Migration – To Archeio

A comparative analysis of migration control strategies along the Western and Eastern Mediterranean routes: Sovereign interventions through militarization and deportation

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:39 +0000

This paper is a historically informed comparative study of militarization and deportation efforts along the Western (Spain–Morocco) and Eastern (Greece–Turkey) Mediterranean migratory routes from 2005 to 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork on both sites, we argue that these two policy instruments go hand-in-hand in the construction of the European Union’s anti-immigration border and examine the continuities in their implementation along the two extremes of the Mediterranean basin. Our findings indicate that the origins of current militarization and deportation efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean (such as the EUROSUR system and the ‘Hot Spots’ approach) can be traced back to the Western Mediterranean and that they have been gradually expanded eastwards. Finally, the paper also demonstrates how militarization and deportation initiatives were implemented jointly by sovereign entities (the EU and member states), and by doing so it addresses the recent debates on the status of sovereignty. We provide evidence to support the argument that, rather than disappearing, sovereignty is re-articulated through cooperation among sovereign entities, despite occasional disagreements among them.

The Biopolitical Border in Practice: Surveillance and Death at the Greece-Turkey Borderzones

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:39 +0000

This paper examines biopolitical control practices at the Greece–Turkey borders and addresses current debates in the study of borders and biopolitics. The Greek and Frontex authorities have established diverse surveillance mechanisms to control the borderzone space and to monitor, intercept, apprehend, and push back migrants or to block their passage. The location of contemporary borders has been much debated in the literature. This paper provides a nuanced understanding of borders by demonstrating that while borders are diffusing beyond and inside state territories, their practices and effects are concentrated at the edges of state territories—ie, borderzones. Borderzones are biopolitical spaces in which surveillance is most intense and migrants suffer the direct threat of injury and death. Applying biopolitics in the context of borderzones also prompts us to revisit the concept. While Foucault posits that biopolitics is the product of the historical transition away from sovereign powers controlling territory and imposing practices of death towards governmental powers managing population mainly through pastoral, productive, and deterritorialized techniques, the case of the Greece–Turkey borderzones demonstrates that biopolitics operates through sovereign territorial controls and surveillance, practices of death and exclusion, and suspension of rights. This study also highlights the fact that, despite the biopolitical realities, migrants continue to cross the borders.

The Newcomers’ Right to the Common Space: The case of Athens during the refugee crisis

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:29 +0000

The Ecumenical ‘Right to the City’: Urban Commons and Intersectional Enclosures in Athens and Istanbul

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:29 +0000

The collective volume is an outcome of the international conference ‘Contested Borderscapes. Transnational Geographies vis-à-vis Fortress Europe’ that took place in Mytilene (Lesvos), September 28 – October 1, 2017.

Contested Borderscapes, Transnational Geographies vis-à-vis Fortress Europe

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:28 +0000

In 2016, Oxford English Dictionary declared “post-truth” the word of the year. In this Orwellian moment, the movement of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants across the increasingly militarised borders of Europe have instigated a socio-spatial debate about the limits of human rights, national sovereignties, continental values, precipitating and contributing to the ongoing condition of European crises. Although in the era of globalisation borders constitute porous passages for capital and commodities, at the same time they have hardened and ossified as “new enclosures” seeking to immobilise migrant and refugee populations. Fortress Europe emerges as a complex of new state control mechanisms, freshly erected border fences, newly built detention centres and improvised refugee camps; together, these technologies of migration management aim at the criminalisation, classification, stigmatisation, and biopolitical control of moving populations, fomented by xenophobic politics, and managed by humanitarian subcontractors. In this hostile climate, people on the move contest European border regimes, peripheries, and cityscapes by claiming spatial justice and political visibility while creating a nexus of emerging common spaces. They are joined by activists defending their right to movement, who are engaged in efforts to “welcome refugees” into a shrinking and contested public sphere, into alternative and self-organised social spaces, responding to the humanitarian crises wrought by militarism, violence, and structural adjustment with solidarity, stemming from a larger vision of sharing in each other’s struggles for survival and social transformation.

