Sonic borders: Sound, governmentality and migration

The role of sound as a sensorial weapon in the governmentality of migration has received little attention. This article examines how sound functions as a technology of border control and, conversely, how refugees living in alternative housing, i.e. squats, resist via their own sonic practices to contest border regimes. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in Athens (2018 and 2020), combined with an analysis of textual resources including human rights reports, press releases and parliamentary records pertaining to the testing of sound cannons on the Greek-Turkish border in Evros, my aim is to conceptualise sensory acoustic governmentality : an assemblage of techniques that aim to control migration through violent vibrations. Focusing on the testing of sound cannons as sonic weapons for managing migration on the Greek-Turkish border, I explore how sound is used for border management and security as part of a governmental apparatus that involves rationalities and logics of exclusion that extend to human sensations.