Border porosities

Movements of people, objects, and ideas in the southern Balkans

Rozita Dimova, Hastings Donnan, Sarah Green

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526140654
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología cultural y social

This innovative book documents border porosities that have developed and persisted between Greece and North Macedonia over different temporalities and at different localities. By drawing on geology's approaches to studying porosity, Dimova argues that similar to rocks and minerals that only appear solid and impermeable, seemingly impenetrable borders are inevitably traversed by different forms of passage.The rich ethnographic case studies, from the history of railroads in the southern Balkans, border town beauty tourism, child refugees during the Greek Civil War, mining and environmental activism, and the urban renovation project in Skopje, show that the political borders between states do not only restrict or regulate the movement of people and things, but are also always permeable in ways that exceed state governmentality.

1
Railway porosity across the border: from Ottoman railway lines to contemporary migrant transportation

Vug is a term used in geology referring to an elongated cavity formed by cracks and fissures opened by tectonic activity. Vugs can be filled by different materials such as minerals or they can remain empty cavities that allow water or other liquid to permeate through the rock. This vuggy character of porosity created by tectonic, environmental, or chemical processes bears similarity with the protractive, elongated porosity triggered by the first central railway built in the early 1870s between Thessaloniki and Mitrovica.¹ Constructed with the initial intention to speed up transportation of passengers, soldiers, various merchandise, but also weapons and post, this railway has enabled intensive exchange since its construction until today, opening a durable crack on both sides of the border (Битоски, Пистиќ and Крстески 1973). Often, the railway had unintended consequences, other than those initially planned. On the one hand, the Ottoman army used the railway to transport soldiers and weapons during the period of uprisings in this region in the early twentieth century, thus enabling much better mobility and speed. The rebels and revolutionaries, on the other hand, made the railways and bridges targets of their attacks, thus affecting the military potency of the Ottomans.

The importance of the railway has endured until contemporary times, although the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991, and the ensuing financial crisis of Greece and RN Macedonia, have gravely affected the railway transport and infrastructure. The most striking recent porosity took place during the migrant and refugee wave of 2015–16, when over 300,000 people crossed the country, many on foot but many using trains through the Balkan corridor on their way to Serbia and further, to Western Europe.

The public became aware of the Balkan corridor on 6 November 2014 when, in broad daylight at around 2 p.m. near the town of Veles in central RN Macedonia, a father and a seven-month-old baby from Afghanistan were run over by the express train traveling from Thessaloniki to Belgrade. This was the first incident, marking a trend that would claim many more lives in the months to come. On 23 April 2015, 14 more migrants were run over and killed by the evening express train near Demir Kapija in Southern RN Macedonia. The victims, economic migrants from Afghanistan and Somalia, used the railway to orient themselves on their passage from Macedonia to Western Europe. Coming from Greece, where they had initially arrived on one of the Greek islands, many of the migrants and refugees were transported by boats and buses to Greece's northern border. At the border they were prohibited from entering RN Macedonia legally and using public transport. This prohibition forced hundreds of refugees and migrants to enter the country illegally and walk the 180 kilometers across Macedonian territory. To be sure that they were on the right path, most of them followed the railway tracks going north to Serbia (Figure 1.1a–c). The train accidents occurred when, exhausted and dehydrated, the migrants did not hear the approaching trains.

Figure 1.1a–c Migrants walking or resting on the railway tracks in RN Macedonia in 2016

In the period between January and April 2015, 27 migrants – half of whom were children – were run over by trains while crossing Macedonian territory. The horrific images in the media of dismembered and decapitated victims lying on the railway tracks prompted calls from local NGOs and activists, and also from international humanitarian organizations, to amend the Macedonian asylum law and allow the migrants and refugees to enter, transit, and exit the country legally.

After considerable pressure, the Macedonian parliament revised the asylum law and its new version was passed in May 2015. The new law allowed legal entry and 72 hours of free movement through Macedonian territory, pending mandatory registration at the border. This law therefore allowed the refugees and migrants to legally use public transport, and also to apply for asylum in Macedonia if they decided to stay longer than the 72 hours.² In the period from the passing of the law until November 2015, when the border was closed to economic migrants, hundreds of thousands of people entered, passed through, and exited RN Macedonia. The majority used trains as their main means of transportation, which made the Macedonian railway company crucial in the transportation of migrants and refugees. This activity came after a long period of decline in the amount of transport and profits.