“Refugee tv” and “Refugees got talent” projects. Affective and decolonial geographies of invisible common spaces

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:27 +0000

Reimagining a transnational right to the city: No Border actions and commoning practices in Thessaloniki

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:26 +0000

Although there is extensive literature on State migration policies and NGO activities, there are few studies on the common struggles between refugees and local activists. This article aims to fill this research gap by focusing on the impact of the transnational No Border camp that took place in Thessaloniki in 2016. The border region of northern Greece, with its capital Thessaloniki, is at the heart of the so-called refugee crisis and it is marked by a large number of solidarity initiatives. After the sealing of the “Balkan corridor”, the Greek State relocated thousands of refugees into isolated and inappropriate camps on the outskirts of Thessaloniki. Numerous local and international initiatives, with the participation of refugees from the camps, self-organized a transnational No Border camp in the city center that challenged State policies. By claiming the right to the city, activists from all over Europe, together with refugees, built direct-democratic assemblies and organized a multitude of direct actions, demonstrations, and squats that marked the city’s social body with spatial disobedience and transnational commoning practices. Here, activism emerges as an important field of research and this article aims to contribute to activists’ literature on migration studies after 2015. The article is based on militant research and inspired by the Lefebvrian right to the city, the autonomy of migration, and common space approaches. The right to the city refers to the rights to freedom, socialization, and habitation, but also to the right to reinvent and change the city. It was recently enhanced by approaches on common spaces and the way these highlight the production of spaces based on solidarity, mutual help, common care, and direct democracy. The main findings of this study point to how the struggle of migrants when crossing physical and social borders inspires local solidarity movements for global networking and opens up new possibilities to reimagine and reinvent transnational common spaces.

Surplus citizens struggle and nationalism in the Greek crisis

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:25 +0000

The crisis in Greece has elicited the full spectrum of responses – from optimism for a left parliamentary politics inspired by Syriza’s electoral victory, to pessimism about the intransigence of the EU and calls for the reinstatement of full national sovereignty in Europe. In Surplus Citizens, Dimitra Kotouza questions the terms of the debate by demonstrating how the national framing of social contestation posed obstacles to transformative collective action, but also how this framing has been challenged. Analysing the increasing superfluousness of subordinate classes in Greece as part of a global phenomenon with racialised and gendered dimensions, the book interrogates the strengths, contradictions and limits of collective action and identity in the crisis, from the movement of the squares and neighbourhood assemblies, to new forms of labour activism, environmental struggles, immigrant protests, anti-fascism and pro-refugee activism. Arguing against the strategic fixation on unified identities and pointing instead to the transformative potential of internal dispute within movements, Surplus Citizens highlights the relevance of a discussion of Greece to collective action beyond it, as we continue to traverse a global financial crisis that has provoked conflicts over nationalism, immigration and the rise of neo-fascism.

Behind the veil of philoxenia: The politics of immigration detention in Greece

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:22 +0000

This article sets out to summarise the policies, practices and experiences of immigration detention in contemporary Greece, as well as outlining how they have been critiqued domestically andinternationally. The article proceeds to address the ways in which the Greek state has reacted to criticisms and pressures for reform, especially from abroad. It is argued that neither domestic nor international interventions have succeeded in bringing about substantive progressive change in the Greek immigration detention system. Rather, Greek state authorities have systematically neutralised criticisms by employing an array of rhetorical techniques, most notably through evocation of philoxenia (broadly meaning hospitality to foreigners and strangers more generally) as a natural trait common to all Greeks. In addition to highlighting the dubious and paradoxical dimensions of the rhetorical defences deployed by the state in Greece, particularly concerning its discourse of philoxenia, the article goes on to discuss the main socio-political functions that have subtly been served inside the country’s borders through maintenance of deplorable policies and practices of immigration detention, including the symbolic management of public anxieties in accordance with what may be termed the ‘more eligibility’ principle. In pointing to these functions, the article helps to explain why the Greek state persists in making use of rhetoric that is blatantly indefensible and bound to attract further disapprobation.

Punitive inclusion: The political economy of irregular migration in the margins of Europe

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:21 +0000

Focusing on the treatment irregular migrants have received in Greece since the early 1990s, this article seeks to advance critical scholarship on how European countries have responded to migration from impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged parts of the globe over recent decades. The article first draws attention to ways in which purportedly exclusionary approaches to irregular migration control may be imperfect by design, insofar as restrictions are imposed on outflows to secure an exploitable workforce that serves important labour market needs and, by extension, dominant political interests in the ‘host’ state. Moving on to address the precise ways in which labour exploitation of irregular migrants is brought into effect, the article demonstrates how seemingly unrelated state policies and practices regarding matters of migration, welfare, employment and criminal justice, as well as certain manifestations of anti-migrant violence by non-state actors, may act in combination with one another to this end.