Power and informality in the polycentric governing of transit and irregular migration on EU’s eastern border with Belarus
Journal: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Year: 2024

Scholarship on transit and irregular migration related to Europe has primarily studied movements from war-torn regions in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, yet since 2021 this academic landscape has drastically changed. Irregular migration that earlier had passed invisibly towards the EU via Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, using Ukraine and Belarus as transit states, adopted new forms under Russia’s intensified “hybrid” warfare and its 2022 military invasion of Ukraine. This paper seeks