This paper is part of a larger project that seeks to explore the ideological and material circulations, subject positions and citizenship claims framing contemporary geographies of migration at the southern borders of Europe. Current preoccupations with the perceived threat of non-European migrants from the global south—particularly during a period of economic crisis—obscure the no less significant forms of movement of elderly citizens and tourists from the wealthier, welfare-state countries of Europe's north. Drawing on ethnographic and historical investigations of the region, this presentation ponders the theoretical implications of these intersecting realities for an anthropology of mobility and the nation-state. What is to be learned from the forms of life and labor that converge at the seams of Fortress Europe?
