Rationale

Migration and Mobility in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Borderlands (19th-21st Centuries)

Vienna, 13-14 November 2026
 

The last decades have brought increasing solidification of contemporary borders in the Middle East (Tejel and Öztan 2023), as border walls between Turkey and Syria, Egypt and Gaza, as well as Saudi Arabia and Yemen have become tangible, impermeable manifestations of spatial segregation. In the Aegean Sea, the Hellenic Coast Guard and Frontex have created a similarly rigid, albeit moving and thus more permeable, system of border control, which is much more characterised by its coercive function than an alleged humanitarian one (López 2022). In light of these developments, our workshop is interested in highlighting instances of the liminality, permeability, and fluidity of borders, as well as their effects on individuals, communities, and especially minority groups (e.g., Armenians, Greeks, Kurds). In this sense, borders can be understood not as fixed lines, but as part of wider networks of mobility and interaction, in line with approaches that stress connectivity and micro-regional dynamics (Horden and Purcell 2000). Borderlands, by extension, are thus ‘spaces where place, identity and power relations intersect over time’ (Schlaepfer and Tejel 2024: 81). 
By zooming in on individual and microhistorical perspectives in particular, this workshop seeks to trace instances of trans-border mobility, networks, minority cultures, and memory in borderland spaces that (have) transcend(ed) the territorial division of the former Ottoman Empire. Thus, we aim to discuss the border(land) and trans-border mobility not within the light of top-down policing and control, but as the site of vibrant social, economic, and cultural dynamics, individual agency, transgression, trans-border relations, identity, and memory production (particularly in relation to experiences of mobility and displacement). By entwining microhistorical perspectives and minority histories with broader debates in border and mobility studies, the workshop aims to open new methodological and conceptual avenues for studying the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world.