This essay discusses 'solidarity to refugees,' its rise in the form of a new patriotism, and its decline and fall from 2016 to 2021. It approaches 'solidarity to refugees' ethnographically, from the *bottom up* and in *emic* terms, as a socially and politically productive *symbolic structure of affect* towards displaced people.1 'Solidarity' (*alilengii*) as well as 'hospitality' (*floxenia*) are analysed as emic or native terms, rather than employed as general, descriptive categories, and, thus, they are put in quotation marks. The emic strategy that is adopted here puts analytical emphasis on the everyday usage of unoffcial categories on the ground. From the locals' point of view both 'solidarity' and 'hospitality' have provided the key metaphors that *alternatively* organise their engagement with the irregular travelers. Therefore, the analysis of both metaphors in the specifc historical context of their use and from an emic perspective allows the more thorough, in depth understanding of the set of meanings that inform the engagement of locals with the displaced people and the transformations in local attitudes.

'Solidarity to refugees' (*alilengii stus prosfyes*) has been one of the most important legacies of the so called 'European refugee crisis.' In Greece the two categories, solidarity and refugeehood, have been around for some time now, yet until recently they have been kept separate from one another. 'Solidarity,' literally meaning 'standing by someone,' suggests a horizontal, egalitarian attitude of support towards a

1On the emic approach to 'solidarity,' see Papataxiarchis (2016b).

E. Papataxiarchis (\*)

University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2022 M. Kousis et al. (eds.), *Challenging Mobilities in and to the EU during Times of Crises*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11574-5\_8

fellow human being who needs help. It historically referred to comrades suffering police prosecution or, more recently, to victims of the economic crisis.2 The term 'refugee' referred to the Ottoman Christians who came to Greece after the big Exodus mostly from *Anatolia* in 1922.3 These two symbolic categories, 'solidarity' and 'refugee,' came together for *the frst time* in the course of the 'refugee crisis,' a development that was made possible by the *resignifcation of 'refugee'*4 *–now meaning a person on the move*– and its application to the displaced people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, who arrived in big numbers to the Aegean islands. In 2015, in a short period of time, yesterday's 'migrants' turned into 'refugees.' The new identity, which was attributed to the, mostly Syrian and Afghan and often 'middle class,' irregular travelers by the locals, *allowed the extension of 'solidarity'* to them*.* They were treated as vulnerable human beings (*anthropi*) in need, irrespective of color/race, ethnicity, social class or age.5

The new symbolic formation replaced the historically dominant 'hospitality to migrants' (*floxenia stus metanastes*). The latter suggested a contradictory attitude of openness to the newcomers from the East. As is evident in the rich ethnographic literature,6 'hospitality' combines two opposite sides, xenophilia and xenophobia. It identifes the migrant's settlement in the host territory as a 'problem' to be dealt in a hierarchical way and an assimilationist direction. In the period before the 'refugee crisis,' 'hospitality to migrants' was in retreat, exhausted by the violent confict between its two political sides, the xenophilic Left and the xenophobic Right battling for political hegemony.

The replacement of 'hospitality to migrants' by 'solidarity to refugees,' in the autumn of 2015 and during the climax of the civil war in Syria, was a turning point. The upcoming attitude was a cultural innovation carrying the promise of deep changes in the Greek collective sub conscious. During the frst years of the economic crisis a wave of the worst xenophobic violence ever experienced had swept Greece, a wave that reached its probably highest point with the murder of *Shehzad*

2On 'solidarity,' during the Greek economic crisis, see Rakopoulos (2015) and Douzina-Bakalaki (2016). On the confusion of the boundaries between the politico-ideological and the religious versions of 'solidarity,' see Theodossopoulos (2016).

3See Voutira (2003).

4Throughout this essay I use the terms displaced people, irregular travelers or border crossers as my own *descriptive* categories in order to refer to all those who irregularly cross the Greek (EU)- Turkish border and enter Greek territory irrespective of their offcial status (asylum seeker, refugee or migrant without papers) or the causes of their mobility. The great majority of the displaced people in *Lesvos* are asylum seekers. Whenever I use the terms 'asylum seeker' and 'refugee' as identity categorisations I put them in quotation marks.

5See Papataxiarchis (2016c). The ethnographic analyses of the value system of modern Greek society by John Campbell, Juliet Du Boulay and Michael Herzfeld have signifcantly contributed to the anthropological understanding of *anthropia* and *anthropos*.

