Paper short abstract:

Tracing the spatio-temporal transformations of the EU Hotspot Approach, the contribution provides a comparative analysis of Hotspot camps in Greece and Italy as infrastructures of control underpinned by logics of racialisation.

Paper long abstract:

The Hotspot Approach, introduced in 2015 by the European Commission and implemented by Greece and Italy, is a flexible, yet powerful device for the classification, channelling and detention of migrants. As such, it forms a core element of the European Union's efforts to govern migration at its external border. Since its inception, however, the Hotspot Approach has been subject to a range of legal, political and practical transformations, resulting in widely diverging trajectories not only between the national contexts of Greece and Italy, but among the actual sites of Hotspot camps too.

Against this backdrop, our contribution traces the developments of the Hotspot Approach across space and time through the interplay of law and practice. For this, we understand the infrastructural manifestations of the Hotspot Approach in Greece and Italy as camps and analyse them in terms of different forms of spatial and temporal governance. The paper provides a comparative analysis of the differences and similarities between different Hotspot camps in Italy and Greece, highlighting their changing functions as infrastructures of (im)mobilisation, control and care. Since migrants' (assumed) nationalities are mobilised as a crucial element for the Hotspot procedures, our contribution furthermore interrogates the modes of racialisation at play here and how these are shaped by different legal and political frameworks.