In this special issue, the European irregularized migration regime will be examined through an ethnographic perspective, based on studies carried out in its peripheries. Rather than treating this regime as a coherent or centralized system, the contributions trace how it is assembled through everyday practices, material environments, spatial conditions, temporalities, but also through modes of control, care and negotiation. The papers collected in this issue focus on cases drawn from Turkey, Italy, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to illustrate the way bordering and irregularization of migration occur at the margins of Europe. A set of interrelated keywords – (im)mobility, material traces, child labour, visa, solidarity networks, and (re-)fugitive democracy – structure the thematic analysis of the European irregularized migration regime as a field of practices, relations and ways of life.
Jovanović et al. (2026) studied this question.