6On 'hospitality' in Greece, see Papataxiarchis (2006, pp. 1–10). For a recent application of the concept of 'hospitality' in the analysis of migration management in Greece, see Rozakou (2012). On the politicisation of 'hospitality' during the frst years of the Greek crisis, see Papataxiarchis (2014).

*Luqman* in January 2013 by Golden Dawn members.7 Two years after, a major reversal of cultural mood seemed to be on the way.

I have been ethnographically following closely the whereabouts, the ups and downs, of 'solidarity to refugees' from a privileged position, *Skala Sykamnias*, 'my anthropological village,' a small fshing community that received more than a quarter of a million irregular border crossers in a period of a few months, and *Mytilene,* my professional base and capital of the humanitarian regime in Greece.8

Since the EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 the 'refugee crisis' has entered a new phase. Because of the deal and the subsequent re-bordering of the Aegean, the displaced people became trapped on the islands and their place in the humanitarian regime as asylum seekers became contested from different sides. The development of protests by both locals and asylum seekers and the intensifcation of confict reached a climax with the 'pogrom' against the 150 Afghan asylum seekers who occupied the central square of *Mytilene* in April 2018. This was a turning point. As a good part of the local population withdrew its tolerance towards the asylum seekers and generously offered it to the violent xenophobes, the patriotism of 'solidarity to refugees' came to its conclusion.

In this essay I would like to address a set of questions on the developmental cycle of 'solidarity to refugees' –its rise, demise and eventual fall. How has 'solidarity to refugees' been gradually reconfgured in the new circumstances, after the EU-Turkey Statement of 2016? What was the impact of the conficts around the prolonged stay of displaced people on the island, of the asylum seekers' struggles but also of the xenophobic reactions to their presence, on 'solidarity'? How do the grassroots mobilisations for and against the displaced people and contests around 'solidarity' impact high level politics? I particularly want to address these issues from the angle of the events of April 2018, a moment of climax of grassroots struggles and a turning point in local attitudes towards the irregular travelers.

#### **8.2 The Rise of a New Patriotism: 'Solidarity to Refugees' from a Grassroots Movement into a State Project**

#### *8.2.1 Birth: Grassroots Empathy in the Caring Border*

'Solidarity to refugees' was *born* on the frontline, on the shores of the Eastern Aegean islands, the squares of Athens and along the route that was followed by the irregular travelers on their way to the Northern European destinations. It frst emerged in the *grassroots*, in everyday practices of rescue at sea and frst reception, among ordinary citizens, activists, local and foreign volunteers and humanitarian

7The reports of the Racist Violence Recording Network (RVRN) amply demonstrate the rise of xenophobic violence on the above period.

8See Papataxiarchis (2016a, 2017, 2020).

workers. It took the form of empathy with and support for the displaced people, particularly in the early phase of the 'crisis.'9

In the summer and autumn of 2015, almost one million displaced men, women and children entered European territory through the Aegean. Half of them came through *Lesvos*. The record number of people who crossed the European Union (EU) border in its Eastern Mediterranean route employed a new type of passage to the Aegean islands: due to the short distance to cover it was *a private, small scale*, and easy to manage operation involving infatable dinghies usually carrying 40–60 people. This type of passage invited an equally *decentralised and privatised, but also democratic, grassroots model of response.*10 Since the offcial state authorities were unable to cope with the situation, a signifcant part of the work of rescue and frst reception of the border crossers was realised *unoffcially*, by many private individuals –locals, volunteers and activists. In the context of an unprecedented mobilisation of human and material resources throughout Europe, relying on social media, thousands of foreign and Greek citizens came to *Lesvos* to help. At the peak of the crisis, more than 3000 non-local volunteers and activists were operating on the island. The rise of *digital grassroots humanitarianism*11 totally transformed the frontier zone of Northern *Lesvos* into a humanitarian borderscape, an unstable, diverse yet highly energetic margin. As the policies of deterrence and the pushbacks were replaced by the spontaneous offering of help by thousands of volunteers, a *caring border* was produced.12

In these conditions, an attitude of welcome to the displaced people emerged in the frontline and gained wider visibility particularly through social media. 'Solidarity to refugees,' as this attitude was coined by ordinary citizens, activists, politicians and the media, was generated *from below*. 13 In the context of unoffcial rescue and reception at the grassroots, the relationship of many locals and foreign volunteers with the border crossers, mostly middle class Syrian families with lots of children, became *personalised*; spaces for interpersonal interaction and empathetic

9See Papataxiarchis (2016c).

10This comparison with the Western and Central Mediterranean routes mostly relies on the works of Andersson (2014) and Albahari (2015).

