The exhibit both points out that there is, in fact, a continuous river by placing the Balkan Route in broader histories of migration, while also showing that no migration story happens twice.

The afterlives of the Balkan conflicts continue to impact today’s migrants.

The raw materiality of the objects exceeds any idea of “migrant” or “border” you might enter the exhibit with.

“Depending on where one arrives and where one leaves, one becomes a refugee, an expatriate, a ‘brain drain,’ an asylum seeker, a student, a worker.”

Saccora says we can realize one vital fact, a fact demonstrated in the very ability to go beyond official narratives of life along the Balkan Route: “Another Europe is already here.”