Biopolitics, sovereign power and mobility at the intersectionsbetween tourism and informal migration along the Balkan Route

Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants take the informal Balkan Routefrom Turkey to Greece and on to western Europe. Along this route, the paths ofmigrants and tourists frequently cross. Some sections of the route arepopulated by volunteer tourists, and hostels, railway stations and bus stationsare often used by both tourists and migrants. Some hotels accept migrants,while others do not. Similarly, some buses and taxis do not allow migrants to board, while others accept them or even see them as an opportunity to earnextra income. Furthermore, some migrants deliberately dress like tourists in anattempt to blend in with people who can travel freely throughout the regionthanks to their passports. In this article, I consider how bodily appearance caninfluence the biopolitical differentiation of mobility at key intersections whereinformal migrant routes and tourist itineraries frequently converge, resulting inunexpected encounters. Drawing on the work of Italian political philosophers, Ifocus on the dispersal of sovereign power in the politics of controlling andmanaging mobility in this part of Europe. This often results in extraordinarydecision-making power being concentrated in the hands of officials or otherindividuals involved in the day-to-day management of transport infrastructureor border control along this corridor. More specifically, I discuss how suchdifferential mobility is enacted through a set of biopolitical practices ‘on theground’, examining several sites along the Balkan Route where I haveconducted fieldwork. Finally, I argue that a powerful biopolitical dispositive ofmobility differentiation emerges precisely at the intersection between thesetwo forms of contemporary mobility via the somewhat arbitrary manifestationof sovereign power, which is often based on the racialized, class-based‘appearance’ of individual travellers.