11On the blurred boundaries and the tensions between (unoffcial) 'solidarity' and (offcial) humanitarianism (i.e. Non-Governmental Organisations, NGO's), see Rozakou (2017). On the 'informal path' of volunteering for the displaced people, see Kalogeraki (2018).

12 In the social sciences there is an extensive literature on the various facets of the 'refugee crisis' in the Aegean. For *Lesvos,* in particular, see the works of Heath Cabot, Anna Carastathis, Effrosyni Charitopoulou, Sotiris Chtouris, Anja Franck, Sarah Green, Chloe Howe Haralambous, Pafsanias Karathanasis, Maria Kastrinou, Alexandra Knott, DeMond Miller, Nikos Nagopoulos, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Ilektra Petrakou, Michalis Psimitis, Kostas Rontos, Katerina Rozakou, Kostas Rontos, Dina Siegel, Aila Spathopoulou, Katerina Stefatos, Sevasti Trubeta and Nikolaos Xypolytas.

13 'Refugee solidarity' contrasted the exclusionary solidarity to the Greek victims of the economic crisis by the xenophobic Right. For a comparative assessment of how national contexts impact transnational solidarity organising in the sphere of migration, see Kanellopoulos et al. (2020).

understanding of their predicament were created, and this, in effect, radically altered the local attitudes towards them.14

During the 2015 crisis the irregular border crossers stopped being conceived as 'illegal migrants' (*lathro-metanastes*). Instead they were reclassifed as 'refugees.' The emic category of 'migrant' suggests a claim to settle in the host environment and thus raises the sovereign worries that dominate the practice of 'hospitality.' 'Refugee,' on the other hand, is a politically innocent and sympathetic category, which in the local mind, besides recalling the traumatic memories of the 1922 'Asia Minor Disaster' and the massive exit of ethnic Greek Christians from *Anatolia,* suggests *a person on the move*, in transit, with no intention to settle in the locality.15 For the frst time in local perception the displaced people were divested of all troubling particularities –the color of their skin, their ethno-national identity, their language or, most important, their religion- and were identifed on the basis of a common denominator, as vulnerable, suffering 'human beings' in need.

'Solidarity,' suggesting a rather lighter form of sociality than 'hospitality,' with fewer 'obligations' attached to it, a short-term arrangement that lasts as long as the other is in a state of need, was often employed in the extra-parliamentary Left towards 'comrades' suffering police prosecution. After 2010, it gained wider currency and characterised the 'solidarity movement' towards the victims of the economic crisis.16 In 2015 the reconfguration of the irregular travelers in need made possible the dramatic change of attitude. Thus, 'solidarity' was extended to include them, thereby replacing the politically controversial 'hospitality to migrants.'

#### *8.2.2 Consolidation: The Humanitarian Regime*

This shift of attitude was initially partial. Xenophobic reactions were strong on the ground, leading to internal strife and intercommunal conficts that started *breaking down* the local communities in the front line.17 Yet 'solidarity to refugees' was soon *consolidated* in the context of the *regime of humanitarian governance*, which was established under UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees**)** auspices when Greece was offcially declared to be in a state of 'humanitarian emergency.'18

In the summer and autumn of 2015, the collapse of the border and the subsequent retreat of the state to the very basics created a vacuum in the management of the

14On the role of interpersonal contact in the formation of 'prosocial behavior,' see Charitopoulou (2020).

15On emic constructs of refugee that are embedded in cultural perceptions of Greece's refugee past, see Voutira (2003).

16See Oikonomakis (2018).

17During these months I had the impression of a 'broken place.' See Papataxiarchis (2016a).

18For a critical assessment of humanitarian governance, from the angle of power and 'technologies of control' of these vulnerable populations, see Barnett (2013) and Fassin and Pandolf (2010).

'refugee crisis.' Greek authorities, despite their commitment to apply the 'hotspot system' in the frontline, could not manage the massive fows alone.19 For the frst time the EU deployed its own humanitarian response unit inside Europe and UNHCR increased its staff in Greece from a dozen to around 600 in a few weeks.20 The interstate agents that took control of the situation, in cooperation with international and few local NGOs under the auspices of the UNHCR, gradually flled the vacuum side by side with the grassroots initiatives and the experimental 'structures' that were born in the informal humanitarian sector.

