Crossing the lines on Lesvos: Navigating overlapping borders in the Aegean

Not all borders are the same, and they have a habit of both changing over time and being different according to where you have come from and where you are going. Asylum seekers and other migrants arriving on the island of Lesvos were attempting to cross into the European Union and had mostly come from war-torn regions further to the east and south, and were looking for a better life. Yet there were different kinds of borders being crossed on the island, triggered by different kinds of desire: Euro-American women visiting the island because of its association with the poet Sappho were crossing from what they saw as hetero-normative space into lesbian-friendly space; and some women residents of the island would cross the Greek-Turkish border on a weekly ferry to go shopping (both for goods and occasionally illicit affairs) in the bazaar in the Turkish coastal town of Ayvalik. The chapter shows that the borders that people cross or transgress generate different kinds of desires according to the historical moment and where people are coming from.