The chapter discusses a politically situated, critical ethnographic account of a particular form of violent and forced expulsions or pushbacks of refugees to Serbian territory by the Croatian police. Working within the framework of transnational feminist theory and recent critical analysis of the state of people on the move, we posit that the refugee subject has transformed now to constitute a threatening subject—one that is repeatedly criminalised and dehumanised through physical police violence and denied access to international protection mechanisms. We explore the particularity of the subject formation of the refugee during the so-called refugee crisis (izbjeglicka kriza) and the creation of the refugee as a parahuman to be expelled from the state territory. We also argue that the question of the illegality of the pushbacks conducted by the Croatian police needs to be reframed and discussed instead as a legalised action, justified through the securitisation paradigm and protected by the law. Lastly, we argue that this practice of violence against people on the move rarely undergoes criminalisation.
