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Being ‘there’: At the front line of the ‘European refugee crisis’ - part 1
Abstract
In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a fishing village and tourist idyll on the northern coast of Lesbos, by accident of its geographical location, has turned into the informal gate into Europe for more than 200.000 refugees. In this article the author analyses the massive flows of people and things that transverse his fieldwork site from different directions: the great diversity of actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, the several theatres of operation and reception 'structures', both frontline and back stage, and the debates that revolve around humanitarian action in the region. The local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents the gateway to freedom. It is becoming a mini theatre of conflicts that echoes wider debates on the political future of Europe.
... Finally, several scholars have remarked that volunteers who flocked to the Greek Islands during the peak of arrivals in 2015-2016 were motivated by a "desire to experience the border first-hand" or "witness" (Cabot 2019;Di Matteo 2021;Knott 2018;Papataxiarchis 2016). As ...
... Discussing volunteers' compulsion to "do something," she rightly questions the widespread assumption that doing something is necessarily better than doing nothing, and points to harm resulting from "ethnocentrism, Othering and egocentrism." Describing the volunteers as "volunteer tourists," she is furthermore critical of volunteers' desires to document or witness, arguing that they rarely respected refugees' right to privacy and appeared overly concerned with showcasing their "desired" selves on social media (2018: 359-362; see also Papataxiarchis 2016;Franck 2018). ...
... On the one hand, several scholars have been suspicious or denunciatory, questioning volunteers' intentions or suggesting that they do more harm than good (e.g., Cabot 2019; Knott 2018;Papataxiarchis 2016). Echoing earlier critiques of humanitarian aid, some have also suggested that humanitarian volunteers are part of the same border regime or "border/migration industrial complex" as commercial and governmental players (Franck 2018; see also Rozakou 2019), or that they have been "consolidated and brought under control" by the global refugee regime in the interest of maintaining "a liberal order" at home (Pallister-Wilkins 2018). ...
Following the so-called refugee crisis unfolding on the Greek islands in 2015, a multitude of citizen-led agencies emerged to mitigate or contest the EU’s policies of securitisation and containment. This dissertation explores the trajectory of one of these initiatives: a Norwegian humanitarian volunteer organisation Dråpen i Havet (A Drop in the Ocean, DiH). Established by a mother-of-five with no prior experience in humanitarian or social work, DiH aspires to “make it easy” for ordinary people to help refugees in Greece, but has undergone a process of partial professionalisation, leading to larger responsibilities inside and outside Greek refugee camps. The organisation also tries to scale up their acts of care and hospitality to the Norwegian state and to influence co-nationals who do not share their humanitarian sensibilities. The dissertation is based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Greece and Norway. Chapter 1 discusses the emergence of a new humanitarian geography and the rise of “Fortress Europe.” Chapter 2 and 3 trace DiH’s trajectory from spontaneous volunteering to “NGOization” and explore the organisation’s shifting and contested efforts to “fill humanitarian gaps” on Europe’s southern border. Chapters 4 and 5 examine DiH’s widespread appeal amongst Norwegian citizens and the organisation’s vision of volunteering as a transformative experience. These chapters also explore volunteers’ pathways to help refugees in Greece and ambivalent experiences of returning home and negotiating different worlds and relationships. Chapter 6 analyses DiH’s political turn and efforts to witness and mobilise for more inclusive asylum policies and positive public orientations towards refugees in Norway. The conclusion discusses the redemptive potential of volunteering. Taken together, the chapters challenge enduring representations of humanitarian actors and volunteers as “rootless cosmopolitans” or “transnationals” motivated by either selfish or altruistic concerns to help distant strangers. Conversely, the dissertation shows that DiH staff and volunteers felt deeply ashamed by Norwegian affluence and their government’s restrictive asylum policies and increasingly worried over the moral health and future of the Norwegian state and society. The dissertation argues that DiH staff and volunteers can be understood as “cosmopolitan nationalists,” called to help as indignant and ashamed Norwegian citizens and mobilising against what they perceive as an illicit, inward-looking nationalism. Drawing on feminist and anthropological work on the politics of affect, the dissertation analyses shame (skam) as both culturally and politically contingent, expressed on personal and collective levels and simultaneously on behalf of and against the nation. Contrary to popular and scholarly assumptions, DiH staff and volunteers experience shame as largely productive and self-affirming. However, the dissertation argues that its political force is hampered by its reliance upon (and reproduction of) a sanitised and romanticising national narrative. While primarily a contribution to the study of humanitarianism, nationalism and border politics, the dissertation addresses anthropological and philosophical debates on ethics, affect, cosmopolitanism and liberalism. It further provides windows into changing and increasingly fragmented and hostile humanitarian and political landscapes on the fringes of Europe. Analysing volunteers’ post-utopian and redemptive aspirations, the dissertation identifies “sticky attachments” to national and humanitarian frames and imaginaries yet also some cracks and openings.
... Thus, local activism is embedded into geopolitical and global narratives, and linkages of local and coastal communities with nearby urban communities and nationwide news coverage can ultimately create pressure on state agencies (Norman, 2017). This linkage of local, particularly border and coastal, communities with national, transnational and global networks creates conflict situations which can furthermore transform local communities (Papataxiarchis, 2016). ...
... Yet they are faced with multiple difficulties. While coastal communities in close proximity face more urgency of issues, such as the Greek fishermen who "cannot have people, particularly children, dying on your liquid doorstep" (Papataxiarchis, 2016: p. 9), they can be disconnected from and disillusioned with performative activism and lack of support outside of the coast (Papataxiarchis, 2016). Creating public pressure from outside the social and political centre can be a huge challenge, sometimes successful when supporters can co-mobilize at land or new developments create opportunities (della Porta, 2018), but often seemingly futile when other news drown out activities. ...
Increased interest in the spatial dimension of protests and activism has led to both the material spatial condition of protest activities and their spatial effect entering academic debate. With Social Movements being a dominant paradigm for activism which focuses on strategic localization and scalar tactics, an emphasis has been put on political activities in proximity to either centralized power or to actor communities and networks. On the fringes of Social Movements, however, smaller types of direct action have been emerging in places outside of conventional, landed spaces. Chinese and Japanese nationalists symbolically contesting national authority over islands in the Pacific, Environmentalists blockading oil platforms in the North Sea, refugee rights groups preventing air-based deportations and nationalists attempting to prevent human rights groups from saving drowning migrants have in common that the site of their activities are beyond the traditional power base of the state on solid ground and make use of specific sets of laws and regulations. This paper argues that transterranean spaces encompass an interplay of state and non-state actors heavily impacted by their location. As these spaces exist beyond the mainland, they share a lack of presence of both state and society. Both state agencies and activists have to adapt their strategies during successive contentions. I conceptualize this relationship as contentious configurations shaping these interactions: Vertical Activist-State, horizontal activist-activist and interconnected state-state contentious configurations. They serve as heuristic tool to analyze protest dynamics in transterranean spaces by highlighting both state power and actor’s engagement with it. With technological advancements and increased access to transterranean, such contentions are likely to increase.
... Στην εθνογραφική έρευνα που διεξάγει στη Λέσβο και συγκεκριμένα στη Σκάλα Συκαμιάς, ο Παπαταξιάρχης (Papataxiarchis, 2016) αποτυπώνει λεπτομερώς τη συγκυρία. Επισημαίνει πως η Ύπατη Αρμοστεία του ΟΗΕ, δομές της τοπικής αυτοδιοίκησης, τοπικοί φορείς, εθνικές και διεθνείς ΜΚΟ, πρωτοβουλίες κατοίκων και κινηματικές συλλογικότητες συσπειρώνουν γύρω τους πολλές εκατοντάδες εθελοντών, τοπικές και διεθνικές δικτυώσεις (συμπεριλαμβανομένων και δρώντων από απόσταση) και διαμορφώνουν μια νέα «ανθρωπιστική γεωγραφία». ...
