From borders to courts: assembling pushback cases in a hostile transnational setting

Abstract This article examines the work of legal intermediaries in moving cases from the border to the court, focusing on pushbacks from Italy and Austria to Slovenia and along the Balkan corridor. It demonstrates that these practices occurred within a hostile transnational setting that, from the outset, dispersed and destabilized potential claimants, traces, and the litigation path. Confronted with this immediate condition of misalignment, it shows that intermediaries engaged in constitutive and collaborative work across borders. The article conceptualizes this work as “case assembly” and analyzes it from a comparative perspective.