Dynamics of exclusion and everyday bordering through Schengen visas Zelal € Ozdemir a, * , Ays ¸ e Günes ¸ Ayata a a Middle East Technical University, Center for Black Sea and Central Asia (KORA), 06800, Ankara, Turkey article info Article history: Received 30 June 2016 Received in revised form 4 May 2017 Accepted 9 May 2017 Available online xxx Keywords: Turkey-EU relations Schengen visa Bordering Situated intersectional framework abstract Turkey is the only European Union candidate country whose citizens are obliged to obtain a Schengen visa. The difficult visa procedures, often seen as unjust and discriminatory, are a longstanding source of frustration and humiliation among Turkish citizens, as they reproduce both symbolic and physical borders between the EU and Turkey and seem to reiterate the ‘Fortress Europe’ thesis. These perceptions of the visa process and the consequent feeling of ‘otherness/non-Europeanness’ hinder the process of Turkish integration into the EU. Bordering no longer occurs merely in the border areas separating two states, but rather through a wide range of practices in multiple locations within and beyond the state's territory. This complexity has recently been augmented by the introduction of intermediary companies. The offices of these intermediaries have become an example of bordering sites located away from the border area. Moreover, in these offices border work is carried out by non-traditional actors: in other words, not by border guards or immigration officers of the EU but by Turkish employees. Treating those offices as significant nodes where border work is done, this paper draws on material collected at visa offices in Ankara to understand the multifaceted construction of borders between the EU and Turkey. Using a situated intersectional framework, this paper elucidates not only perceptions from both sides of the border eTurkish nationals applying for visas and Turkish nationals doing border work e but also how the differentiated social positionings and purposes of travel shape these interactions. © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. In a 2009 press conference following a meeting with the chief negotiator for EU affairs, then Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto glu said: ‘ … it is unacceptable that certain Balkan countries that are in the starting phases of association and which have not begun negotiations have received Schengen privileges, and that Turkey, taking into consideration the level it has reached in EU negotiations, has not’ (EU-Black Sea Observatory, 2009). In 2016, Prime Minister Davuto glu emphasised the centrality of the visa regime for EU-Turkish relations: ‘We see visa liberalisation as the indispensable, fundamental element in the EU-Turkey agreement. As a matter of fact, there is a direct linkage between the Read- mission Agreement and visa liberalisation. It would be effective only if visa liberalisation is put into practice’ (‘Bas ¸ bakan Davuto glu,’ 2016). Turkey has been an official candidate for membership in the European Union since 1999, and the European Union put an ‘Accession Partnership’ (AP) strategy for Turkey into practise in 2000. Following the acceptance of the National Program for the Adoption of the Acquis (NPAA) by the Turkish government, Turkey and the EU started accession negotiations. Since Turkey is the only EU candidate country whose nationals must obtain a visa to enter the Schengen zone (Stiglmayer, 2012: 100), the visa requirement has always been at the forefront of the relationship between the EU and Turkey and ‘has become highly ‘politicized’ and even ‘securi- tized’’ ( € Ozler, 2012: 121). The issue occupies a central place in the latest agreement between the two parties pertaining to the refugee crisis, and it has been used as a source of punishment and reward by the EU as well as the Turkish government. It has also been instrumentalised as a mechanism for domestic politics through which both sides control and manipulate public opinion. Another aspect of the visa problem for Turkish nationals is the procedural dimension, which entails cumbersome bureaucratic processes at the doors of member states' embassies. Starting in 2005, certain * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: zelal@metu.edu.tr (Z. € Ozdemir), aayata@metu.edu.tr (A.G. Ayata). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.05.005 0962-6298/© 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Political Geography xxx (2017) 1e9 Please cite this article in press as: € Ozdemir, Z., & Ayata, A. G., Dynamics of exclusion and everyday bordering through Schengen visas, Political Geography (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.05.005