Nowadays trains and railways are managed by two state-owned companies: Macedonian Railway Transport and Macedonian Railway Infrastructure. The two companies have 1,200 employees each, a total of 2,400. In a report prepared on the state of the Macedonian railway, Al Jazeera identified the employees of these two railway companies as the oldest in Europe: the average age is 60 years. The same report reveals that both companies have experienced a constant decline: in 2008, for instance, the number of passengers was 1,440,000 and in 2016 it dropped to 663,000. The same trend applies to the transportation of freight: in 2008 the amount of goods transported by trains was 4.2 million tons, and in 2016 it was 1.3 million tons. The Railway Transport company has suffered the largest loss in the country: €11 million, and the Railway Infrastructure has incurred an €8 million loss, meaning an overall loss in 2017 of €19 million.³

This changed briefly during the migrant crisis and the need for transportation in 2015–16. The fact that the company used old trains dating from Yugoslav times that could not run faster than 20 kilometers an hour made the travel excruciating. At the peak of the migration wave in 2015–16 the state-owned railway company increased the price of a ticket from Gevgelija to Tabanovce – a journey of 180 kilometers – from €5 to €23 per person. With 4,000–5,000 people entering the country daily, media reporters estimated that the profit for the railway company increased drastically. As no receipts were issued for the tickets, it was difficult to estimate the overall profit. The railway company also abolished the regular discounts for families traveling together that had existed prior to the migrant crisis. After the border was closed – first for economic migrants in November 2015 and then for all others in March 2016 – the railway continued to be used by local people in the country, and prices went down significantly.

The reasons for the crisis in the Macedonian railway companies are not unique to RN Macedonia. This is the case in all Former Yugoslav countries which did not manage the transition of their railway companies well. Over-employment, lack of investment coordination with the other types of transport, and refusal to privatize the state-owned companies have been pointed out as the main reasons for the decline of railway transportation and maintenance of the infrastructure.⁴ What was a pleasurable trip from Greece through Yugoslavia (Macedonia to Serbia and further north or west during socialist times), became a more complicated undertaking in the 1990s due to the wars and other turbulent political events.

Owing to the political and economic crisis in Greece, passenger services were suspended from 2011 until spring 2014. The beginning of the migrant crisis put a stop to the operation of the direct train, and the migrants and refugees were transported by bus to Idoumeni, the last point in Greece. The final 1.2-kilometer stretch to Gevgelija they crossed on foot, arriving at the railway station in Gevgelija and waiting to board one of the three trains traveling north to Tabanovce and the border-crossing with Serbia. The direct train on the route Belgrade–Skopje–Gevgelija–Thessaloniki resumed in 2016 when the migrant wave subsided. But due to the technical problems of the railways and the low number of passengers, the train stopped again. It was reestablished only briefly during the summer months of May–September 2019.

Investigating the vuggy and moldic porosities enabled by the central railway line and train system that crossed the border, from its initial construction in the early 1870s to the contemporary use of trains in the transportation of displaced people through the Balkan route in 2015–2016, I zoom onto gateways created by the railway system established since the construction of the first railway in 1871. The railway shows the importance of this porosity through the inter-bellum, the socialist period, all the way to independence and contemporary times. By looking at the modifications of the railway in different periods, one discerns the historical, technological, political, economic, and humanitarian landscapes of this region, and the relevance of the border for the continuous change.

The porosity of this region began to intensify with the railway that started operation in 1873, when a new line was constructed to connect Skopje and Thessaloniki. The hundredth anniversary in 1973 resulted in a detailed study sponsored by the state-owned Macedonian Railway company that included a team of historians, social scientists, and engineers who conducted comprehensive archival, ethnographic, and technical research to examine the relevance of the railway for the development of Macedonia since Ottoman times (El-Din​ 2009, Битоски, Пистиќ and Крстески 1973). The analysis provides a detailed study of the challenges due to the various geomorphological configurations that included canyons, valleys, and geological formations that were not easily overcome, and also of th...