... Στη βάση της παραπάνω διευκρίνισης ο Παπαταξιάρχης (Papataxiarchis, 2016) προβαίνει σε μια κατηγοριοποίηση των δράσεων αλληλεγγύης με αναφορά στα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά των ατόμων που εμπλέκονται σε αυτές. Διακρίνει έτσι τρεις κατηγορίες: τους αλληλέγγυους, τους εθελοντές και τους επαγγελματίες στις οργανώσεις της ανθρωπιστικής βοήθειας. ...
... Στην εθνογραφική έρευνα που διεξάγει στη Λέσβο και συγκεκριμένα στη Σκάλα Συκαμιάς, ο Παπαταξιάρχης (Papataxiarchis, 2016) αποτυπώνει λεπτομερώς τη συγκυρία. Επισημαίνει πως η Ύπατη Αρμοστεία του ΟΗΕ, δομές της τοπικής αυτοδιοίκησης, τοπικοί φορείς, εθνικές και διεθνείς ΜΚΟ, πρωτοβουλίες κατοίκων και κινηματικές συλλογικότητες συσπειρώνουν γύρω τους πολλές εκατοντάδες εθελοντών, τοπικές και διεθνικές δικτυώσεις (συμπεριλαμβανομένων και δρώντων από απόσταση) και διαμορφώνουν μια νέα «ανθρωπιστική γεωγραφία». ...
... Στη βάση της παραπάνω διευκρίνισης ο Παπαταξιάρχης (Papataxiarchis, 2016) προβαίνει σε μια κατηγοριοποίηση των δράσεων αλληλεγγύης με αναφορά στα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά των ατόμων που εμπλέκονται σε αυτές. Διακρίνει έτσι τρεις κατηγορίες: τους αλληλέγγυους, τους εθελοντές και τους επαγγελματίες στις οργανώσεις της ανθρωπιστικής βοήθειας. ...
Edited volume In greek
Η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση δομείται στη βάση θεμελιωδών αρχών και αξιών, που στοχεύουν μεταξύ άλλων στην προάσπιση της δημοκρατίας, του κράτους δικαίου και του σεβασμού των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων. Σε περιόδους «κρίσης», όπως αυτή που συντελέστηκε το 2015 με την άφιξη ενός εκατομμυρίου και πλέον προσφύγων, το θεμελιακό υπόβαθρο της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης φάνηκε να κλυδωνίζεται. Η ιδέα της ενωμένης Ευρώπης ως εγγυήτριας των δικαιωμάτων όσων αναζητούν προστασία αμφισβητήθηκε, καθώς η αλληλεγγύη, ο επιμερισμός των ευθυνών και η προσφορά φιλοξενίας δεν προσεγγίστηκαν ούτε προσεγγίζονται έως σήμερα με τον ίδιο τρόπο από τα κράτη μέλη. Παρότι οι ευρωπαϊκές αξίες εμφανίζονται στο δημόσιο διάλογο ολοένα και περισσότερο, η ερμηνεία τους διαφοροποιείται. Η ελαστικότητα στην απόδοση του ακριβούς νοήματος τους επέτρεψε και συνεχίζει να επιτρέπει την επίκλησή τους συχνά με ένα ασύμβατο φάσμα πολιτικών. Αυτή την ιδιαιτερότητα επιχειρεί να αναδείξει η παρούσα έκδοση. Υιοθετώντας μια διεπιστημονική προσέγγιση, οι συγγραφείς του τόμου, επιχειρούν να φωτίσουν την αντίφαση μεταξύ του προβεβλημένου αξιακού πλαισίου και της μεταναστευτικής πολιτικής που εξακολουθεί να εφαρμόζεται, τόσο στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση όσο και στην Ελλάδα. Φιλόσοφοι, πολιτικοί επιστήμονες, κοινωνιολόγος, κοινωνικοί ανθρωπολόγοι, διερευνούν με ένα πρωτότυπο συνδυασμό κοινωνικής επιστημονικής ανάλυσης και νομικής και φιλοσοφικής θεωρίας το θέμα των αξιών και αρχών, στην εφαρμογή πολιτικών φιλοξενίας, υποδοχής, και προστασίας της περιόδου 2015-2021.
Συγγραφείς: Σάμυ Αλεξανδρίδης | Ρόζα Βασιλάκη | Φιλύρα Βλαστού-Δημοπούλου | Αναστάσιος Γιουζέπας | Αγγελική Δημητριάδη | Λουκία Κοτρωνάκη | Κώστας Ν. Κουκουζέλης | Χάρης Μαλαμίδης | Ρεγγίνα Μαντανίκα | Κωνσταντίνος Α. Παπαγεωργίου | Εύα Παπατζανή | Χαρίλαος Πλατανάκης| Νίκος Σερντεδάκις | Αλεξάνδρα Σιώτου | Αννα Τριανταφυλλίδου | Αναστασία Χαλκιά | Πάνος Χατζηπροκοπίου
... At that time, a turnaround marking the beginning of Tilos' municipal reception model occurred. The humanitarian emergency on the Aegean islands had attracted not only international attention and volunteers, but also voluminous public and private funding (Oikonomakis, 2018;Papataxiarchis, 2016). The mayor of Tilos saw the opportunity lying in the crisis, and quickly capitalized on the solidarity with refugees that locals had shown. ...
... At that time, it was mostly the locals who struggled to provide first reception to thousands of people despite the economic hardship. Subsequently, however, Tilos neither experienced the emergence of a local rescue industry of professional humanitarians (Papataxiarchis, 2016;Bousiou, 2020), nor it hosted a hotspot. After the EU-Turkey deal, Tilians-unlike their fellow Greeks on the hotspot islands-were not asking in despair 'Where is Europe?' (Siegel, 2019, p. 164). ...
This article discusses the potential and limits of municipal solidarity with refugees to offer solutions to some of the acute problems caused by the lack of international and intra-European Union (EU) solidarity. It focuses on the Greek island of Tilos, which in contrast to the nearby hotspot islands has developed a reception model that safeguards refugees’ rights, preserves social cohesion, and contributes to local development. The article shows that spontaneous expressions of municipal solidarity can be gradually transformed into sustained commitment to refugee reception, and highlights the opportunity that municipal solidarity opens up for strengthening refugee protection in the EU. © 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
... Refugees displaced as a result of the Syrian conflict soon became a refugee crisis in its own right, and directly contributed to the European refugee crisis that began in 2015 (Papataxiarchis, 2016;Triandafyllidou, 2018). According to UNHCR data and World Bank estimates, the number of refugees globally rose to 35.3 million in 2022, a sharp increase from 27.1 million the previous year (UNHCR, 2024). ...
This study delves into the intricate mechanisms by which states employ a complex network of competing and intersecting borders—both real and imagined—to delineate and perpetuate the image of Syrian refugees as security risks. Drawing upon insights from border studies, securitization theory, and framing analysis, we explore the nuanced processes of mental mapping and bordering within the context of the Syrian crisis. By scrutinizing the construction of these borders and mental maps, we highlight the deliberate state‐driven narrative that portrays Syrians as threats, emphasizing that such perceptions are not inherent but rather intentionally crafted. Our investigation sheds light on the state's agency in framing Syrians as threats, a narrative rarely challenged despite the multifaceted nature of the refugee crisis. Through an expanded discussion on historical, geopolitical, and socio‐cultural dimensions, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the intricate dynamics underlying the portrayal of Syrian refugees as perennial security concerns.
... It was especially after the signing of the EU-Turkey Statement ii in March 2016, that the role of both local (state) and European level migration control and surveillance mechanisms became unambiguous. This was a crucial period for the strategic subsumption of population flows within the asylum process, which contributed to extensive geographical control of people on the move and activated a large corps of volunteers and humanitarian organizations (Papataxiarchis 2016(Papataxiarchis , 2017. ...
