Mobility Humanities

The 2015 so-called “European refugee crisis” saw an unprecedented number of refugees enter Europe via the Balkan Route. Despite the corridor officially closing in March 2016, refugees continued to travel along the Route to reach Western Europe via (in)formal border crossings. This paper examines “The List,” a document that existed between the Serbian and Hungarian authorities to manage mobility across their shared border. It remained the single legal pathway to the European Union available to refugees based in Serbia from mid 2016 until March 2020. This article seeks to conceptualise the role of detours as a mechanism of governing (im)mobility along informal migration corridors. Detours, as mechanisms of control over mobility, offer a critical lens for understanding the interplay between power, temporality, and the lived experiences of forced migration. By exploring detours in this way, their dual role in fostering hope and agency while simultaneously enforcing control and exclusion can be examined.