by
Publication Name: Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 2014,
volume 32, pages 000 – 000
doi:10.1068/d13031p
The biopolitical border in practice: surveillance and
death at the Greece–Turkey borderzones
Özgün E Topak
Department of
Sociology, D431 Mackintosh-Corry, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada
K7L 3N6; e-mail: ozgun.topak@queensu.ca
Received 17 May 2013; in revised form 29
March 2014; published online 28 August 2014
Abstract.
This paper examines biopolitical control practices at
the Greece–Turkey borders and addresses current debates in the study of borders
and biopolitics. The Greek and Frontex authorities have established diverse
surveillance mechanisms to control the borderzone space and to monitor,
intercept, apprehend, and push back migrants or to block their passage. The
location of contemporary borders has been much debated in the literature. This
paper provides a nuanced understanding of borders by demonstrating that while
borders are diffusing beyond and inside state territories, their practices and
effects are concentrated at the edges of state territories—ie, borderzones.
Borderzones are biopolitical spaces in which surveillance is most intense and
migrants suffer the direct threat of injury and death. Applying biopolitics in
the context of borderzones also prompts us to revisit the concept. While
Foucault posits that biopolitics is the product of the historical transition
away from sovereign powers controlling territory and imposing practices of
death towards governmental powers managing population mainly through pastoral,
productive, and deterritorialized techniques, the case of the Greece–Turkey
borderzones demonstrates that biopolitics operates through sovereign
territorial controls and surveillance, practices of death and exclusion, and
suspension of rights. This study also highlights the fact that, despite the
biopolitical realities, migrants continue to cross the borders.
Keywords: Greece–Turkey borders, surveillance,
biopolitics, border ethnography, migration control, human rights
