On a street corner in central Athens, Shir Muhammad grips his backpack straps and cranes his neck to look for the bus. The block, located near Victoria Square, is packed with refugees and migrants speaking a jumble of Farsi, Pashto and Arabic dialects.

In a European transit camp, women and girls explain why they feel safer sleeping out in the cold.

"We never sleep [at the same time]. One of us always stays awake. We've heard too many stories of women who have been robbed," says 38-year-old Samaher from Baghdad. She has a soft voice and sad, dark eyes. 

Three weeks ago she fled Iraq with her baby boy and two female friends.  

Now she is at the transit camp of Vinojug on the Macedonian-Greek border, waiting for the train to Serbia.

FEAR is driving thousands of people into the hands of traffickers.

They are desperate to escape war, poverty and oppression, but are afraid Europe will shut the gates to safety at any moment.

In the controlled chaos of a transit centre in south Serbia, on the border with Macedonia, their faces show the strain, even if they know the worst is over.

Four thousand people passed through the centre in a single day last month as the migrant wave shows no signs of letting up, despite the -5°C temperatures at night.

For the hundreds of female activists volunteering along the Balkans refugee route, the migration crisis is both personal and political.