The aim of this article is to investigate the asylum process based on the experiences of asylum
seekers. Two axes of the asylum procedure are examined: a) the interview and b) the decisions
produced by the asylum committees on the requests. The text argues that, in order to understand
the construction of the category of asylum seekers on the one hand and the institutional practices
and forms of their control and management on the other, these two dimensions should be
considered together. The interview process is based on the articulation of speech, while the
decision constitutes an element of a written text document. Since there is no decision without
the interview, the objective is to trace the practices and methods through which the meaning of
the text of the decision is produced and the form of the speech narrative that asylum seekers are
required to deliver in front of asylum committees. The research took place in Athens ,Greece,
from January 2018 until July 2019.
... Thus, by enforcing their borders, former seemingly 'peripheral' Eastern European countries have been able to move closer to the 'core' of (Western) Europe. 6 For the scale and impact of crossings to Lesvos in 2015 and 2016, see Evthymios Papataxiarchis (2016a;2016b) and Katerina Rozakou (2017). 7 This has been a growing trend over the past few years. ...
This article explores migrant disappearances and border deaths at the Greek borderlands through the notion of forensic bordering. Based on fieldwork in the Evros region, Athens and its surroundings, and on the island of Lesvos, I argue that disappearance and non-identification in the event of death are effectively border violence by other means. Three forms of symbolic and political post-mortem border violence are then explicated: the act of disappearance, the act of non-identification, and the act of denying proper mourning. Crucially, this article unpacks the underlining logic that, if migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are not supposed to cross the border in the first place, their existence and, ultimately, their equal humanity can be similarly denied in death. If the forensic sciences are generally perceived positively as means to provide answers, closure, accountability, and truth, forensic bordering seeks to do the exact opposite, rejecting accountability and employing silence as a deterrence.
... Greece also has a refugee pastthe 1923 Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations. Memories of the population exchange have fostered deep sympathy and solidarity with those displaced (Papadopoulou-Kourkoula 2008), not least witnessed during the so-called "migration crisis" (Papataxiarchis 2016). While those who have arrived may be framed as temporary guests (Dimitriadi 2018), and the situation has changed in profound ways since my last field trip, people continue to seek shelter in Patra's abandoned buildings as they successively try to hide in lorries with the hope of crossing to Italy and beyond. ...
This article considers the interplay between mobility and immobility in the everyday lives of young people on the move. It looks at the ways interactions with and categorisations by protection structures and restrictive border and migration regimes lead to diverse trajectories. The article is based on research with young men from Afghanistan mostly classified as unaccompanied minors. Some of the young men were seeking to continue their journeys from Greece and others had managed and had arrived in Norway. The young people’s trajectories were marked by uneven rhythms and multiple forms of movement and stasis with various effects on the body and the intimate. Whether they were categorised as accompanied or unaccompanied children or as adults also governed their spatiotemporal mobility and led to different, partly contradictory, temporalities. Moreover, imagination, desire, and conditions endured in the places they had left and moved through interacted and encouraged onward mobility.
... My ethnographic fi eldwork at the "front line" of the migration crisis (Papataxiarchis 2016) explored on the one hand how vigilante violence became accepted and normalized and, on the other, the role of gender in the legitimation of such forms of violence. From May 2017 to March 2018, I lived in the town of Harmanli, located on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey and thus since 2007 also on the border of the European Union, aft er Bulgaria's accession. ...
In this article, I explore the construction of the “refugee crisis” from the perspective of border vigilantes in Bulgaria. Drawing on ethnography in Harmanli, a border town with a refugee camp, the article explores how the identity and agency of the “refugee hunter” emerged. I argue that the gendered identity of the “refugee hunter” combines a national feminized victim and a vigilant masculinized protector. The masculinized protector patrols the Bulgarian-Turkish border in order to defend the victimized national community from the immigrant Other and the nongoverning state. The article illustrates that the refugee hunter identity has produced a new mode of hegemonic masculinity, where immigrant men and women are constructed as criminals, while men’ border patrols as heroic.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
This open access book offers a cross-disciplinary view of challenging mobility issues for migrants and refugees in Europe and particularly Greece during the last decade when the economic and refugee crises coincided. It offers new analyses and data on a diverse range of topics concerning new emigrants as well as refugees and mobilities in Greece. The book covers themes which are not only related to refugee and immigrant integration and governance challenges, but also describes host attitudes, solidarity, political and protest claims in the public sphere, as well as the changing emigration environment in Greece within a European context. With contributions from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, geography and linguistics, this book provides a unique resource for students and scholars, but also for policy-makers and social scientists working on migration-related issues within and beyond Europe.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
This open access book offers a cross-disciplinary view of challenging mobility issues for migrants and refugees in Europe and particularly Greece during the last decade when the economic and refugee crises coincided. It offers new analyses and data on a diverse range of topics concerning new emigrants as well as refugees and mobilities in Greece. The book covers themes which are not only related to refugee and immigrant integration and governance challenges, but also describes host attitudes, solidarity, political and protest claims in the public sphere, as well as the changing emigration environment in Greece within a European context. With contributions from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, geography and linguistics, this book provides a unique resource for students and scholars, but also for policy-makers and social scientists working on migration-related issues within and beyond Europe.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
In late 2014, the city of Athens began to receive large numbers of refugees and migrants from the Aegean islands, mainly ‘transit’ refugees who wanted to travel to Northern Europe. The political and socioeconomic situation in the country was difficult, as the effects of the economic crisis (2010) were still being felt. Squeezed between different and constantly changing legal frameworks, different levels of public governance and facing xenophobic reactions from local residents, the authorities of Athens had to face a new ‘wicked problem’ and find urgent solutions and innovative policies. This chapter discusses the main policies developed by the Municipality of Athens to provide basic goods and services for the survival and dignity of the large number of migrants and refugees, as well as to transform administrative structures and review policy priorities. Three important aspects of the ‘wicked problem’ are highlighted: (a) the clear political responses against xenophobic reactions (b) the innovation of the institutional and financial framework by ‘deviating’ from administrative rigidities, and (c) the coordination of the ‘Babel’ of multiple policy actors involved in addressing the ‘refugee crisis’ beyond the established public sector. The lack of a coherent national strategy forced the city government to find innovative solutions, raise funding from multiple sources and mobilise new social actors and policy networks. The case of the Municipality of Athens has highlighted that policy innovation, administrative reform, and institutional change under conditions of humanitarian emergency can be facilitated by mobilising untapped human and institutional forces and resources.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everyone’s life globally, nevertheless, its impact on refugees and migrants has been particularly profound. This chapter analyses key parameters on the living and healthcare provision conditions for these groups, the obstacles to access and to service provision, and the institutional context in Greece – a country with a large number of refugees and one of the main ports of entry to Europe. The impact of COVID-19 is examined in relation to containment, care provision and preparedness measures, with special reference to the conditions in the refugee settlements and to capturing the measures implemented over the first two years of the pandemic. Comprehensive contextualisation is achieved by examining EU legislation and policies, the Greek care provision system and obstacles to its access; an overview of key characteristics for optimal care delivery is also provided. The existing body of evidence on health and hygiene is reviewed along with key regulatory and legislative aspects, to inform the current debate, research and policy. The role of health information, mediation, public health messaging and risk communication is also briefly examined, together with key considerations in terms of social cohesion and societal resilience. Brief recommendations in terms of health and social policy, with relevance to national and local authorities, and all relevant stakeholders, are made, aiming to reduce the harm, as well as collateral damage, and to inform future policies for public health programmes and care provision for these groups. Given the changing refugee landscape due to the current war in Ukraine, which has resulted in a new wave of displaced persons within the European area, particular attention is needed on the potential disparities that may be created amongst different refugee groups that ought to be protected to the same degree.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
Highly educated human capital is crucial for economic development. This has created a situation where countries compete to attract the best and the brightest. Being the case that in developed countries the demand for skilled human capital is greater than the supply, such global policies risk the possibility of less developed ones losing a significant part of their human capital. In this chapter, we review the policies followed by the countries losing their human capital to counter this trend. Greece being such a case, herein we examine the relevant policies and present the results of a novel field research. Conducted on top-tier highly educated individuals (PhD holders) who received their doctorate degree in the period 1985–2018, we examine issues of physical and virtual option as well as return policies that can be extended by the state. In terms of findings, 14.8% of these individuals currently live abroad while 31.3% of them have lived and worked abroad in the past. They maintain strong ties with Greece and they believe that the state could do certain things to help them to return (return option) as well as to facilitate their connection to the Greek economy while they still reside abroad (‘virtual return’/ ‘diaspora option’).
