This article explores nonrecording on the borders of Europe during the “European refugee crisis” in 2015. It examines the ambiguous practices of border control and the diverse actors involved. Taking the island of Lesvos as its starting point, the article interrogates how state functionaries manage an “irregular” bureaucracy. Irregular bureaucracy is approached as an essential element of statecraft , rather than an indication of state failure. Nonrecording is thus a crucial site of contestation between the state, nonstate agents, and the government, as well as between Greece and “Europe.” Nevertheless, despite the prevalence of irregularity, the imagery associated with ideal bureaucracy—a system of absolute knowledge, control, and governance of populations—is powerful; and yet, the actors are fully aware that it is a fantasy.

Nonrecording the “European refugee crisis” in Greece: Navigating through irregular bureaucracy

A Sense of Border

The current financial and fiscal crisis within the Eurozone is the latest in a series of events to have occurred in recent decades that have been altering the meaning, purpose, and form of European borders. These events include the multiple border-altering experiments of the European Union (EU), the end of the Cold War, and the conflicts in former Yugoslavia. Cumulatively, the position of Europe, as a place and as an idea, has been undergoing considerable relocation as a result. This large-scale political reorganization of spatial location has led to a shift in focus within European border studies: The way the ground underneath people's feet can be shifted turns out to be as important as the way people themselves move from one place to another, or the way people form politically inflected identities in relation to territories.

Borders and the Relocation of Europe

This paper explores borders as conceptual entities that are performed. Rather than assume that the meaning of borders (or ‘border-ness’) holds steady while everything else changes, the paper considers borders as forms of ‘performation’ in Callon's terms. It also argues that border is always about relations as much as separation, and that, combined with historically shifting theories of border, suggests that border as such cannot be taken for granted in understanding the difference borders make to peoples' lives. The paper considers differences in the way border has been performed in the Aegean in order to explore shifting theories of border in this region. It particularly focuses on the events leading up to the 1923 exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, and more recent European-led attempts to control illegal migration across the Aegean, in exploring the interplay between border performed as place as opposed to border performed as abstract line.

PERFORMING BORDER IN THE AEGEAN: On relocating political, economic and social relations

The relevance of European Union (EU) cross-border cooperation for European border conflict amelioration may be questioned in the contemporary global climate of threat and insecurity posed by forces of 'dark globalisation'. In any case, empirical evidence exposes the limitations of cross-border cooperation in advancing conflict amelioration in some border regions. Nevertheless, in an enlarged EU which encompasses Central and East European member states and reaches out to neighbouring states through cross-border cooperation initiatives, the number of real and potential border conflicts with which it is concerned has risen exponentially. Fortunately, there are cases of EU 'borderscapes' that have adopted a cross-border 'peace-building from below' approach leading to border conflict amelioration. Unfortunately, countervailing pressures on EU cross-border cooperation from border security regimes (principally Schengen), the Eurozone crisis, EU budgetary constraints, the conceptualisation of 'Europe as Empire', ...

European Union Cross-Border Cooperation and Conflict Amelioration

The identity of any nation-state is inextricably linked with its borders and frontiers. Borders connect nations and sustain notions of social cohesion. Yet they are also the sites of division, fragmentation and political conflict. This ambitious study encompasses North Africa, the Middle East, and South and South East Europe to examine the emergence of state borders and polarised identities in the Mediterranean. The authors look at the impact of political boundaries upon the region, along with pressures from European and economic integration, the resurgence of nationalism, and refugee and security concerns. The authors explore the politics of memory, and ask whether echoes from the imperial past - Ottoman and colonial - could provide the basis for conflict resolution, region-building and economic integration.

Mediterranean Frontiers: Borders, Conflict and Memory in a Transnational World

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Mediterranean Frontiers: Borders, Conflict and Memory in a Transnational World