of a different nature.

In fact, the ‘game’ is so widespread among migrants and asylum seekers that it creates “ephemeral geographies”, with the occupation of abandoned houses during the Balkan conflict, crumbling factories, skeletons of unfinished buildings. All this often without any supervision, not even health, not even in time of Covid.

Professor Claudio Minca, from the University of Bologna, has been studying the phenomenon for several years and has recently brought home a grant from the European Research Council to support the most innovative research for a project called ‘The Game’, focused on corridors ‘informal’ migrants.

Unlike the institutional camps, such as that of Lipa, recently renovated after a fire, the informal camps are a real “archipelago” that hosts the thousands of people heading to Western Europe and are, explains Minca, “the result of a” gray zone ”in the administration of these border areas. These are informal camps on the Balkan route, which starts from Greece and winds through constantly updated routes through Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia ».

To cross the Bosnian-Croatian border are now mainly young Pakistanis headed for Italy, “because we are not rejected there,” says Aziz. Met in a café run by a local association, Aziz has now managed to make it to Slovenia, but running out of money.

To draw attention to informal settlements and what is de facto migrant squatting are also studies on best public health practices for both migrants and the local population.

Of low average age, that of migrants is often a healthy population, but exhausted by weeks of walking, prone to infections and with a very high spread of diseases such as scabies, exchanged by sleeping on the same mattresses. Given the high mobility it is often difficult to identify more insidious diseases such as tuberculosis, antibiotic resistance, HIV.

In institutional fields, migrants can access health care, but the issue becomes more complicated in informal settlements. Yet many prefer to stay here, because it is closer to the border and the chance to try the ‘game’.

The Iraqi Siddar then explains how to remove him from the camps in favor of a house with unsafe stairs and no windows or bathroom was also the violence found in the structures run by the institutions: “There are too many migrants there,” he says, referring to to internal violence, but also to the limited freedom to go out.

In countries such as Bosnia, where the management of the camps and the migration phenomenon was originally entrusted to the United Nations and is only now starting to be managed by the state, coexistence with the local population has not always been without obstacles and public health has often part of the anti-migration rhetoric.

For this reason, Ines Tanovic, manager of Kompas 071, a local organization dedicated to supporting migrants who want to try the ‘game’, explains the dangers of the ‘western savior syndrome’ of the humanitarian industry, which would harm local organizations. “Here they have all focused on migrants, forgetting the local population. And this is wrong, ”explains the no-borders activist.

The heavily impoverished Bosnian population has seen a phenomenon of parallel emigration of young Bosnians, especially doctors, to better-paid countries. Even during Covid, the elderly in many cases found themselves alone.

“Even if international organizations bought ambulances and some cars, much more could have been done for the local population,” says Tanovic. “People living on less than 400 euros a month saw migrants resell the jackets they had received for free because they receive too many, without coordination. It seemed to see capitalism pitting the poor against the poor ».

This is echoed by Niccolò Paganini of the organization of the Mediterranean Hope evangelical churches, also engaged in integration projects between young migrants and the local population. As he speaks, a group of Pakistani enter and ask to be allowed to shower in the café on the way to the ‘game’.

The number of migrants on this route has decreased significantly, explains Laura Lungarotti of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the occupation of the ‘formal’ camps is currently less than 2,000 seats against a capacity of over 5,000.

About 90% of the migrants are Pakistanis, with a growing number of Afghans, Iranians, Bengalis and even Cubans. Different ethnic groups don’t always get along, as the threats written on the walls of many of these makeshift shelters testify. Among the migrants living in abandoned houses, there are also the same traffickers.

For Lungarotti, the best approach to public health is to create “lasting solutions, no longer emergency”, such as including the resources destined for migrants in those of the public system also destined for the local population.

Meanwhile, in another ‘makeshift refuge’ a man from India explains that he has tried the game several times and wants to wait for the warm weather to cross again. He wants to join an uncle in Naples. Meanwhile, he watches Bollywood movies on his cell phone, inside a room without a door, with plastic-covered windows.

* This article, part of the Public Health Safety project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was funded by the European Journalism Center (EJC)