A refugee family at Kanjiza Refugee Centre in Northern Serbia. Martin Leveneur/flickr. Some rights reserved.“Wait, the Serbs are now the good guys?”, read a recent headline in the Brussels edition of Politico magazine, referring to Serbia's compassionate treatment of Middle Eastern and African refugees arriving across its borders.
Many observers and refugees themselves have testified to their humane treatment in Serbia, which stands in contrast with how the governments (but not necessarily the peoples) of its some of its European neighbours have handled the refugee influx.
While Serbian society is not immune to anti-refugee xenophobia, with instances of robbery and verbal abuse of migrants by the police and members of public having been reported, these have been peripheral and rare. Several factors might help explain this 'Serbian exception'.