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
With the unveiling of the 2019 National Strategy for Integration, Greece entered its third decade as a host country for immigrants, applicants and beneficiaries of international protection. Even though inflows of immigrants are recorded since the early 1990s, it took more than a decade for the issue of immigrant integration to be raised in the political agenda. This contribution provides for an assessment of the past 30 years, in terms of analysing the evolving legal and policy framework. In addition, it evaluates the proposed and implemented measures that aimed into facilitating immigrant integration. Historically, the 1991–2000 period was characterised by a repressive approach towards immigration and strict control measures, without any provisions for integration. During the years that followed (2001–2008), the first comprehensive immigration laws were presented, as did two Actions Plans on the social integration of immigrants. The 2008–2015 period was marked by the severe economic crisis that affected Greece, and resulted in dis-integrating part of the immigrant population. Finally, the current period is defined by the long-lasting effects of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. As such, the latest in a long series of National Strategies for Integration was unveiled, while the HELIOS programme was launched, aiming to facilitate the integration of beneficiaries of international protection. Summarising, this chapter argues that even though lip service is paid to the concept of immigrant integration, a coherent and proactive policy for immigrants’ integration in the Greek society was almost never a Greek state’s priority.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
‘Solidarity to refugees’ has been the dominant mood towards the displaced people during the first months of the ‘refugee crisis.’ This essay approaches ‘refugee solidarity’ ethnographically, from the bottom up and in emic terms, as a, socially and politically productive, symbolic structure of affect towards displaced people and a cultural innovation that differs from the traditional ‘hospitality to migrants.’ It analyses the developmental cycle of ‘refugee solidarity,’ its rise in the grassroots as a widespread attitude in frontline Aegean communities, its transformation by the state and the media into a post-national patriotism, its gradual demise after the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016 and the creation of an internal border, and its eventual fall in the course of a series of protests and bursts of xenophobic violence. The essay focuses on the most emblematic xenophobic incident against asylum seekers, the pogrom of April 2017 in Mytilene, as an index of the radical shift in attitudes towards the displaced people. It shows that ‘refugee solidarity’ was a matter of tolerance rather than of actual engagement with the predicament of the displaced people, a volatile tolerance that easily shifted towards indifference. The patriotism of ‘refugee solidarity’ eventually fell prey to the xenophobic reactions, thus proving to be ephemeral, because it was built on the same, essentialist, foundations with historically hegemonic forms of patriotism, and was governed by the same assimilationist logic.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
How can we appraise and best describe the re-emergence of large-scale emigration from Greece in hindsight, more than ten years since the eruption of the Greek crisis? Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected in the context of the EUMIGRE project in the Netherlands and Greater London, this chapter provides an in-depth assessment of Greece’s emigration during the period of the country’s prolonged economic crisis from the perspective of the key actors, the migrants themselves. Focusing on their migration motivations, it explores how the crisis in Greece has altered everyday discourse on emigration and loosened up social constraints towards long distance mobility. It further highlights the significance of the freedom of movement within the EU in shaping the characteristics of the outflow and the experiences and aspirations of the migrants. Three different migrant profiles are singled out, the necessity driven migrants, the career-oriented migrants and the middling transnationals. Moving away from statist and economistic presentations of the phenomenon, the chapter aims to challenge several conventional assumptions underlying the way this outmigration is commonly presented in the Greek public discourse and critically assess the main labels used to describe it namely, brain drain, new migration and crisis-driven migration.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
During the recent ‘refugee crisis’ Greece became one of the major entry points by sea as high numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, primarily originating from Syria, entered its territory en route to wealthier European countries. The unprecedented arrival of refugees has triggered mixed reactions towards newcomers raising socio-economic and cultural concerns about the potential impacts of refugees on the host country. The chapter uses survey data from the EU-funded TransSOL project and incorporates realistic group conflict and social identity theories to explore potential determinants shaping different attitudes towards Syrian refugees entering Greece. The descriptive analysis indicated that opposition attitudes towards Syrian refugees are widespread in Greece. Results from a multinomial logistic regression analysis demonstrated that individual determinants related to social identity theory are particularly important in understanding different levels of Greeks’ opposition towards Syrian refugees, whereas strong opposition towards the specific ethnic group was associated with an amalgamation of individual factors related to both realistic group conflict and social identity theory. The findings stress the necessity of implementing policy interventions that promote the intercultural dialogue and aim to mitigate the main sources of negative stances towards refugees.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
This chapter reports on a qualitative study investigating a particular type of Greek-language education abroad, namely non-mixed or Greek state schools in Germany, and the impact ‘new’ migration has had on their operation. These schools (K-12) follow the Greek curricula and employ teachers seconded from the Greek Ministry of Education. They were originally set up in the 1970s as an educational setting which would help immigrant students in Germany to develop Greek language skills and a Greek ethnocultural identity, eventually facilitating transition in the case of repatriation. Their graduates have the additional benefit of gaining access to Greek universities with relatively low grades, and, as a result, such schools have been a popular option for Greek immigrant families for the last forty years. Following the decision of Greek authorities to start abolishing them in 2011, Greek non-mixed schools saw their students’ numbers wane. ‘New’ migration to Germany (post 2010), however, has led to an important rise in enrolments and a change in the student population profile. According to the findings of a small-scale exploratory study presented in this chapter, teachers in these schools perceive new arrivals as young people traumatised by the migration experience and in need of a familiar physical and symbolic setting. As a result, non-mixed schools are once again considered as important institutions in the current circumstances on the grounds that they offer their students a number of advantages.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
This chapter focuses on the reception system for migrants, a system that consists of procedures that take place between practices of what is known as first reception and longer-term plans for integration. When we use the term migrant in this chapter, we are referring to those who migrate towards a territory, have arrived at a territory, or live in the territory in question for a short or long period of time. Unless noted otherwise, the term does not distinguish between migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Our research is built on an analysis of two key periods that are critical in the emergence, evolution and consolidation of this intermediary space. Firstly, at the start of the 2000s, reception emerged as a concept and practice related to the governance of so-called transit migration. This period was characterised by a plethora of complex forced and voluntary mobilities inside Greece and the EU. Furthermore, during this period, the state of ‘being in limbo’ became established as a situation in between borders, as well as in between transiting (through) and settling (in) a territory. During the second key period from 2015 to 2019, we observe contradictory policy attempts to consolidate migrant reception as a formal system, including new infrastructures like camps and housing programmes, which were maintained by diverse agents and jurisdictions. The ‘hotspot’ approach, the closing down of the Balkan route and the EU-Turkey Statement constituted important impediments to the development of inclusive practices by international humanitarian agencies and grassroots solidarity initiatives.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
With a broader view of ‘crisis’ not only as temporal interruption, but also as opportunity and constraint, the volume offers a multidisciplinary perspective on challenging mobilities arising during the 2009–2021 period in Greece, the epicentre of the Eurozone crisis, EU’s main gate in the ‘refugee crisis’ and a country experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic. Its contributors from social sciences and humanities, mathematics, health and legal sciences, document how crises interact with migration processes at the individual, organisational and macro levels on critical junctures of economic, humanitarian and governance emergencies. Its fresh empirical and theoretical insights on an ‘exceptional’ South European periphery case contribute to the existing migration literature, especially in reference to the third wave of emigrants, crises-affected host attitudes, solidarity and claims-making, mobility reception transitions and perennial integration challenges. Illuminating the dynamic interactions between crises and migration processes involving supra-state, state and non-state actors as well as citizens and migrants/displaced people, the volume offers new knowledge and insights on the challenges and complexities of crisis-related mobilities. These centre on the ways in which crisis-related opportunities and threats affect transnationalism, collective action, migrants’ political agency, governance and reception practices, as well as secondary migration.
