Infrastructures, Riverscapes, and the Governance of Mobility: The Evros/Meriç River and the Infrastructuring of Nature

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay between infrastructures, geophysical environments, and mobility regimes by focusing on the Evros/Meriç River, as the border between Turkey, Greece, and the EU. Situated in the fields of Infrastructure Studies, Mobility Studies, and Critical Border Studies, this paper examines how border regimes are enrolled in the riverscape, thereby shaping who can cross the river-as-border and under what conditions. Through an interdisciplinary research practice of “montaging”, which integrates ethnographic research, literary and visual analysis, cartography, and textual analysis, this paper analyses how geophysical environments and socio-technical formations co-constitute racialising border regimes. Using the conceptual framework of infrastructure as ecology, this paper highlights the relationality between geophysical environments, border regimes, and how people-on-the-move navigate these landscapes. In so doing, this paper explores a critical way of thinking about “natural borders” and “infrastructures” and aims to put forward analytical tools for documenting and analysing bordering practices.