Borderland Porosities: Migratory Journeys and Migrant Politics in Lebanon and Turkey

Abstract

This article focuses on displaced peoples’ migratory journeys to the borderlands of Lebanon and Turkey. Building on a selection of ethnographic, interview, policy, and programme materials, it advances the argument that Syrian encounters with these borderlands encompass multidirectional movements and context-specific and fluid processes imbricated in relations of power that often stimulate migrant politics, processes that involve, what we term, borderland porosities. Contributing to critical migration and border studies, the analysis emphasizes how displaced people negotiate the permeabilities of borderlands, engage intermediaries to assist in their perilous journeys, and employ their pre- and post-war transnational networks during their movements. This perspective places borderland porosities front and centre. It illuminates how these dynamic and penetrable spaces shape peoples’ movements, foster a diverse web of actors and encounters in migratory journey and resettlement processes, and cultivate a migrant politics of presence and invisibility.