... In 2015, 856,723 refugees crossed the sea borders with Turkey and settled in Lesvos, Samos, Chios and other Aegean islands (Papataxarchis, 2016). From 2014 till July 2020 a total number of 1,254,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by both sea and land (UNHCR, 2020a). ...
The chapter looks at the governance of migrant mobility in Greece in the period 2015–2018. It investigates how Greece managed migrant trajectories, with particular attention to irregular migrants and asylum seekers who entered through the land and sea borders, after the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016. Building on empirical research conducted in the framework of the CeasEVAL project, with migrants and asylum seekers who crossed the external borders of Greece, the chapter contributes new findings to the growing field of research on borders and bordering practices and how they impact the (im)mobility trajectories of people on the move. As the findings suggest, the governance of migrants’ mobility sought not only to deter entry or provoke onward movement, but also to produce containment and divergence, both geographical and in terms of access to services. Mobility was regulated and controlled internally through the construction of administrative and legal barriers that in turn resulted in the inclusion/exclusion from key services, including asylum and accommodation. Reception conditions –particularly access to, or lack of accommodation– can define secondary movement, either by provoking or by deterring it. Thus, internal barriers can function as a key driver for the desire to undertake transitory movement, posing a challenge to the Schengen space.
... Επιπλέον, επί της παρούσης, δεν κρίθηκε σκόπιμο να συμπεριληφθεί η εθελοντική ανθρωπιστική δράση που λαμβάνει χώρα στο νησί, και μάλιστα την περίοδο της επιτόπιας έρευνας ήταν αρκετά εκτεταμένη. Η συμπερίληψη της εθελοντικής δράσης και των πρακτικών που ακολουθεί, πιστεύω θα επέφερε μία διάνθιση γύρω από ζητήματα ανταγωνισμού στο πεδίο του ανθρωπισμού(Papataxiarchis 2016a;2016b), πέραν των ζητημάτων αρμοδιότητας που αναλύονται εδώ, αναδεικνύοντας πτυχές της «ευαλωτότητας» πέραν του συστηματοποιημένου τρόπου οργάνωσης και εφαρμογής της. Η μη-συμπερίληψη της εθελοντικής δράσης ήταν αποτέλεσμα τόσο της έλλειψης πρόσβασης σε εθελοντικές ομάδες που δρουν στο νησί, όσο και της περιορισμένης διάθεσης πόρωνχρονικών και οικονομικώναπό μεριάς μου για τη διεξαγωγή της έρευνας.Καταληκτικά, τα παραπάνω αναφέρονται στο συγκεκριμένο χρόνο πραγματοποίησης της επιτόπιας έρευνας. ...
Αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η σχέση πάροχου-λήπτη προστασίας όπως αυτή συγκροτείται στο πλαίσιο της ανθρωπιστικής παρέμβασης στη Λέσβο. Συγκεκριμένα, η εργασία εξετάζει τη λειτουργία του μηχανισμού αξιολόγησης της «ευαλωτότητας» μέσα από την εμπειρία των εργαζόμενων οι οποίοι καλούνται να τον εφαρμόσουν στο πεδίο της Λέσβου, και αναδεικνύει όψεις της λειτουργίας των ίδιων των εργαζόμενων.
Το νησί της Λέσβου αποτελεί διαχρονικά τόπο όπου εφαρμόζονται μηχανισμοί διαχείρισης της κινητικότητας. Από το 2016, στο πλαίσιο των αυξημένων ροών εκτοπισμένων πληθυσμών και κατόπιν της Κοινής Συμφωνίας Ε.Ε.- Τουρκίας, το hot-spot γίνεται το νέο ευρωπαΐκό παράδειγμα διαχείρισης της κινητικότητας και καθίσταται τόπος συναρμογής ετερογενών φορέων δράσης και στρατηγικών διαχείρισης των νεοεισερχομένων, με την παράλληλη εφαρμογή πολιτικών ασφάλειας αλλά και προστασίας. Εντός του hot-spot, o μηχανισμός αξιολόγησης της «ευαλωτότητας» υλοποιείται ως επιμέρους τεχνολογία της ανθρωπιστικής διακυβέρνησης, κατακερματίζοντας και ταξινομώντας τον εγκλωβισμένο πληθυσμό σε «ευάλωτους» - σε σώματα που πάσχουν και αξίζουν προστασίας- και σε «μη- ευάλωτους».
Κατά τη διάρκεια επιτόπιας έρευνας στη Μυτιλήνη, τον Απρίλιο του 2019, διεξήχθησαν
ανοιχτές συνεντεύξεις με εργαζόμενους/ες διαφόρων φορέων ανθρωπιστικής δράσης
(κρατικών, μη-κρατικών, διακρατικών, υπερκρατικών). Μέσω θεματικής ανάλυσης λόγου, η παρούσα έρευνα επιχειρεί να απαντήσει σε δύο ερωτήματα: πώς λειτουργεί το ταξινομητικό σύστημα της «ευαλωτότητας» μέσα από την εμπειρία όσων το εφαρμόζουν, και, πώς η θέση του υποκειμένου που αξιολογεί κατασκευάζεται ως θέση διαμεσολάβησης ανάμεσα στην αλήθεια του/ης αιτούντος/σας άσυλο και στην εγγραφή της αλήθειας αυτής – με τη μορφή της πιστοποίησης – στο γραφειοκρατικό μηχανισμό.
Απαντώντας στο πρώτο ερώτημα, η εφαρμογή του μηχανισμού της «ευαλωτότητας», είναι δομημένη στη λογική της διαμεσολάβησης και βασίζεται σε ένα σύμπλοκο σχήμα
παραπομπών, το οποίο συγκροτείται μέσα από τη δικτύωση φορέων ανθρωπιστικής
δράσης και τη γραφειοκρατική τους διασύνδεση. Εντός αυτού του σχήματος, οι πρακτικές αξιολόγησης του «ευάλωτου» αποτελούν κοινό τόπο και πραγματώνονται μέσα από την αντικειμενοποίηση του λόγου και του σώματος των αιτούντων/σών, στη βάση επιστημονικών λόγων που αποφαίνονται για την αλήθεια των ισχυρισμών. Η ανάλυση αναδεικνύει δύο υποκειμενικές θέσεις των εργαζόμενων οι οποίες συγκροτούνται ανάλογα με το ρόλο του εκάστοτε φορέα ανθρωπιστικής δράσης: μία ταξινομητική και μία υποστηρικτική/υπερασπιστική.
Στην προσέγγιση του δεύτερου ερωτήματος, χρησιμοποιείται η έννοια της «δυσπιστίας», όπως αυτή κεντρικά προκύπτει από την εμπειρία των συμμετεχόντων/σών, διαφωτίζοντας επιμέρους πτυχές των δύο υποκειμενικών θέσεων που αναδείχθηκαν. Το γεγονός πως για την εφαρμογή της πολιτικής φροντίδας της «ευαλωτότητας» αντικειμενοποιείται το σώμα και ο λόγος του/της αιτούντος/σας ώστε να αναδειχθεί η αλήθεια του, συγκροτεί ένα πρόβλημα στην τάξη της αλήθειας. Το πρόβλημα της δυσπιστίας, παράγεται πολλαπλά μέσα από θεσμικές αλλαγές και ατομικές στρατηγικές απεγκλωβισμού των ταξινομούμενων, και αναδεικνύεται ως συγκροτητικό στοιχείο της εφαρμογής του μηχανισμού αξιολόγησης της «ευαλωτότητας». Έτσι, δεν αποτελεί απλώς μια κατάσταση την οποία καλούνται να αντιμετωπίσουν οι εργαζόμενοι/ες του πεδίου, αλλά περισσότερο ένα αναπόσπαστο στοιχείο του μηχανισμού, στο οποίο οι εργαζόμενοι επενεργούν αντιμετωπίζοντάς το και ταυτόχρονα αναπαράγοντάς το μέσα από τη δράση τους στο πεδίο.
