Refugee agency through bare life? New forms of voice and strategies of imperceptibility at the European borders (original) (raw)
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Refugee Life at Europe's Borders - Abandon, Survival and Retaking Control in Idomeni, Greece
Current European border politics are not without consequence for refugees and other non-European migrants who find themselves stuck in border camps. Unable to access their international right to protection or to move on, they are made to navigate a confusing (non)status in precarious living conditions. This thesis, by taking Idomeni refugee camp as a case study, aims to not only uncover the way in which unwanted populations are currently (not) being dealt with, but also to examine the ways in which refugees experience the precarious and unclear situation they are faced with at the Greek-Macedonian border. By bringing my fieldwork data to the fore, the ethnographic part of my thesis will show how people handle the confusion and precarity of refugee life on the ground. Examples of coping mechanisms and strategies, reflections on Europe, as well as other aspects of camp life will be discussed. Overall, I conclude that the mis- and non-management of refugees at the border is done with disregard to refugees' needs, ignores international law, leads to mistrust and resentment towards Europe, and that the massive gap between 'the people' and 'the system' leaves many desperately feeling that they have no other way to retake control of their lives than by using illegal and dangerous routes. Furthermore, a consideration of the long-term implications of border politics and their consequences will lead me to conclude that border camps are the ‘ante-chambers to European apartheid’, or merely the constitutive beginning of future difficulties surrounding integration and feelings of belonging in host countries.
Comparative Migration Studies, 2019
Malta, an island-state, limits the mobility of non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers who want to leave due to the lived consequences of disintegration. Stripped of any legal entitlements non-deportable refugees only have restricted access to the job market, basic services, and health care. They have no formal legal status whilst their presence and stay are known by the immigration authorities. However, although non-deportability restricts refugees' mobility, they find ways to navigate the system governing their physical and social immobilities. Based on (auto-)ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta and Italy, non-deportable, rejected asylum seekers' lived experiences of first reception in Malta and migrating to Italy are illuminated. While enacting their denied right of mobility, new challenges reveal themselves, resulting in a life in limbo that continues even after they leave Malta. Through the conceptual lens of the 'perspective of migration' we consider the making and unmaking of refugees' (im)mobilities. In doing so, we pursue a three-stage approach. First, we shed light on produced immobilities while in Malta. Second, we explore refugees' practices of appropriation of mobility and third, we turn to new possibilities and challenges they face after a secondary movement to Italy. From a micro-analytical perspective, we examine how non-deportable refugees navigate the system governing their social and physical (im)mobilities. Practices of resistance and conciliation are illustrated.
The article deals with the temporal dimension in migration and border studies, applying the theory of subjectivity that highlights the power dynamics within the forced migration phenomenon in Europe. Drawing on two separate ethno-graphic research studies with refugees and asylum seekers conducted in Italy and Germany, this article sheds light on how migration control mechanisms influence the everyday life of refugees and impact the temporal dimension of refugees' subjective experience. Despite the historical and socioeconomic differences, a general tendency emerges: the intertwining of control and abandonment tends to produce a fragmentation of refugees' everyday lives. Refugee temporalities in Europe alternate between experiences of confinement and hyper-mobility across borders: these lead to the lengthening of migrant temporariness and precariousness. This protracted transit experience is internalized by the refugees and affects their self-construction process. The power dynamics inherent in the European border regime create temporal ruptures that fragment individual biographies; the refugees therefore devise everyday practices of resistance that open up spaces of possibility within the structural constraints in order to re-appropriate autonomous time. Finally, this paper argues that refugees claim temporal, rather than spatial, justice in relation to the biographical time they have wasted since their arrival in Europe. This thesis ultimately aims to consider migration as a process of becoming subjects produced by the intertwining of structural and agency factors.
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Italian Sociological Review, 2024
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Antipode, 2017
Migrants' daily arrivals to Italy's southern coasts and continuous shipwrecks in the Mediterranean have captured international media attention, producing a fixation on the scene of landing and a deliberate marginalization of what happens to migrants and refugees after the moment of landing. This paper aims to refocus analytical attention on the lives of asylum seekers after landing in Europe, breaking through the institutional silence that is cast upon the infrastructure of the camp, the logic of assistance and the bureaucratic waiting zone asylum seekers are stuck in. By documenting political changes in European and national policies, the paper reflects on the forms of institutional control and abandonment refugees are subjected to once they land in Italy, and are housed in the governmental camps and extraordinary structures which arose at the time of the Mare Nostrum Operation where strict discipline, carelessness, uncertainty and confusion intertwine.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2021
Through the concepts of the ‘coloniality of asylum’ and ‘solidarity as method’, this book links the question of the state to the one of civil society; in so doing, it questions the idea of ‘autonomous politics’, showing how both refugee mobility and solidarity are intimately marked by the coloniality of asylum, in its multiple ramifications of objectification, racialisation and victimisation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, The Coloniality of Asylum bridges border studies with decolonial theory and the anthropology of the state, and accounts for the mutual production of ‘refugees’ and ‘Europe’. It shows how Europe politically, legally and socially produces refugees while, in turn, through their border struggles and autonomous movements, refugees produce the space of Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hamburg in the wake of the 2015 ‘long summer of migration’, the book offers a polyphonic account, moving between the standpoints of different subjects and wrestling with questions of protection, freedom, autonomy, solidarity and subjectivity.