Abstract.

This thesis disentangles, complexifies and problematizes the constructed aspects of the regime of borders from the experiential aspects of that regime in the Maltese context. Through in-depth research conducted between 2021 to 2023, which triangulates the interpretations and narrations of those who have crossed Malta’s borders and settled there, the narratives of professionals and administrators in migration and death management in Malta with my own observations of this context. Using border ethnography as a tool to define both physical and conceptual spaces of engagement, this thesis aims to more ubiquitously, roundly understand and define the function, purpose, location and consequences of borders. It does this through not only acknowledging the construction and enforcement of border structures but also folding into the analysis how they are experienced and negotiated.    

This approach aims to illustrate how the regime of borders re/produces historical hierarchies which have direct consequences on past, present and future trajectories and opportunities available to border-crossers as well as the frequency and intensity of continuousness of border encounters that some of the noncitizens who traverse Malta’s borders. Through exploring, comparing and observing the experiences of a diverse group of noncitizens, this project aims to reveal power dynamics in context and how contemporary hierarchies are re/constructed and re/produced based on old logics. 

This project centers the Mediterranean borderlands (Balibar, 2009) as a continuum, unfixed even geographically but rather as shifting configurations of power, mobility, porousness and bordering practices. This project maintains a counter-mapping as its highest aim to differentiate the structural aspects of borders from their embodied aspects. In so doing, the emphasis highlights noncitizen subjectivities; this results in a mapping of the practice of borders, the experiential border itself or a mapping of the borders of Malta as they were experienced by those who crossed them.

Keywords: ethnography, regime of borders, Malta, human circulations, noncitizens