In this special issue, we aim to contribute to the rich body of existing critical work on theMediterranean through ethnographic research on migration and border policies. We propose the concept of ‘entanglement’ to examine a variety of interconnections at play with regard to Mediterranean im/mobilities and border regimes.

My historically informed ethnographic research on both sides of the Greek–Turkish border in Thrace demonstrates the continuing impact of unresolved bilateral disputes and centralized state power in a highly militarized region to align state and nonstate actors with migration control at an “external border” of the EU.

This article examines some of the contested geographical imaginaries of the so-called “Balkan Route” as part of the wider Mediterranean migration complex. More specifically, we interrogate how such varied imaginaries of the Route contribute to shaping conflicting geographies of responsibility for migration in the region among a shifting set of international and state actors.

This article contributes to debates about the autonomy of migration (AoM) by ethnographically detailing the EU border regime's external operations in Nouadhibou, Mauritania.

Focusing on the tomato districts of southern Italy, the article interrogates the recent legislative and emergency measures devised to tackle labour violations and to facilitate the reproduction of the workforce.

The intricate relationship between border control and migrations is the core puzzle of this paper, which takes voluntary returns from Morocco as a case study and autonomy of migration (AoM) as a theoretical framework. More precisely, the paper examines voluntary returns from the perspective of migrants themselves to grasp border control through the lens of its disputed, distorted and sometimes subverted implementation.

Focusing on four moments in which crises were declared in relation to migration and EUropean borders and their immediate aftermath, we examine how the European Union border agency Frontex framed these events through an analysis of its press releases, annual reports, and practices.

In this article, I bring feminist ethnographic attention to community infrastructure such as childcare centers built collectively by women residents in MGR Nagar, an informal urban settlement in Chennai, India, as understudied examples of autoconstruction in peripheral urbanization.

Drawing on the concept of ‘cuerpo-territorio,’ we conceptualize non-Western “other mappings” as situated and historical performances that center embodied experiences, such as the multiple and persistent traumas of coloniality, that are invisibilized in Cartesian cartographic processes. In doing so, these mappings unveil how Cartesian cartography does the traumatic work of coloniality while fostering alternative, embodied spatial imaginaries based on situated practices and visceral geographies.