The local regime of humanitarian governance involved three categories of actors-the displaced people, the locals (including state offcials) and the foreign humanitarians. It was premised on a very simple idea of how to inter-connect the three sides: state and municipal authorities offered 'hospitality' to the foreign humanitarian actors and, through them, provided help and 'solidarity' to the displaced people. You often had the impression that local authorities were nominally present in the running of humanitarian affairs. The actual work, the division and coordination of humanitarian labor or the administration of funding were done by the experienced foreign humanitarians.

From the perspective of local authorities, this worked as a *disemic* model of governance: 'hospitality' towards the 'inside' of the humanitarian regime, the foreign humanitarian agents of governance, 'solidarity' towards the 'outside,' the irregular travelers, recipients of help. Through their inclusion in the hierarchical structures of 'hospitality' and their subjection to the 'law of hospitality'21 the humanitarian 'guests' symbolically confrmed the sovereign status of the local authorities –they offered *the illusion of sovereignty*– and got literally a free hand to pursue their operations. Local authorities, on the other hand, performed 'solidarity' *indirectly*, through the foreign humanitarian actors and their actual contribution in the provision of aid.

Although the unconditional welcome of 'refugees' was adopted in offcial discourse, 'refugee solidarity' primarily informed unoffcial humanitarian action, and in this capacity started working as a sort of *legitimising superstructure* of the humanitarian regime. It also became more established as the humanitarian regime expanded its own social and economic base forming a whole *assemblage of mechanisms and practices* and producing important spatial transformations which I have described using the term *'humanitarian town.'*22 I refer to a new dimension of urban space, which is produced by the humanitarian regime. As the town adopted the properties of humanitarian space it turned into a complex, dynamic feld, where various political, institutional, and economic agents, forces, mechanisms, and processes met to produce antagonistic relations.

19See Parsanoglou (Chap. 12 in this volume).

20Howden and Fotiadis (2017, p. 3).

21See the classical work of Pitt-Rivers (2012).

22See Papataxiarchis (2017). This concept allows for a more balanced view of the multiple aspects of the refugee condition on the islands and the unraveling of refugee agency and interaction.

The humanitarian town is composed of *a network of interactions emplaced in humanitarian spaces*, yet extending far beyond them in all directions.23 It is geographically located in all sorts of humanitarian spaces –camps, 'structures,' residences, offces, warehouses, 'schools,' recreational facilities– and made of all sorts of interactions (between displaced people, humanitarian workers, state offcials and locals), yet it is shaped around two defning types of accommodation, the camps and the urban refugee residences and places of refugee sociality. After March 2016 the hotspot and the municipal camp of *Karatepe* suggested the bureaucratic, disciplinary and ultimately biopolitical aspect of the humanitarian regime, while the places of residence and sociality in the town offered alternative outlets for interaction and, often creative, experimentation.24

For the displaced people the humanitarian regime worked as a special entrance to local society. In this respect, it *mediated* between the locals and the displaced people, thus changing the terms of their interaction. It eventually functioned as a *buffer zone*, offering much needed assistance, visibility and protection from xenophobia. It also offered spaces of experimentation in new ways of *inter-cultural* action and interaction that promised the transcendence of the narrow limits and the self-centredness of 'hospitality.'

The humanitarian regime relied on the social alliance between the professional humanitarians, the segment of the local population that embraced 'solidarity to refugees' on pragmatic grounds and the idealist 'solidarians.' The regime eventually became more solid as it acquired roots in the growing humanitarian economy. Humanitarian tourism was in full swing. New professions emerged and a good part of the local population either diversifed in the direction of the booming humanitarian economy or became employed in humanitarian structures.

#### *8.2.3 Offcial Upgrading: 'Refugee Solidarity' as a State Project*

'Solidarity to refugees' was also fashioned *from above* and eventually *upgraded into a new patriotism by the SYRIZA (Sιnaspismos Rizospastikis Aristeras [Coalition of the Radical Left] -ANEL (Anexartiti Elines [Independent Greeks]) government and the sympathetic media*. 25 As a big, principally mediatic, state project, the new patriotism capitalised on the *border spectacle*26 and the stories and representations of rescue and reception. 'Refugee solidarity' was celebrated as a distinctive mark of the local and national character and a property ingrained in places such as *Lesvos* or

23For a critical assessment of the term 'humanitarian space,' see Hilhorst and Jansen (2010).

24On the urban qualities of the camp and the interface between camp and city, see Agier (2011) and Sanyal (2014).

25See Chouliaraki (2012).

26On the border spectacle, see De Genova (2013).

