Alaa Dia , MSc. MAS.

This doc-mobility project supported the completion of my PhD dissertation, Border-Building, which examines how migration governance is materialised through the design, organisation, and everyday operation of border and reception infrastructures. The core purpose of the mobility period was to strengthen the dissertation’s analytical framing, improve the coherence between empirical chapters and the theory chapter, and translate the findings into publishable outputs through structured mentorship and sustained writing time.

The UK-based phase took place in London at the London School of Economics (LSE), within the Department of Urban Geography, hosted through the Visiting Research Student framework and supervised by Prof. Romola Sanyal. This period focused on targeted chapter work: refining the theory chapter, revising key empirical chapters, drafting the dissertation conclusion and introduction, and strengthening the methods chapter through peer feedback, workshops, and systematic engagement with LSE’s research seminars and library resources. In parallel, I initiated the development of journal article manuscripts and discussed publication directions with colleagues in the LSE research environment.

The US-based phase took place in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), hosted by the Department of Architecture and supervised by Prof. Sarah Lopez. This stage consolidated the dissertation into a “ready-to-submit” draft through final revisions, structured feedback exchanges, and continued work on article manuscripts, alongside seminar participation to better situate my findings in wider migration and border debates. I also used the UPenn period to develop a postdoctoral project proposal and to build longer-term research connections for future collaboration.

Dieses Projekt ist eine Studie über die Einrichtungen des Hotspots im Mittelmeer, insbesondere in Griechenland (Lesbos, Leros und Chios). Es zielt darauf ab, den Zusammenhang zwischen der Gestaltung der Infrastruktur und der Migrationssteuerung zu untersuchen und zu untersuchen, wie dies die Migrationspraktiken beeinflusst. Sie untersucht die Macht der Infrastruktur als Instrument der Migrationssteuerung gegen irreguläre Migrationsströme. Dieses Projekt wird eine visuelle Kartierung, räumliche Erhebungen, Interviews, eine partizipative Kartierung (besonderes Interesse an der partizipativen Kartierungsmethodik, einem Instrument zur Kartierung der unterschiedlichen Realitäten zwischen den Akteuren) und eine Dokumentation durchführen, um die physische Dimension der Infrastruktur der Migrationssteuerung einerseits und die Praktiken andererseits zu erfassen. Nach der Analyse und Kategorisierung der verschiedenen Arten von Infrastruktur in den ausgewählten Orten konzentriert sich das Projekt auf die Verbindung zwischen der Hotspot-Infrastruktur und der Regierungspolitik, das technische Verfahren der Migrationssteuerung (Fingerabdrücke, biometrisches Scannen und Verfahren), Sicherheitsmassnahmen (Zäune, Überwachung), andere Praktiken (wie Such- und Rettungsaktionen, Grenzpatrouillen, Beratungsagenturen) und politische Auseinandersetzungen (von Bürgern und Nicht-Staatsbürgern). Daher zielt dieses Projekt darauf ab, zu verstehen, wie EU-Migrationsmanagementpolitiken als Infrastrukturräume in Griechenland umgesetzt werden und somit das Grenzland im Mittelmeerraum verändern.

This dissertation interrogates how European migration governance is materially produced, contested, and reimagined on the Greek Aegean islands. Bridging Critical Border Studies with architectural theory, it advances ‘border building as a method,’ foregrounding the political work of design, construction, and spatial adaptation in contemporary bordering practices (Chapter II). Through a comparative, multi-sited ethnography of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros, and Kos (2019 and 2022), the study combines architectural surveys, satellite imagery, participatory mapping, visual ethnography, and interviews with state, non-state, and migrant actors (Chapter III).

Three interlocking conceptual contributions emerge. Layered Bordering reveals how successive humanitarian, carceral, and logistical interventions sediment into border spaces where ISO containers, biometric checkpoints, razor wire, and migrant-built shelters coexist, constrain, and enable later reforms (Chapter IV). Modular Bordering shows that prefabrication, standardisation, and logistics constitute a flexible sovereign technology that disperses accountability, commercialises migration management, and substitutes spatial reconfiguration for legal change (Chapter V). Temporary Inhabitation demonstrates how asylum seekers convert enforced waiting into spatial and material practices, adding new layers to the border regime and recalibrating future design and funding priorities. Migrants, therefore, act not only as subjects of bordering but also as co-authors of its evolution (Chapter VI).

Tracing how policy directives travel from supranational institutions and national ministries to their built manifestations in camps and reception centres, the thesis demonstrates that architecture simultaneously reflects and shapes border governance. It reveals how everyday spatial and building tactics challenge immobility by asserting a right to move on rather than a right to belong, and how design friction, generated when competing logics of security, care and mobility control collide, opens space for both contestation and incremental change. Treating the Aegean islands as laboratories of European governance, the study concludes that any effort to reform migration policy must attend to the ‘spatial imagination’ embedded in its built forms and to the vernacular design practices that persistently exceed them.