Migrations on a gateway to the EU: some considerations on Istanbul as a border city

Abstract

Embedded in the social morphologies of the spaces it involves, migration is a political phenomenon as it redefines public space and its use, labour market and social stratification; it multiplies political issues and requires answers to new social questions, new civil rights, or better civil rights for new people. Geopolitics of migrations is an approach to human post-modern mobility aimed at considering migration as a transcalar geopolitical process: it occurs and flows linked to political, economic and social imbalances at global, regional and local scales. This kind of geopolitics becomes more visible in the world border spaces, i.e. those places crossed by relevant flows of people, goods and assets, and where circulation and mobility need to be ruled by politics or sometimes challenge even politics itself. The present paper proposes some reflections on Istanbul as a border city in the Mediterranean basin.