Description
In this paper, I propose the ferry as method. With this methodology, the ferry is both a metaphor and a concrete vehicle of research through which to enquire into the ways in which the trajectories of the differential operations of the border go hand in hand with emergence of different forms of carceral spaces, as ferries, ships, ports and docks are transformed into spaces of containment, waiting, and administrative torture. I approach these processes by focussing on the official hotspots on the Greek border islands where the ferry connects to the hotspot’s spatial strategies of rendering people on the move (im)mobile and ‘redistributing’ them on the Greek mainland; and the more informal hotspots in Estonia and Scotland (UK) where cruise ships anchored at the ports of Tallinn, Leith (Edinburgh) and the River Clyde (Glasgow) are being used as accommodation centres for people escaping the war in Ukraine. These three examples show how ferries and ships immobilise people in floating detention, refugee camps and asylum registration centres, literally offshore, quasi-extraterritorial spaces, which nonetheless can potentially become mobile vehicles of deportation. In addition, with a methodology of ferries, I investigate the ways in which travel companies such as the Australian travel firm Corporate Travel Management (CTM) become implicated within ‘migration management’ through dubious contracts, by turning cruise ships into traveling control devices. Lastly, the ferry as method highlights how policies and infrastructures of ‘migration/refugee management’ travel across international borders (according to the logic of the hotspot), as the examples of Greece, Estonia and Scotland show us.
