EXTENDING THE CURRENT REFUGEE CRISIS: ADDITIONAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC BURDEN FOR SERBIA

GREČIĆ Vladimir (Vladimir Grečić is a retired Professor of Economis of Labour from the University of Belgrade, and former Director of Research in the Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade),

The European Union was facing the biggest wave of disorderly migration since World War II. The European Commission has very seriously started to seek the response to the migrant crisis, which has, by character, become a humanitarian in the first half of 2015. The influx of migrants in the EU went over many migrant routes. One was the Balkan route that went through Serbia. The European Commission adopted two key documents: the European Agenda on Security and the European Agenda for Migration. The implementation of these documents has not proceeded as was expected, and the crisis has been continued. The author of this article explores migrants’ assessments of the benefits and consequences of arriving, staying, and leaving the country and indicates the push and pull factors that generate legal and asylum migration through the European Union. For a majority of migrants crossing through the Balkan route in 2015, Serbia has not been preferred as a destination country by asylum-seekers, but as a transit only. However, the number of asylum seekers in Serbia was significantly higher in 2015 compared to the previous year.

Keywords: forced migration, asylum-seekers, European migration policies, Serbia, transit migrations