Fluid Borders in the Aegean: Imbros, Lesbos and the Archipelago

Abstract

This paper explores issues concerning political borders imposed within the Aegean Archipelago, focusing particularly on two Aegean islands - Imbros and Lesbos - as comparative cases. Today the Aegean Sea and Archipelago function as an unconventional threshold, separating Europe from the non-western powers of the Near and Middle East. Ongoing perpetual migration into Europe via T & uuml;rkiye is altering the understanding of the Aegean as a fixed borderland, revealing the inherent fluidity which underpins it. This is a process in the making and can go in many different directions. Analyzing historical and current spatial politics of the region, I claim that the Aegean Sea border has increasingly begun to act akin to Giorgio Agamben's theory of zones of indistinction. Imbros, as the westernmost landmass of T & uuml;rkiye, and Lesbos, as part of the easternmost group of Greek islands, offer themselves as key sites to examine new bordering practices, analyzed in relation to the phenomenon of archipelago and Agamben's thought.