SURVEILLANCE, SUBJECTIVITY AND RESISTANCE AT THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE: A MATERIALIST ANALYSIS OF THE GREECE-TURKEY BORDERS by Özgün Erdener Topak A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (November, 2014) Copyright © Özgün Erdener Topak, 2014 Abstract The Greece-Turkey borders have become one of the main points of undocumented entry into the European Union since 2009. The borders operate through complex elements: historical processes that shape their structure, ideologies that legitimize their violent existence, techniques and technologies that allow them to be practiced over migrants, and migrants complying with or resisting these structures, ideologies, techniques, and technologies. In order to provide a comprehensive analysis of these complex elements of the border, this dissertation critically engages with Althusser’s aleatory materialism, Foucault’s analytics of power and other complementary theories, and it analyzes the four aspects of the border in individual chapters. 1. Structural-decentred aspects of the border: The dissertation analyzes the historical material processes of colonialism and racism and the contemporary material processes of neoliberal globalization and post-politics that enable the EU borders to function as a decentred totality and to exclude certain peoples and not others. 2. Practical aspects of the border: The dissertation analyzes how the border operates in practice with specific surveillance technologies (such as radar systems and EUROSUR mechanisms at the borderzones) and techniques (such as everyday racist violence in urban contexts) that produce specific biopolitical effects on migrants. 3. Subjective aspects of the border: The dissertation analyzes how migrants develop diverse subjectivities when confronted by the border’s material violence, including stranger subjectivity, abject subjectivity, religious subjectivity, nomadic subjectivity, and dissident subjectivity. 4. Contested aspects of the border: Drawing on the case of 300 Migrant Hunger Strikers in Greece, the dissertation analyzes the material conditions of possibility for political contestation of the border. The dissertation draws on fieldwork data collected from border authorities, migrants, NGO workers and political activists in Greece and Turkey in May-September 2012 and from ii secondary data from publicly accessible resources. This dissertation provides a complex and nuanced understanding of surveillance, borders, and migrant subjectivities and politics through putting an emphasis on how the border is practiced, on the experiences of the affected migrants, as well as on the deeper and enduring material structures that frame the practices of the border and experiences of the migrants. iii Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the migrants who shared their stories with me. I also would like to thank the political activists and NGO workers who agreed to participate in this study. I am indebted to those who facilitated my fieldwork at different levels: among others, Burcak, Valy, Volkan, Pavlina, Vania, Dilaver, Serhat, Antonis, Tevfik and Panos. My supervisor, Dr. David Lyon, played a major part in the materialization of this dissertation. I thank him for his guidance, patience and ongoing encouragement. His mentorship allowed me to develop and sharpen my thoughts, his commitments to ethical sociology influenced my scholarship, and his generous personality smoothed the difficulties of the long Ph.D. process. I could not have asked for a better supervisor. I had the privilege of being the teaching assistant of Dr. Frank Pearce in Queen’s Sociology theory courses. His surgical approach to theoretical practice and his intellectual rigour influenced me deeply. He also made agonistic interventions into my thoughts. I am very lucky to have had his interventions. I also would like to thank my committee members, Dr. David Murakami Wood and Dr. Martin Hand. Both David and Martin were available for insightful discussions during my time at Queen’s Sociology. Their valuable inputs strengthened my arguments. Many thanks also to go Dr. Wayne Cox, my internal examiner, and Dr. Peter Nyers, my external examiner for their willingness to serve on my committee. I appreciate their constructive engagement with my work and their encouragement. I also would like to thank Dr. Annette Burfoot for her involvement in my committee and her comments. Michelle Ellis, Anne Henderson and Wendy Schuler at Queen’s Sociology and Joan Sharpe and Emily Smith at the Surveillance Studies Centre (SSC) were excellent in providing iv administrative support. Many thanks also go to Jane Rodgers for her wonderful editorial assistance. I learned much from the activities at the SSC. Workshops, seminars and reading groups kept me up to date with the literature and expanded my knowledge in diverse fields of surveillance studies. My friends at the SSC; Sachil, Jeff, Midori, Alana, Ciara, Mohammed, Tabs, Scott and – from back in the day - Lucas, Francesca, Sarah and Kiyoshi provided support and friendship throughout different periods of the long Ph.D. process. My cohort mate Dean provided professional advice whenever I needed it. My friends in Kingston; Mark, Karl, Mansoor, Jeff, Lisa, Tim, Dilan and Andrew, were ready for an insightful conversation to share the grad student life. My friends from ODTÜ back in Turkey: Begum, Ergun, Idil, Mehmet, and Volkan motivated me with their friendship and jokes. My ex-supervisor and friend Çağatay Topal, who greatly influenced my academic fate through introducing me to surveillance studies and the work of David Lyon back in ODTÜ, continued to inspire me while I was at Queen’s. Derya was with me during the writing period of the dissertation and endured my intensive social theorization; our everyday conversations helped me develop and reformulate my thoughts. I owe much to her special existence in my life. My parents, Aksın Özgür and Murat Topak supported my decision to pursue my dream of studying sociology without any hesitation. While this first meant living in different cities and later living on different continents, despite the distance I never felt alone. My parents and my brother İlke have always been with me and have provided every form of support I have needed. All errors of fact or interpretation in this dissertation are my own. I dedicate this study to the undocumented migrants of the world. v Statement of Originality I hereby certify that all of the work described within this thesis is the original work of the author. Any published (or unpublished) ideas and/or techniques from the work of others are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Chapter 5 appears in: Topak OE. (2014) “The biopolitical border in practice: surveillance and death at the Greece– Turkey borderzones”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32: 815-833. Sections of Chapter 4 appear in: Topak OE. (2014) “The New Borders of the European Union: Digital Surveillance and Social Sorting” in Okyayuz M, Herrmann P. and Dorrity C. (eds) Migration Global Processes Caught in National Answers. Wien: Wiener Verlag für Sozialforschung, 17-35. (Özgün Erdener Topak) (November, 2014) vi Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iv Statement of Originality ............................................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................... ix Preface ........................................................................................................................................................... x PART I: BACKGROUND AND THEORY ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Introduction: A Materialist Theory of the Border ........................................................................ 1 Why Materialism? ..................................................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Structural Aspects of the Border ....................................................................................................... 11 1.2 Practical Aspects of the Border ......................................................................................................... 26 1.3 Subjective Aspects of the Border ...................................................................................................... 32 1.4 Contested Aspects of the Border ....................................................................................................... 38 Conclusion and Outline of the Dissertation ............................................................................................ 43 Chapter 2 : Research Methods .................................................................................................................... 47 2.1 Research Data ...................................................................................................................................