Page - 202 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

202 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Estela Schindel | Sea border crossing to Europe and humanitarian paradigms that approach the European border regime from allegedly oppo- site perspectives. Indeed, I believe that the two are consistent with a bio-political understanding of border management, which tends to biologicize the migration and asylum processes. At the same time, the self-destruction of the boats reveals how the condition of bare life to which ille- galized travellers are being driven is not deprived of agency, but may be used and negotiated as an advantage in the context of the radical risk of these sea border crossings. The crossing: “Point the boat towards those lights” “See those lights? That is Europe, just head the boat in that direction.” As the Greek authorities started prosecuting trafficking more severely, these became less likely to travel with the refugees on the boats. Instead, as several of my interviewees told, shortly before starting off, the “agents” (as the migrants call them)3 would take one of the travellers aside, explain to him briefly how to drive the boat, and leave the group on its own often without any other instructions than merely to head “towards those lights.” Most travellers have no sailing experience, cannot swim and many have never seen the sea before. The “driver,” generally a man chosen either because is tra- veling without family or because he could not afford the whole “fare,” is exposed to draconian sentences if he is caught by Greek authorities. Until 2010, most migrants and refugees headed to Greece used to cross the Aegean Sea in small boats. Back then, in words of a local refugees’ lawyer, there were almost no reports of deaths related to the crossings. however, increased surveillance by the hellenic coast Guard with the support of frontex and the removal of anti-personnel mines along the Turkish-Greek land border led more travelers to take route of the Evros region (AI 2013, 7). The 203 kilometer long border between Turkey and Greece saw an important increase in the number of ‘irregular’ entries to the EU. In order to stop this, in August 2012 the Greek government launched the Operation Aspida (Shield), which included the deployment of almost 2,000 additional border guards and the construction of a 10.5km fence along the northern section of the land border (the rest of the land border runs along the Evros river).These developments had an immediate impact and produced an enormous decrease in the ‘irregular crossings” and shift to the sea route in a few months (frontex 2013a, 19). As a consequence, more and more refugees and migrants opted again for taking the more dangerous sea route to Greek islands. This shift of the migration route back to the Aegean Sea has become lethal, although precise figures of deaths are still lacking. The North Aegean area between Lesbos Island and the coast of Turkey, where I conduc- ted my research, already had been used by migrants fleeing to Europe in the years following the Turkish military coup, when many intellectuals and activists left the country escaping the regime’s prosecution. In recent decades it has been one of the routes used by refugees: first by Kurds in the 1990s and then by persons fleeing mostly from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq as well as Africans whohad made their way to Turkey first. The proximity of Greece and the topogra- phy of the Ayvalik area, with its many isolated, small bays, makes the zone ideal for sending off boats. Indifference and possibly complicity of the authorities have turned the trafficking with refugees into a booming business. 3 for an account of how traffickers organize their business and sell their services in ways that resemble, or rather imitate, travel agencies see Bauer (2014).