*Skala*. In this capacity, it was embraced by large sections of the population at the national level, turning into a sort of national pride and an asset with which the government attempted to restore the country's wounded international image.27

The crisis attracted the attention of world media and eventually offered immense visibility to the village, the island, and the protagonists of the humanitarian drama. The journalists were primarily interested in the rescue at the frontline. The *new spectacle of the caring border* portrayed the rescue in dramatic aesthetic terms as a relation between a vulnerable refugee, often a child or a woman, and a virile male lifeguard or just a caring person. In this respect, the visual economy of the crisis adopted a strong *soteriological* tone.

*Skala* was a major provider of the raw materials –the emotional narratives of the drama of rescue, personal accounts and, most important, photos– with which *the romance of 'solidarity'* was produced. A cataclysm of photos from the village fooded the globe. The best example of course is the photo of 'the three grannies feeding the refugee child' by the photographer *Lefteris Partsalis*, one of the most signifcant photos of the 2015 crisis. This photo had a remarkable career. Soon after it became viral on the internet it was upgraded into a big background poster at the joint press conference of the Greek Prime Minister and the President of the European Parliament, it latter fgured as the emblem of *Lesvos* during the Pope's visit to the island and covered a wall in the *Mytilene* airport. This emblematic photo offered immense visibility to *Militsa Kamvisi,* the elderly woman who was photographed feeding the baby, turning her into a star of 'solidarity.' As an effect of the immense visibility she gained from the photo, she gave tenths of interviews to the national and international press, she was awarded prizes (including being one of the three offcial candidates for the Nobel Peace prize who were selected by the Greek government), and, together with the other two elderly women of the photo, inspired a wave of humanitarian pilgrimage to *Skala*.

In all these performative activities, 'solidarity' was celebrated as an essence that lies in places, such as *Skala* and *Lesvos*, or in ordinary individuals: all these were assumed to constitute the 'human face' of Greece or Europe. The actual behavior of people, emptied of its idiosyncratic complexity, in visual and other forms, turned into the symbolic base of a political project. Thus 'solidarity to refugees' emerged as a new symbolic *topos* with which citizens could identify and thus turn to 'solidarians.'28 Α new cosmopolitan form of political attachment and, as in the case of constitutional patriotism, a post national identity, not to say faith, was under construction.29

27The 'patriotism of solidarity to refugees' has been a much larger project with a much wider ideological scope than the 'Refugee Solidarity Movement' (Oikonomakis, 2018) that consists of informal, collective 'initiatives.'

28On the production of the 'solidarian,' see Rozakou (2016).

29On the differences between patriotism and nationalism, the limitations of a 'placeless cosmopolitanism' and the prerequisites of post-national patriotism, see Turner (2002).

In one word, all this together –the representations, the honors, the exhibitions, the visits– were fused into a larger political project; they made up what I have coined as the new 'patriotism of solidarity to refugees.'30 This has been the political legacy of the 'refugee crisis.' In 2015–2016 the 'patriotism of solidarity to refugees' adopted multiple functions: it legitimised the humanitarian regime and provided an important political horizon to the Greek government of the Radical Left which was shaken by the negative outcome of its negotiation with its creditors. It also *overshadowed the dark side*, which was present from the frst moment of the crisis: the xenophobic reactions, the exploitation of the asylum seekers and, particularly, the internal strife that was generated by the passage of the displaced people through localities.

#### **8.3 The Decline: Excessive Bordering and the Political Contestation of the Ambiguous 'Asylum Seeker'**

The new patriotism fell victim to the closure of the Balkan corridor and the effects of the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016, which, by instituting an internal border, set the new terms of (im)mobility in the Aegean. It was *undermined* by the social and political protest and confict which arose around the immobilisation of the displaced people and the *ambiguous* status of the asylum seeker that was offcially attributed to them. After March 2016 almost all irregular travelers opted for seeking asylum in Greece. The legal status of the asylum seeker provided the source of a new identity, which politically enabled the displaced people yet also exposed them to the suspicion and eventual hostility of the locals since it hung suspended in-between the (innocent) deserving 'refugee' and the (threatening) 'migrant.' Under these conditions 'solidarity to refugees' eventually *demised* where it was actually born, at the grassroots, in the very consciousness of all those who had earlier expressed sympathy yet later, in the course of the struggles that were generated around the continuous presence of the displaced people on the island, turned their back to them.

The decline of the new patriotism is a *multi-factor* phenomenon. Here I want to discuss three principal factors: the formation of the internal border and the immobilisation of the border crossers on the islands, the fragmentation and eventual decline of the humanitarian regime and the contests around the challenging fgure of the 'asylum seeker.'

30See Papataxiarchis (2016b).

