Europe’s new gateway

In recent years, Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a crucial transit point along the Balkan route — a waiting room at the edge of the European Union. For many young Afghans, some still teenagers, the country represents both a temporary refuge and the final obstacle before reaching what they hope will be safety in Western Europe.
Having travelled thousands of kilometres across Iran, Turkey and the Balkans, they arrive in northwestern Bosnia carrying fragmented stories of war, loss and survival. There, abandoned factories and derelict buildings become improvised shelters. Cardboard replaces beds. Open fires offer fragile warmth. Days are spent waiting — watching the weather, monitoring border patrol movements, conserving strength for another attempt.
Among migrants, the crossing is often referred to as “the game.” The term sounds deceptively light, but the reality is anything but. The route from Bosnia into the European Union, often through Croatia and onwards toward Italy, cuts across dense forests and mountainous terrain. In winter, temperatures drop well below freezing. Snow conceals paths and erases footprints. Some areas remain contaminated by landmines left from the Bosnian war of the 1990s, adding another layer of invisible danger to an already perilous journey.
For these adolescents, the wait is as punishing as the crossing itself. Stalled in legal limbo, with limited access to education, healthcare or structured support, they exist in a suspended state — neither fully settled nor able to move forward. The uncertainty compounds the physical hardship. Each failed attempt means returning to the same cold floors and burnt-out rooms, regrouping, and deciding whether to try again.
Bosnia has become a new gateway to Europe not because it offers opportunity, but because it stands at the threshold. It is a place of convergence — of routes, of policies, of hope and exhaustion. Here, at the margins of the European project, a generation of young migrants measures time not in days or months, but in attempts to cross.