Migrationsverket’s National Service Centre in Sundbyberg is a borderscape displaced from the outer contours of the nation. This borderscape of the interior, perform bordering and difference-making functions in its deciding of who gets to become a citizen, who is to be considered a legitimate refugee and in a sense who you are. Asylum-seekers visiting the Service Centre attempt to make sense of the maze-like bureaucratic organisation they find themselves caught up in. This thesis engages with the materialization and realization of the border, narratives about emotions in the asylum process, and the sensebreaking qualities of the bureaucratic organization of Migrationsverket as a Kafkaesque institution through participatory, narrative and engaged ethnographic methodologies.

La frontière orientale de la Grèce connaît depuis le début des années 2000 une augmentation des arrivées de migrants qui la franchissent sans autorisation. Le pays, nouvellement dans lʼespace Schengen, est jusque là muni dʼun cadre législatif prévu pour une immigration albanaise dont les autorités contrôlent les arrivées et envers laquelle elles pratiquent lʼexpulsion. Au fil des années 2000, lʼaugmentation des arrivées de migrants à la frontière gréco-turque et une combinaison de prises de décisions politiques autant locales, nationales, quʼeuropéennes, voire mondiales, a entraîné lʼémergence de lieux dʼenfermement. Cʼest lʼensemble de ces évolutions, leurs enjeux et leurs conséquences que ce travail décrypte. Théoriquement et méthodologiquement inscrit dans une approche sociale et politique en géographie, la frontière est envisagée comme un assemblage. Cela permet de comprendre comment le contrôle migratoire sʼétend à de nouveaux espaces et à de nouveaux acteurs, prolongeant ainsi la frontière au-delà de la ligne de séparation. Les modalités de cette extension frontalière sont autant le fait des cadres législatifs et des pratiques policières à différentes échelles que de lʼenvironnement socioculturel des espaces frontaliers. La manière dont ces éléments sʼimbriquent pour former une frontière réticulaire et performative permet dʼancrer la réflexion au cœur dʼun débat géographique sur les nouvelles formes de frontières contemporaines et leurs localisations. Du franchissement frontalier jusquʼau cœur du territoire grec, cette thèse expose les modalités de production et de reproduction des situations de frontières pour les migrants dans le pays. / Since the start of the millenium Greeceʼs eastern border has witnessed an increase in the flow of irregular migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Although the country entered Schengen a few years back, its immigration laws catered mainly for arrivals from Albania, an immigration that the autorities wanted to keep under control and where expulsions were possible. Throughout the noughties, new places of confinment were built in response to increasing numbers of migrants at the border between Greece and Turkey, and based on a combination of political decisions taken locally, nationally, at European level and even globally. This essay deciphers these trends, what is at stake and the consequences that they carry. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, encompassing a social and political approach in geography, borders are considered as an assemblage. This makes it easier to understand how migratory control expands beyond the geographical line of separation between Greece and Turkey and into new spaces involving new players. This expansion of the borders is the result of the legal framework, the policing practices at all levels and the sociocultural environment of these areas. The way in which these various elements come together to form a border that is both reticular and performative, enables us to position our thoughts within the geographical debate on new forms of contemporary borders and their localisation. From crossing the border to life inside the greek territory, this thesis presents the ways in which border situations are created and reproduced for the migrants in that country.

The securitisation and externalisation of Europe's borders have had devastating consequences for people trying to cross them. As Greece is on the periphery of the European Union, its role in this process and in the journey of people on the move is crucial. This thesis focuses on the situation in the city of Patras (Northern Peloponnese) and the informal camp set up by people on the move there. Drawing from interviews with volunteers working in Patras and previous research related to Patras or other Greek refugee camps, this thesis applies the concept of borderscapes in order to understand the situation in Patras. The aspect of resistance that people on the move create against borders is central to the thesis, as it lies at the heart of the relationship that people on the move have with the borders they face. Furthermore, analysis through the conceptual lens of borderscapes explains how the border, like Patras itself, is a violent place in many different ways. Finally, I will highlight the paradoxical role that volunteers play in this system of bordering and how the mobility and visibility of people on the move are linked to European policies and strategies to selectively restrict certain types of migration.