#### *8.3.1 The Internal Border as a Source of Stagnation and Subsequent Protest*

The policy of geographical restriction of the newcomers to the islands, which became effective in the context of the EU-Turkey Statement, had an immense impact on the mobility and the local demographics of the displaced people. Once stuck on *Lesvos* the new, more ethnically diversifed, arrivals radically transformed the local humanitarian scene.

The internal border was not waterproof. Quite the contrary, there was a certain degree of mobility of displaced people across it, in the direction of the Greek mainland, mostly on grounds of vulnerability.31 The Greek government strategically managed the otherwise restricted mobility of displaced people, by closing and opening the tap depending on the number of arrivals, through the manipulation of the criteria that decided mobility, and particularly the criterion of 'vulnerability.' Thus, emphasis shifted from the external caring border of 2015–2016 to the *internal strategic* border.

Yet, the *very slow pace of the asylum process*, which was engulfed in legal battles over the rights of the irregular travelers and suffered structural weaknesses (e.g. small number of asylum offcials) resulted in big delays. For this reason, an increasing number of asylum seekers were stuck in *Lesvos* and the other frontline Aegean islands, suspended in a prolonged state of *waiting*. Their 'congestion' on the islands, to use a popular term, was a continuous source of strain for them as well as for the locals. It fueled the corrosive forces that eventually undermined 'refugee solidarity' in the Aegean.

No doubt, this was a complex situation. The life of displaced people in *Lesvos* from 2016 onwards had its bright as much as its dark sides. On the bright side, one could count the new spaces of symbiotic sociality, primarily organised around projects of informal education, 'schools' and 'nurseries,' which had spread all around, in the humanitarian town and the camps, and the limited, yet important, immersion of the asylum seekers, who lived in apartments, in urban life.32 On the dark side, the hotspot of *Moria* dominated as a clear case of *failed protection*. Oversised, with serious problems in sanitation, accommodation and medical aid, the hotspot was a constant source of often suicidal violence.

It is not easy to describe the exact balance between the two extremes since the living conditions of the asylum seekers were quite volatile and *changed all the time*. Yet, the management of the internal border through the strategic handling of

31For example, from 20 March 2016 till the frst of October 2017, 46,600 displaced people reached the islands of the Aegean. 65% (33,140) of them left the islands, most (around 30,240) moved to the mainland, primarily on grounds of vulnerability or because they obtained asylum. A relatively small percentage, less than 3% (mostly Pakistanis) returned to Turkey and an equal number participated in the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) scheme of 'voluntary return.' See European Stability Initiative (2018).

32 In a sympathetically critical account (Papataxiarchis, 2017), I have discussed some of these projects of informal education.

'vulnerability' by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, systematically failed to decongest the island and diminish the pressure. It was principally undermined by the spectacular on-going inability of the authorities to improve the conditions in the hotspot of *Moria.* Therefore, the hotspot *was increasingly exporting trouble to Mytilene and the rest of the island*. The bad conditions in the hotspot were regularly leading to unrest –riots, suicides, inter-ethnic violence– and fed a *chain of protests and mobilisations from all sides*. This was increasingly becoming an ideal environment for the application of the strategies of Ultra-Right xenophobes and their allies who struggled for visibility and political gains. The occupation of the central square of *Mytilene* by tenths of asylum seekers and the violent reactions of locals in April 2018, as well as the arson of a number of humanitarian facilities in the frst half of 2020, and the eventual destruction by fre of the hotspot of *Moria* in September 2020 are key moments in this middle term cycle of contention and unrest.

#### *8.3.2 The Humanitarian Regime Under Transformation and Eventually in Retreat*

From a certain moment onwards, particularly after the UNHCR ended its 'emergency response' in Greece and reduced its staff in 2017, the humanitarian regime shrunk in numbers and its informal sector, the grassroots humanitarians, went into retreat. As the regime turned into a more bureaucratic and technocratic direction, it started fragmenting into its multiple components (e.g. the professional humanitarians and the activists).

The policy of geographical restriction changed the operational priorities which after 2016 shifted from rescue and frst reception to *accommodation, protection and education*. As rescue was *bureaucratised* and went back to the full control of the Hellenic Coastguard and Frontex, the bipartite character of the regime also changed, and, with the *retreat of grassroots humanitarianism*, the unoffcial side declined and to a large extent became integrated into the offcial one.

