From home to summit: Sovereign bodies and the everyday geopolitics of mountain tourism in Iraqi Kurdistan

This article examines the everyday geopolitics of tourist mobility in the Zagros Mountains of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2025 (go-along interviews, observations, semi-structured interviews, and checkpoint testing), it explores how tourist practices are both shaped by and contribute to geopolitical reconfigurations. Through a detailed case study of a mountain ascent—from logistical preparations and permit acquisition to group formation, checkpoint crossings, and the hike itself—the article analyses how these practices reveal micro-forms of agency used to bypass logistical, administrative and security constraints. Mountain recreation in the KRI involves mobility across areas governed by overlapping and contested sovereignties. Given the ubiquity of internal borders in the KRI, we argue that tourist mobility is structured by differentiated borderities, forms of uneven access structured by privilege but also negotiated through everyday micro-agency. Tourism does not merely respond to geopolitical dynamics; it can also reshape them by introducing “sovereign bodies”—actors with strong social and symbolic capital—into areas where sovereignties are in competition and mostly traversed by nonsovereign populations. By emphasising the ordinariness and spatiality of tourism, this article highlights how seemingly mundane leisure practices can subtly transform the geopolitical space.