Abstract
This master thesis deals with the relationship between protection provider and protection
recipient as it emerges in the context of humanitarian intervention in Lesvos. Specifically, the thesis examines the “vulnerability” assessment mechanism through the experiences of aid workers who implement it, and highlights aspects of their own function.
Different mechanisms of mobility management have been implemented at Lesvos island over the years. Since 2016, in the context of increased flows of displaced populations and after the E.U.- Turkey Statement, the hot-spot is the new European paradigm in mobility management. The hot-spot is an assemblage of heterogenous actors and strategies to manage the newcomers, a place where security and protection policies are simultaneously applied. In the hot-spot premises, “vulnerability” is implemented as a component – a technology – of humanitarian government by dividing and sorting the confined population into “vulnerable” – suffering bodies deserving protection – and “non-vulnerable” ones.
During field research in Mytilene, in April 2019, open-ended interviews were conducted with field workers employed in different humanitarian organizations. Through thematic discourse analysis, the research attempts to respond to two questions: how does the taxonomic system of “vulnerability” function based on the experience of those who apply it; and how their subjective position is constructed as a position of mediation between asylum seekers’ truth and its inscription – by the form of certification –into the bureaucratic mechanism.
As far as the first question is concerned, the thesis argues that the implementation of the
“vulnerability” assessment mechanismis structured on the basis of mediation, and is
dependent on a complex scheme of referrals. This scheme is shaped by the networking and the bureaucratic interconnection of various humanitarian agencies. In this context, the assessment practices of “vulnerability” are achieved through the objectification of the asylum seekers’ speech and body, on the basis of scientific discourses which decide about a claim’s truth. The analysis shows t wo emerging subjective positions of the aid workers, which are constructed according to the role of the humanitarian agency that they work for: one taxonomic and one supporting/defending.
In responding to the second question, the concept of “disbelief”, which arose as central in the experiences of the participants, is used and aspects of the two subjective positions are further discussed on that basis. The fact that the application of “vulnerability” objectifies asylum seekers’ speech and body, in order to reveal their truth, constitutes a problem of truth or a primary disbelief. The problem of disbelief is multiply produced at the juncture of institutional changes and individual escape strategies of the applicants. It is also emerging as a constitutive element of the “vulnerability” assessment mechanism. Thus, is not just a situation that field workers are called to deal with; it is more an inextricable part of the mechanism, one that professionals in the field both act upon and simultaneously reproduce, by their daily action.
Responding to recent calls in migration studies to focus on the understudied “middle-space of migration,” this article critically evaluates the available literature on migration industry, migration infrastructures, and migration brokerage. Recognizing their value, we propose to move on through a step of “de-theorizing,” to address their mutual theoretical tensions and inconsistencies. By focusing on the basic notion of “migration routes,” simply defined as spatially structured networks of places and segments bridging places of origin, transit, and destination, we offer a common analytical framework to approach the actors, infrastructures, and practices involved in moving migrants, thus leveraging geography’s emphasis on space and space-making processes. We then borrow the concept of “linked ecology” from Andrew Abbott, to capture the complex interactions involved in shaping individual routes. In doing so, we hope to offer a new perspective to approach the middle-spaces of migration and design future research programs.
Violent clashes erupted on the Greek island of Lesvos in early 2020, during which aid groups, volunteers, and activists were threatened and attacked. Aid actors and media sources attributed these events to far‐right, nationalist, and xenophobic mobilisation; however, this risks ignoring more structural factors and local perspectives on asylum policies and practices. This paper suggests that a more critical approach is necessary to understand why people mobilised against aid on Lesvos, and it explores how this antagonism can be seen as intrinsic to the ‘humanitarian border’ as it materialised on the island. Aid groups, volunteers, and activists became integral to this, spawning stories of how they were sustaining the migration dynamic. How these stories coincided with far‐right mobilisation is not straightforward, and nuancing how local concern and protest and far‐right anti‐immigration sympathies relate is imperative to comprehending hostility to aid groups and may contribute to fostering better relations with communities in refugee‐hosting areas.
Background This study investigates the implementation of non-formal educational programs for refugees, which have been implemented in the last seven years in Greek islands in the North and South Aegean Sea. Its main aim is to examine the types of the learning that take place in these educational environments, according to a certain strand of Adult Education (AE) theories, which classifies learning according to whether it is focused on: a) the learner, b) knowledge, c) assessment, or d) the learning community. Methods The study’s methodology is based on the implementation of semi-structured individual interviews, and, through this effort, an attempt is made to develop a broader reflection in relation to the objectives of language education for adult refugees in Greece and to assess the validity of the above framework for the case of AE for refugees in Greece. The research is based on reflections by volunteer educators, who have extensive teaching experience in non-formal educational environments. Results The study showed that the composition of classes characterized by linguistic diversity favors the design of teaching interventions that give meaning to the learning needs of refugees (learner-centered learning) and the creation of a learning community (community-centered learning), and that these interventions utilize the principles of inclusion, differentiated teaching, as well as experiential and work-based learning. Conclusions The findings of the present study reveal that the field of language learning for adults—especially refugees—is increasingly connected not only to communication and survival needs, but also to identity construction, a process involving significant “border crossing” in geographical, legal, social, and psychological terms.
Contemporary migration from the Global South to the Global North is marked by vulnerability, violence, and injustice. These processes give rise to distinct materialities in border regions and transit countries. Although inherently mute, such traces can act as “material witnesses,” testifying to the inequities encountered along these journeys. Contemporary archaeology can apply its research methods to document and analyze these material remains, revealing past instances of injustice and violence. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Turkey and Greece, this paper conceptualizes specific material traces of ongoing migration movements to Europe as material witnesses, shedding light on overlooked stages of migration pathways.
This paper explores economic interactions between displaced people, local societies and spatial dimensions of migration management and border controls, most notably camps, focusing on the northeast Aegean islands of Chios and Lesvos. It explores the diverse activities, practices, transactions and relations developing in, around and in relation to migrant camps, the array of economic actors involved, and the multiple spatialities operating at different scales. These actors intersect in various ways and occasionally interact in overlapping networks, stimulating “developmental” processes in fields of economic activities within but also beyond the migration industries. Building primarily on fieldwork conducted on the two islands in 2020, as well as on secondary data and desk research, the paper argues that reception policies create value and mobilise resources in ways that may deepen existing inequalities or even produce new ones, capitalizing on the presence of the migrants themselves.
Syrian refugees in 2015 in Greece found themselves suspended between a tragedy they had just escaped, and the hope of safety in Europe. While their clothes were still wet from the sea, they were looking forward and planning ahead. In fleeting gatherings at the port or the registration centre, Syrian travellers exchanged advice, debated routes and destinations, and offered tea, fruit and food. In transit, they often became hosts and guests. These roles were interchangeable, yet, through the percolations of advice given and information shared, a Syrian sense of hospitality as collective recognition emerged. Connecting advice, sociality and solidarity, we argue that a different Syrian hospitality than what is usually assumed was at play. The articulation of this hospitality was different to the formulaic, hierarchical or legal prescriptions of honour and status and conflict mediation in which the duplicity of hospitality is encountered. Although at many junctures in their journeys Syrians were made reliant on regimes of ‘protection’ and ‘care’, Syrian travellers actively tried to bypass these by using the sense of hospitality as a ‘Syrian virtue’, as the heuristic of social intimacy and recognition. Through the multi-temporal uses of hospitality, a sense of history and future erupted at a time of danger and anticipation for the journey to follow, forcing Syrians to reconfigure their pasts and futures. In the form of advice given to other Syrian travellers, but also to the anthropologist, this future use of hospitality became a conduit of communication and collective belonging.