Most importantly, the humanitarian regime became increasingly *Hellenised,* thus losing its disemic character: 'hospitality' overpowered 'solidarity.' On the one hand, the Greek state authorities gradually took control of important functions in the administration of humanitarian fnances, in education and in the overall management of the crisis. The UNHCR retreated from the role of fnancial manager and coordinator to that of consultant, while the foreign NGOs occupied an increasingly marginal position. On the other hand, the growth of Greek NGOs and the recruitment of Greek personnel by the big international organisations facilitated the better integration of humanitarians with local society. In this regard, the social base of the humanitarian regime stabilised, and its compositional dualism increased as well.

The hotspots changed their function, which now included not only reception, identifcation and the detention of those facing deportation, but also the processing of asylum applications, accommodation and even informal education. The offcial camps and structures of 'hospitality,' such as the hotspot of *Moria* and the municipal camp of *Karatepe,* replaced the informal camps of frst reception in the centre of public attention. The *Moria* hotspot, particularly, grew into a huge administrative structure. At the same time, as the state regained control, the humanitarian regime fell prey to the antagonism between political parties. It was subjected to the dynamics of the extremely polarised political scene (1 year before the national and municipal elections of 2019) and embedded in the heated debates around burning 'national issues' such as the diffcult Greek-Turkish relations.

Under these conditions, 'solidarity to refugees' started losing its glamour, fell in popularity and became deconstructed into its technocratic, philanthropic, transactional, and politico-ideological components. At best, in this new context the predicament of the displaced people was increasingly thought of as a matter of asylum rights and/or in terms of services, and, more generally, 'hospitality,' offered to them, and not as an issue of 'solidarity to refugees.'

#### *8.3.3 The 'Asylum Seeker,' a New Political Subject and a Challenging Puzzle*

Asylum, as an institutional structure, and the asylum seeker, as a legal category, were available yet underdeveloped and certainly peripheral in the Greek socio-legal context before 2015.33 In this sense, the establishment of the humanitarian regime and the widespread adoption of asylum strategies by the irregular travelers who came to Greece after March 2016 signaled both a *quantitative and qualitative change*. A new identity was born out of the offcial category. The 'asylum seeker' emerged for the frst time as a *recognisable identity*, suspended between the 'refugee' and the 'migrant.' This emergent identity is still perceived by many as strange and challenging.

From March 2016 onwards, the great majority of the border crossers opted for applying for asylum in *Lesvos*. In contrast to those who arrived before March and continued their journey across the Balkan route in order to apply for asylum somewhere in Northern Europe, the newcomers after March risked their forced return to Turkey if they did not ask for international protection. Also, in contrast to the many thousands of African and Asian travelers, who irregularly crossed the Aegean since 2000 to be lost in the grey zone of invisibility, they were more generously offered the (diachronically available) option to claim the status of asylum seeker and the rights that go with it and, therefore, place themselves under the aegis of the humanitarian regime which had become available after 2015.

Their immobilisation on *Lesvos* radically changed the terms of their perception by the locals. The newcomers ceased being thought of as 'refugees,' they reminded the 'migrants' of the old days, yet not exactly, at least not as long as they claimed

33See Cabot (2014).

refugee status and the aura of the 'refugee crisis' had not disappeared. They belonged to *an in-between category*, *a transitional offcial status* that allowed accessing the support of the humanitarian structures that mediated in their involvement in Greek society. Their institutional and symbolic emplacement in the humanitarian town, the raison d'être of which were the asylum seekers themselves, made a difference, particularly in offering visibility and a basis of empowerment.

On the other hand, the settlement of asylum seekers in camps and apartments was a continuous source of worry. Also, the 'special rights' (to humanitarian protection, medical care, accommodation), which were awarded to them by the humanitarian regime, their membership in one of the *parallel worlds* that emerged in Greece during the years of the crisis, and *their visibility were challenging.* Instead of hiding (as their predecessors did before 2015), they were all around: men, women and children, proudly taking their evening promenade in the town's main waterfront, performing their cricket in the playground of the central Lyceum or attending the many informal structures of education and sociality that were spreading in the humanitarian town!34

On top of all these, the new, post-2016 group of displaced people *exercised their political agency* systematically and persistently. They did so often in some sort of coordination with 'solidarians' and activists, who shared local knowledge with them, introduced them to the Greek ways of assembling, marching, protesting, and making claims, as well as exercising their rights, and 'showed them around,' exploring together the symbolic geographies of mobilisation in an alien environment.35 This is how a genealogy of asylum seeker protests and mobilisations was created.

Under these conditions, the humanitarian town became a *contested space*, particularly as organised groups exploited the growing discomfort around the asylum seekers to pursue xenophobic political agendas. Subsequent conficts between locals and humanitarians, between locals and the government, between asylum seekers and the government or between locals and asylum seekers were generated.

