Nahrbtniki v ognju, nahrbtniki na vodi

Croatia’s performance as the gatekeeper of the European Union borders has been characterised by violent pushbacks of people on the move to neighbouring countries. Beyond the denial of asylum requests, the use of excessive physical violence, the systematic destruction of phones, or racialised abuse, Croatian border authorities frequently resort to burning people’s belongings in forests, creating collective dumping points, and throwing clothes into rivers. Drawing on ethnographic research and the Border Violence Monitoring Network’s archive of pushback testimonies, this research centres on discarded and destroyed belongings at the Croatian–Bosnian border. This article inquires into the racialisation of people on the move through traces and explores how ‘trashing’ speaks to violence. Crucially, this argues that the racialised violence that border guards administer is intertwined with the racialisation that people on the move are subjected to in local public spheres. Traces in natural environments, then, become ‘trash’ in local encounters and online debates. This article contends that Croatian border guards contribute to existing pollution and make use of xenophobic sentiments. ‘Trashing’ as a pushback technique is productive beyond contributing to the erasure of individual identities and the epistemic violence of borders. It conflates the causes of ostensible pollution, exemplifies violence, and racialises people on the move as invasive polluters deserving of violence. By drawing on xenophobic sentiments in civil society and adding to the material configuration of the border space, Croatian authorities are active participants in the creation of infrastructures of capture, pollution, violence, and death. Taking seriously the material configuration of natural border environments accordingly provides an inroad to a methodology of traces of violence.