This article explores the challenges of maintaining ethical ethnographic practices amid the evolving bureaucratic regulations of research ethics. Drawing on the author's fieldwork experiences in Lesvos, Greece, during different periods, including the recent European ‘refugee crisis’, it reflects on the deep ethics inherent in the ethnographic encounter, shaped by long‐term commitments and mutual exposure between the researcher and interlocutors. It critiques the bureaucratization of research ethics, arguing that legalistic guarantees, such as consent forms, undermine the nuanced, context‐dependent nature of ethnographic work. By contrasting engagements with locals, activists and professional humanitarians, the author highlights the tensions between bureaucratic regulation and the need for a flexible, situated approach to ethics, calling for a critical assessment of ethical frameworks to preserve the ‘breathing space’ essential for responsible and insightful ethnography. The article advocates for resistance against one‐size‐fits‐all ethical regulations constraining the rich potential of ethnographic research.
Drawing on the highly mediatized arrival of migrants and refugees at the borders of Greece, this article focuses on digital technologies and smartphone use among Syrian refugees in Athens, Greece, and analyses the way family relations are experienced at a distance. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in the refugee camp of Eleonas, from July 2019 to March 2020, when the first wave of COVID-19 was confirmed in Greece. The main objective of the article is to discuss the way digital technologies help the refugees to redefine relationships among family members and experience a sense of ‘togetherness’ at a distance. In addition, it aims to describe the changes of the familial ties and the practices of an ‘imaginary family’ through smartphones and network platforms. Overcoming uncertainty, fear and ‘information precarity’ caused by the dataveillance and control of al-Assad’s governmental authorities, Syrian refugees find ways to use smartphone as ‘an essential tool’ to facilitate communication among family members and relatives in homeland or in diaspora in Europe, to share experiences, comments and pictures.
Refugees use social networks to navigate the institutions of immigration. Social networks also serve as support structures as refugees claim their identity and establish a sense of belonging. This paper examines the influence of personal social networks on the integration experiences of 16 asylum‐seekers in Thessaloniki, Greece. Case studies of three recent asylum‐seekers convey how the dynamics of personal social networks differentially influence the experiences of integration. The visualizations of their personal social network, the 45 individuals they engage with routinely, reveal the structure and composition of their social lives. Across the study sample, refugees with more Greek contacts were better able to navigate the economic and legal landscape. However, more engagement with host nationals did not necessarily improve feelings of belonging. Migration policies and programming should consider how to use social networks, both existing and new, to improve migrant integration outcomes.
This article calls for a deeper consideration of crisis as a method, as spearheaded by anthropologists trained in the Manchester School, including Max Gluckman, who followed extended case studies to track ‘crisis over time’. This approach examines how certain occurrences trigger reflection and deliberation beyond the event and activate critique of interlocutors and anthropologists, reinserting questions of ethics and morality. I argue that crisis as a method facilitates a move away from ‘crisis‐chasing’ apparent in anthropology over the past decade, which labels situations as ‘urgent’ while omitting constitutive aspects of social structure. Crisis as a method entails paying attention to the structures that name or call crisis into being and a critical perspective on what constitutes a crisis or noteworthy ‘event’.
When ethnography is used in fields outside anthropology, vignettes often take a central role. Yet methodological discussions of the vignette are not as central to anthropology as their cross‐disciplinary use might warrant. By dwelling on, but perhaps less stringently guarding, disciplinary boundaries, anthropology can gain a clearer view of its own central tools—in this case, vignettes. Reconsidering these tools holds particular relevance for work on refugee studies, an inherently interdisciplinary field that anthropology has had a key role in shaping. Artistic works focused on refugees are considered here from a meta‐ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the processes through which a specific series of artworks were produced alongside their content. Central to this analysis is the role of the vignette in the artist's presentation of her work, which enables an inquiry into the double role of the vignette as both method and presentation in anthropology.
The article illustrates the potential of engaged arts-based pedagogies in higher education with respect to integration interventions for young refugees in Europe. It discusses the conception and implementation of the collaborative initiative “Find Refuge in Art”, which was part of the research Project PRESS at the Hellenic Open University. This example shows how artistic synergy may become an integral part of research design, framing both awareness raising and open education in the backdrop of intercultural exchange. The initiative encouraged the co-production of artistic work from pairs of artists with refugee and non-refugee background and culminated in an exhibition with over 75 participating artists. Challenging the victimizing conceptualizations of refugee art as a primarily trauma-centered representation of displacement, the article invites us to consider questions of agency and inclusion in terms of mutual recognition and to widen participation as a means of fostering transformative intercultural learning and epistemic justice in universities.
Lampedusa (Italy) and Lesvos (Greece) have become significant locations where the interaction between migration and tourism is expressed through the presence of volunteer tourism, which, along with supporting migrants, has spawned new practices, such as visiting emblematic sites of migrants’ passage, presence, and death. This study investigates the emergent practices of memorial tourism from the perspective of mobility justice. Specifically, considering this liminal practice, the study seeks an alternative route to the dead-end of political possibilities of volunteer tourism, by exploring, rather than denying, the paradoxes it produces. The study employs a comparative ethnographic approach using a multimethod process, including an online survey, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. The author spent six months on Lampedusa and Lesvos as a volunteer. Via these tools, the research explores how volunteers’ actions reinforce and confirm mobility inequalities. Specifically, migration is ‘memorialized’ by volunteer tourists, while concurrently the individuals migrating, and in certain cases even those who return after completing their migratory path, have no access to the spaces of memory on Lampedusa and Lesvos. While volunteer tourists’ practices and relationships to these spaces can engender a growing awareness of the phenomenon of migration, an investigation of the emerging paradoxes argues that despite the risk of reproducing the forms of exclusion and injustice that volunteers seek to counter, some subjectivities gain new, significant positions that cause forms of resistance to the disciplinary power of the border regime.
The chapter, co-authored by Kathleen M. Adams and Natalia Bloch, is an introduction to the volume "Intersections of Tourism, Migration, and Exile" published by Routledge.
This thesis is a contemporary depiction, analysis, interpretation and
critique of the refugee phenomenon crisis today, from 2015, mainly afterwards,
for the global community, the EU and Greece. The two main parts of the study
address specific issues such as the legal framework in force in Greece and the
EU on refugee status, the role of the European Asylum System and other
aspects.
Also, the paper includes an analysis of the EU - Turkey agreement and
the positive and negative developments it has brought to the refugee issue.
At the same time, the rights of asylum seekers at international, European and
national level and the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights,
the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and other relevant legal
instruments on refugees are being examined.
Based on the initial theoretical debate, the study proceeds to an
examination of the institutional framework in Greece, the role of NGOs and
asylum services and the impact of the refugee on the economy and society. In
addition, the attitudes of citizens, NGOs and the interest groups involved in the
integration of refugees are examined in a critical way.
This work is a modern approach to the issue and attempts a more
interdisciplinary analysis of a phenomenon which, in fact, has many causes and
implications for society. The basic methodology followed is that of the
bibliographic review while quantitative data are used from reliable sources.
The chapter will defend the argument that a certain interpretation of migrants’ (particularly refugees in our case) protests against border controls should be taken as a manifestation of claiming cosmopolitan citizenship. The argument has both an empirical and a normative dimension. On the empirical dimension of the argument, we will present and interpret migrants’ protests in Idomeni, Greece, regarding the closure of the EU borders in 2016. Did migrants claim certain rights, such as the right to mobility? Did they claim state citizenship? It will be argued that none of these claims represented their political subjectivity at the time. Moving on to the normative dimension of the argument it will be revealed that there is something inherent in migrants’ acts of protesting that might be taken as claiming cosmopolitan citizenship of a certain kind, challenging, among other things, methodological nationalism. Migrants’ protests challenge border controls, the state’s supposed ‘right to exclude,’ and strive for occupying a ‘place’ in the world.
