This chapter focuses on the politics of closed borders and deterrence that has been enforced since the Schengen Agreement 1985 but which have greatly proliferated and intensified in the aftermath of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ through the establishment of a dystopic landscape of border controls and violence. In the first section of this chapter, I argue that various exceptional externalization border policies and practices have been enforced (at EU, national and local levels) as a response to the 2015 refugee crisis. Externalization policies and practices target people who are en route to Europe by immobilizing or intercepting them in non-EU countries and, therefore, pre-emptively deterring them and preventing them from reaching Europe. In the second section, I argue that although externalization is justified, legitimized and enforced allegedly to alleviate human suffering, prevent border deaths and protect border crossers from smuggling and trafficking networks, externalization has brought about the exact opposite results. Externalization made border crossings and transit routes more securitized, fragmented, perilous, expensive and dependent on smugglers and traffickers. In the third section, I focus on the internalization of border policies and practices that target people who manage to reach Greece and other parts of Europe (alive). The section examines the operationalization of the Greek Aegean Islands as filtering, screening and deportation mechanisms. I deploy the metaphor of Lesvos as a ‘prison island’ wherein deterrence is materialized by exhausting and discouraging border crossers from moving further into Europe.

The externalization of EU borders

In 2003, a UK government policy paper titled A New Vision for Refugees emerged, which included Prime Minister Tony Blair's vision for the management of irregular migration in Europe (Travis, 2003). This policy paper proposed the establishment of a regime of regional protection areas, protection zones or safe havens as well as transit processing centres for irregular migrants on transit routes to Europe (Amnesty International, 2003; Noll, 2015). Blair's vision involved denial of entry to ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘economic migrants’ by returning them to ‘safe havens’, meaning countries outside the EU and closer to migrants’ homelands (Johnston, 2003).