The regime of bordering: Borderwork, mobility, and relational state power in the Greek–Turkish borderlands

The constitutive role of migration, mobilities and borders in state formation and the production of state power is well documented. Existing scholarship has largely focused on the politics and governance of migration, on encounters at and within state borders and often vis- à-vis a single type of cross-border mobility. Building on critical perspectives on everyday borderwork and state power as a relational topological force, this paper advances the regime of bordering as an analytical framework for a fine-grained and relational understanding of state power in postimperial borders, like the Greek-Turkish border. Epistemologically, this framework adopts a comprehensive mobility lens, rather than focusing on one type of mobility or borderwork, and combines a topological approach to power with a place-based analysis of cross-border mobilities and interactions in political, economic and social spheres. Empirically grounded in Greek-Turkish relations and the cross-border mobilities in the Thracian borderlands, the framework enables capturing the accumulated effects of mobility-related borderwork in the interrelated transnational geopolitical, geoeconomic and geosocial spaces. As such, it offers a spatially and temporally connected understanding of state-mobility relations.