„Yallah, Riskiw.“ How Illegalised Migrants from the Maghreb Experience and Challenge Risks and Uncertainty on the Balkan Route and upon Arrival.

This contribution offers an ethnographic insight into understanding how illegalised migrants from the Maghreb experience and challenge risks and uncertainty on the Balkan Route. In the face of high mortality rates for crossing attempts via the Mediterranean Sea or after several failed attempts, migrants from the Maghreb countries increasingly choose to migrate towards Europe via the Balkan Route. While the Balkan Route may not be directly as deadly as the Mediterranean passage, there is more and more documentation being published on cases of unidentified corpses and “the disappeared” (Hameršak, 2024). Besides death, “travelling” the Balkan Route carries a variety of risks and uncertainty to be kept in mind before departure or to discover while en route, ranging from torture and rape to detainment to permanently high exposure to psychological and physical stress over an extended period, several months and even years. The verb “to risk” even found its way from the French language into North African dialects of Arabic, meaning “to risk one’s life in an attempt to make it to Europe". Unlike migrants that are considered refugees under the Geneva convention (e.g. Syrian or Afghan citizens), upon arrival in the EU, migrants from the Maghreb also face the looming uncertainty of whether they will ever be able to legalise their stay and finding ways to provide stable income for themselves and family members back home. This contribution explores and analyses migrants’ ways of dealing with the risks and encounters of violence on the Balkan Route and the uncertainty upon arrival.