Page - 201 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Estela Schindel | Sea border crossing to Europe 201 2012 led migrants and their “facilitators” to seek alternative routes (frontex 2013b, 5). This field- work is part of a larger research that takes the very materiality of the border crossing as a star- ting point for inquiring about the sociocultural construction of the EU border regime. While I maintained conversations with different actors involved in the field, including members of NGOs and civil society initiatives, experts, authorities and border enforcement personnel, I had particular interest in putting the voice of the refugees themselves in the foreground. Who is crossing and how are they doing this? What are their perceptions of this risky undertaking? What happens on the high seas? The practice mentioned by Abbas of destroying the own boat used to be widespread in the Aegean and was confirmed to me by all interviewees whom I asked about it: Authorities consider this practice a criminal action while other actors in the field show understanding for this desperate measure and even see it as an act of resistance or, as an activist called it, a “self-rescue operation.” Testimonies indicate that this action has not always been effective in front of the hellenic coast Guard, which has been accused of serious mistreatment of migrants and of making their emergency situation even worse, as in the account of Abbas. In fact, migrants have ceased using this method when women and children are on board and it seems to be increasingly out of favor in general, since it has become more dangerous.2 The aim of this essay is not to evaluate this action in terms of moral values or of instrumen- tal use, but to take it as a point of departure for reflecting on the political and cultural defini- tion of European borders today. What does it mean to put one’s own life at stake in order to be admitted into Europe through a rescue operation? What sort of border is being created with this action – or rather, what conception of “border” underlies it? can we affirm that the border is being increasingly produced as a line along which “bare life” is being constructed and disputed? Border crossings in the North Aegean, like the ones experienced by Abbas, are radical experi- ences in which refugees risk everything, including their very existence, and most certainties are put into question. Traversing through a sort of “state of nature”, a condition outside all social conventions and certainties, illegalized travellers are exposed to the arbitrariness of trafficking networks and coastal patrols, but also abandoned to the merciless elements. My main claim will be that the European borders are being materially and symbolically constructed as boundaries between civilized areas of technological superiority and zones of exposure to the elements, in continuity and contiguity to what we consider “nature.” In this context, the boat crossing to Europe becomes a navigation along the line that divides a citizenship of rights from a state of total exposure and abandonment, or “bare life,” albeit this line is continually disputed and re-drawn. The illegalized migrants’ journey through this area of the Aegean is thus not only a transitory experience but also, or especially, a transitional one in which the assumptions that allegedly form the basis of social life are distorted and suspended. The self-destruction of the boats, I sustain, reveals the extent to which this radical indeterminacy is taken, and also points to the core of what is being currently disputed in the last instance at the European sea borders, namely the transformation of migrants from citizens into “bare life,” – biological existence – to be rescued or left to drown. Therefore, this operation is compatible both with the securitization 2 An underage Syrian boy suffering diabetes was accused of smuggling and of destroying the boat and received a 7-year sentence in an extremely controversial process. This recent case shows how this tactic is becoming ris- kier. See: “court of Mitilini sentenced a 17-year-old Syrian refugee as facilitator”, in <http://lesvos.w2eu.net/> human rights and refugee’s advocacy organizations have denounced cases of serious mistreatment and abuse by Greek border forces, also on board of their ships. (Refer to reports of Amnesty International and Pro Asyl).