In this chapter, I reflect upon the theoretical and political implications of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ both in terms of governance and sovereignty. The analysis that follows is based on empirical material, namely in-depth semi-structured interviews with different relevant stakeholders, i.e. representatives of authorities, such as the former Ministry of Migration Policy and the Asylum Service, representatives of EU agencies, such as Frontex and DG ECHO, as well as volunteers and activists from Greece and other countries, like Turkey, Spain and the United States of America. I focus on pre-existing and emerging internal contradictions between different actors who have been dealing with refugees. In other words, I try to capture the contingent character of new geographies of control that occurred with the establishment of the ‘hotspot approach,’ in correlation with the shifts in state sovereignty as it has been repositioned through the active involvement of non-state actors – from non-governmental organisations to international organisations and EU agencies – in the refugee/migration management.
This chapter centres on polarised rearrangements of the imageries of ‘Others’ both in the Greek and the Hungarian public, during a period witnessing the impacts of the global financial crisis and the so-called ‘refugee crisis.’ We examined varieties of imageries of ‘Others’ in crisis situations, based on an online survey that was conducted in parallel in Greece and Hungary. Concurrently, we analysed the auto-stereotypical features of Greeks and Hungarians, along with their hetero-stereotype characteristics concerning some key nationalities (Americans, Arabs, Germans and Russians) to capture emerging patterns of sympathies, perceived skills and cultural distances. We found a substantial core of positive expressive auto-stereotypes among the Greek population. Hungarian auto-stereotypes reflected somewhat more instrumental-oriented self-images. The cognitive maps outlined by the two-mode network methodology displayed groupings of nationalities with related stereotypical attributes, such as ‘Western,’ ‘Eastern’ or ‘Peripheral.’ We also examined the beliefs of certain segments of the overall population depending on their exposure to financial and refugee crises. Media analyses of various activity domains conducted correspondingly for the respective countries highlighted substantial shifts between pre- and post-crisis patterns regarding both these countries’ positions and their characteristic features, as portrayed in the Greek and the Hungarian public discourse.
This chapter examines the political contestation on the 2015–16 refugee inflow as it was presented in the Greek press, in a period of heated debate. Using political claims analysis carried out within the context of the TransSOL project, we studied the main attributes of the public discourse as reflected in the political claims of actors located in three national newspapers from August 2015 to April 2016, on refugees and their arrival to Europe. In particular, we examined the protagonists of public debates –both claimants and addressees of public claims– the issues which were discussed, the form in which the claims were raised as an indication of the contentiousness of this field, the positioning –positive or negative– of claims towards refugees, as well as the chronicle of the debate. Two media attention cycles are identified, based on the intensification of claims-making on refugees. This study envisages to contribute to a better understanding of the interplay of different political, social and context-specific influences in the discursive construction of the so called ‘refugee crisis.’
Különleges Bánásmód folyóirat, 2022. 8. (3.) - teljes szám
The largest population movement in the history of Europe since the Second World War has been the migration process of recent years, which also appeared in Hungary in 2015. The significant demographic movement has resulted in important social reactions and has developed different narratives in the civil and also in the power fields. In Hungary, the refugee issue has become a decisive topic of political discourse since 2015, and the party coalition was among the first in Europe to represent the security policy. As a result, the refugees appeared as a source of danger, so the government has rejected them. In spite of this, the grassroots volunteer groups were organized in the civil sphere, who helped the refugee masses passing through Hungary in 2015. This paper analyses a very brief but very intense manifestation of Hungarian civil society involvement as a social response to current conflicts. We will look at how the 2015 migration wave grassroots crisis management took place in Debrecen. This cultural anthropological research is based on online and offline participatory observations and semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with volunteers who helped refugees in Debrecen. This study focuses on the motivations, attitudes, social responsibility of volunteers and their voluntary activity embedded in broader socio-political conditions. The first part of the article shows the formation and operational peculiarities of solidarity philanthropic organization with refugees in Debrecen. Then follows the individual aspects of volunteering. Finally, it will be discussed the socio-political context of the civil voluntary movement, the political interpretations of refugee assistance, and its impact on volunteering. With outlining a segment of the contemporary volunteer phenomenon we can get closer to provide a framework for understanding the possibilities of the recent civil sphere.
This working paper is based on empirical research on the Translocal Figurations of Displacement in Greece and Italy. The authors aim to compare protracted displacement in Greece and Italy, looking at the structural forces shaping it and their interactions with migrants' mobility and connectivity. This comparison is based on the analysis of the relations between two contextual variables (governance regimes and host population) and three key variables (mobility, connectivity and marginalisation). In this paper, they present findings from three study sites in Greece and four research locations in Italy. Findings show that protracted legal and socio-economic marginalisation is a key feature characterising the lives of displaced people in southern European countries. It confirms the hypothesis that protracted displacement does not end when forced migrants reach Greece or Italy. Restrictive governance regimes at the national and EU level severely limit mobility opportunities within Greece and Italy and across the European Union (EU). To cope with and resist margin-alising and immobilising policies, displaced migrants in Italy and Greece put in place several strategies, ranging from adapting to governance regimes and taking the most out of them to resisting them and finding ways to avoid, bypass or overcome such regimes. In this framework, mobility and connectivity emerge as a resource and a trap for displaced migrants in southern Europe. On the one hand, migrants' strategies of intra-national and intra-EU mobility may help them out of protracted displacement, while on the other, certain types of mobility (hyper-, circular, paradoxical) can entrap, rather than free them. Similarly, local, translocal and transnational networks emerge as a crucial resource for displaced people in Greece and Italy. At the same time, family and co-ethnic networks may also be experienced as disabling, hampering one's aspirations to get out of protracted displacement. Fieldwork in both countries highlighted common factors shaping the relationships between displaced migrants and host communities. We also observed different facets of intergroup relations, ranging from indifference to friendship. The paper concludes by highlighting similarities and differences on the findings from both countries, based on qualitative and quantitative data.
Humor is widely recognized as a fundamental aspect of the human experience, that has also played a vital role in the way marginalized groups comment on and mock power. Yet, in migration research the methodological and analytical value of humor has been largely overlooked. Rather, migration studies has commonly centered its analysis around suffering and tragedy and, in the process, depicted migrant trajectories as endeavors largely devoid of laughter, humor, irony and play. This article suggests that such humorless representations of the migration process-and indeed of the migrant subject itself-has broader implications for the types of knowledge that we (re)produce around migrants' experiences, subjectivities and struggles. In fact, it argues that migration studies' failure to recognize migrants as humorous individuals risks feeding into processes of exceptionalization and de-humanization through setting "the migrant" up as an obscure Jigure that lacks "essentially human" qualities. In order to make the case for the humorous in migration research, the article illustrates how refugees arriving to the Greek island of Lesvos in the early summer of 2015 laughed at their own predicament as well as the technologies put in place to control their freedom of movement and how their laughter, humor and comic displays did important political work in refusing subjugation, in speaking truth to power and in capturing the absurdity of the violence that they faced.
In this paper I examine how culturally-based forms of time in Greece were transformed by the presence of new, emergency-like categorizations of time due to ‘crisis’. Reflecting on my teaching of anthropology on the island of Lesbos during the refugees’ arrival, I analyze how Greek temporalities got disrupted and muddled by the new ones that the humanitarian crisis created. A stabilized, extended anthropological temporality that was imposed by human relationships, fieldwork and anthropological analysis, the focus-on-the-present temporality that the financial crisis created and a new, hasty, emergency-like temporality that characterized the refugee ‘crisis’ all entered university classrooms and needed coordination. Academic responses to these, often dissonant, life-rhythms exposed and expressed underlying antinomies related to time but also revealed scientific, political and moral issues, as a hyper-activist anthropology became dominant. Coping with alterity’s time-spans in ordinary life, at some times resulted in hasty academic actions, at other times in long pauses.
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