Bea Abbott

This research examines the visuospatial politics of Europe’s maritime borders, centering the image- making and circulating practices people on the move have developed to document and survive their migratory journeys. Understanding border space to be, in part, enacted and contested visually, this study investigates (1) how the EU border regime produces the Greek-Turkish maritime border through maps and images and (2) how migrant visual practices challenge these imaginaries and work to reshape space in the Aegean. The project analyses and preserves images made by people on the move, taking them up as key sites from which to understand border space anew and to imagine the other possible social-spatial configurations that can emerge from it. Weaving together theoretical and methodological tools from critical cartography, abolition geographies, and counter forensics, this research also sets out to develop new, more-than-Euclidean methodologies for interpreting and engaging ‘images from below’ in spatial research.