This paper examines Russian and Ottoman policies towards cross-border mobility. Traditionally, this has been a subject that has been viewed primarily in terms of (either Russian or Ottoman) state hostility against one group or another. While this form of state hostility indeed constitutes an important part of this story, the approaches of the tsarist and Ottoman states towards the issue of human mobility were also a lot more complicated than this narrative would imply. While tsarist officials, for example, indeed expelled Muslims from some areas of Russia in times of war, in most cases they sought to prevent Muslim emigration. Meanwhile, both tsarist and Ottoman officials made decisions regarding which populations that sought to attract, and which they desired to expel. Drawn from a variety of sources from both the Ottoman archives and Russian imperial archives based in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, this paper examines a series of exchanges taking place between Ottoman and tsarist officials in the late nineteenth century with regard to a series of questions pertaining to the issue of human mobility. While I focus mainly upon Muslim populations, I also relate these developments to a broader set of policies adopted by both states with regard to the management of not only Muslims, but also other populations. Current studies pertaining to the triangular set of relations linking Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the populations between them tend to focus upon the singularity of unspeakable acts of violence. An enormous volume of literature pertaining to the Armenian genocide exists, as does a smaller amount of literature focusing upon genocides committed by Russia against populations such as the Chechens, Circassians, and Crimean Tatars. In my paper, which is based upon a larger study that I am currently developing, I spin this calculus around to look at similar approaches adopted by both empires and the common sets of threats that they often posed, simultaneously, to the Muslims, Christians, and Jews attempting to cross their borders. Throughout, I look at questions such as: when did officials in Russia and the Ottoman empire permit or encourage mobility, and when did they seek to prevent it? How did these populations shift with respect to time and place? What are the connections, if any, between more aggressive state policies developing with respect to internal population management and the expulsions of populations occurring in both states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?