Disobedient Movement: The Biopolitical Subject and Pushbacks in the Greece-Turkey Borderzone

Abstract

In the year 2020, pushbacks across the Greece-Turkey border, a practice by which Greece and the EU unlawfully expels people on the move from the territory, increased and intensified (Refugees International 2020, Legal Centre Lesvos 2020). Despite many making lawful requests for asylum, or being in possession of valid residency documentation, people on the move continue to be expelled in high numbers via violent and unlawful means. This study is based on remote research conducted with fieldworkers and people on the move with lived experience in Turkey, Greece and Norway, through six in-depth interviews. Additionally, 107 testimonies of pushbacks in 2020 were coded and analysed, all of which are published on open-source websites. Drawing from theories of biopolitics (Foucault 2003), thanatopolitics (Agamben 1995) and structurationism (Giddens 1986), this thesis establishes a new analytical frame to elucidate the empirical case of pushbacks in the Greece-Turkey borderzone: Disobedient movement in a rightless zone. This frame informs an understanding of the “mutually constitutive” relationship between structure (the sovereign state of Greece and the EU) and agent (the person on the move) in the borderzone (Giddens 1986, xxx). The borderzone is defined in the thesis as both a physical space and an everywhere space which operates as a rightless zone, implemented by the biopolitical sovereign state. The rightless zone forms the first part of the analytical frame, which examines how people on the move, and those perceived to be on the move, are subjected to illicit and violent practices by the sovereign state. This is analysed through the following indicators: revoking papers, borderzone detention, expulsion and making die. The second part of the frame, disobedient movement, examines how people on the move move disobediently through the borderzone, shown through three indicators of persistence, ingenuity and solidarity. In doing so, they defy and challenge the sovereign power which attempts to control them. This is one of the first papers to systematically research pushback practices and people on the move’s responses to them. In doing so, this study offers a significant academic and social contribution through the addition of a new analytical frame, through the exposing of brutal and unlawful state measures exercised at the EU’s borders, and through a long-awaited recognition and examination of people on the move’s agency and disobedience in the borderzone.