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Abstract
Using the recent documentary essay film Evaporating Borders as a platform, we discuss how the figure of the migrant is construed within the popular imagination as a ‘threat’ to the prosperity of the European Union, and the unique way in which Radivojevic seeks to critique both conservative and liberal discourses around migration through her film. Evaporating Borders examines the present-day experiences of asylum seekers and migrants in Cyprus, the majority of who are Palestinians, as they face increasing hostility and violence from Cypriot nationalists on the island. By framing the film through Radivojevic’s personal voice-over, disrupting linear narrativity, and juxtaposing visual imagery of life on the island with aural testimonials offered by refugees and Cypriots alike, Radivojevic subtly connects worsening economic conditions to the growth of nationalism and xenophobia in Cyprus and Europe more broadly. The film’s exploration of three national traumas – the occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, the denial of Palestinian statehood, and Radivojevic’s personal narrative of escaping to Cyprus from Yugoslavia during its collapse – makes visible the multiple temporalities migrants experience and the time politics used by nation states to limit migrants’ mobility. Through our examination of the film’s narrative structure and aesthetics, we show how Radivojevic renders more complicated the simplistic liberal approaches to the figure of the ‘migrant’ to reveal the fragmented and contradictory nature of national identities, and to compel an examination of the idea of the nation state.