During these conficts, the UNHCR was caught in the middle, in an awkward position of neutrality, increasingly marginalised as the Greek state was taking control of the management of the refugee population, unable to put a brake to the internal fragmentation of the humanitarian regime. Humanitarian assistance was losing its nerve as it became increasingly bureaucratised and the informal base of the humanitarian regime, activists, and volunteers, became alienated from its formal administration by the UNHCR and the big NGOs. Particularly foreign activists, who strongly criticised humanitarian offcials, started facing the open hostility of the locals.

34See Papataxiarchis (2017).

35On the common struggles of asylum seekers and local activists, see Tsavdaroglou (2019).

#### **8.4 The Events of** *Sappho* **Square**

#### *8.4.1 The 'Pogrom'*

On Sunday 22 of April 2018 an *unprecedented* burst of xenophobia took place in *Lesvos.* The xenophobic incident, which focused on the occupation of the town's main square by a big group of Afghan asylum seekers from the hotspot of *Moria*, 36 provides a very interesting angle through which we can analyse the developmental cycle of 'refugee solidarity' and the causes of its collapse.

The incident happened as two separate moves of protest came together in the central square of *Mytilene* turning it into a battlefeld. The frst involved around 150 Afghan asylum seekers –men, women, and children– who occupied *Sappho* square protesting against their restriction on the island, the bad conditions in the hotspot of *Moria* and, particularly, the insuffcient medical care. Their collective action was part of the long chain of similar moves, demonstrations, occupations, and hunger strikes, which were taking place on the island since March 2016. Asylum seeker mobilisations were testimony of the bad living conditions but also an index of the empowerment of the displaced people. Their repertoire of collective action was becoming increasingly sophisticated as they acquired ground knowledge and became familiarised with local ways and modes of political becoming.37

The other move came from organised groups of local xenophobes, who were systematically trying to politically exploit the growing discomfort with the prolonged stay of asylum seekers on the island. It involved activists belonging to the Right (*Nea Dimokratia*) and the Ultra-Right (Golden Dawn), organised in Facebook groups, exploiting 'national sensitivities' during a period of tension in the Greek-Turkish relations and investing in the alleged threat of Islamisation of the island by the primarily Muslim newcomers.38

Previous asylum seeker mobilisations had a peaceful conclusion despite the tensions that arose with locals. This time, the centre of the humanitarian town turned into a battlefeld. After the end of an informal gathering of local citizens to honor the traditional lowering of the Greek fag in the main square of the town every Sunday, a sort of secular ritual that had gained greater attention because of the crisis in the Greek-Turkish relations, a large group of around 200 right-wing extremists, joined by hooligans and young sympathisers from nearby villages, attacked the Afghan squatters with stones, heavy metallic objects, bottles, Molotov cocktails and fares. The asylum seekers defended their ground peacefully with the help of some

36For descriptions of the events of 22 April, see Observatory of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean (2019). Also see the frsthand account by Pafsanias Karathanasis and Angelos Varvarousis (Karathanasis & Varvarousis, 2018).

37For another example of refugee protest in the northern Greek borders, see Koukouzelis (Chap. 9 in this volume).

38For a systematic analysis of the trajectory of asylum seeker mobilisations and local protests in another Aegean Island with a hotspot, *Chios*, see Souzas et al. (2021).

'solidarians' and other asylum seekers from *Moria*. The police did not manage to restrict the local xenophobes and their attacks went on for more than 5 h. According to offcial calculations, more than 30 people, mostly asylum seekers, and a few policemen were injured and taken to hospital.

Early in the morning the police evacuated the square by force and arrested 103 asylum seekers, thus bringing to violent conclusion a peaceful occupation that had lasted for almost a week. Some newspapers spoke of a 'pogrom' and a 'Crystal night'. Yet, many locals were quite understanding of the xenophobic violence and put the blame to the asylum seekers. Months later, the police pressed charges against some of the alleged local protagonists of the violent attack. The whole issue thus came and, till the winter of 2021, remained under judicial investigation. The asylum seekers were recently acquitted by the local court.

The events in *Sappho* square were a landmark. This was the most serious incident of explicitly xenophobic mass violence that ever happened on the island and one of the most serious in the country for a long time. After April 2018, asylum seeker protests and mobilisations on the island were frozen for more than a year.

The signifcance of these events exceeds local boundaries. What I fnd particularly remarkable is not so much the undoubtedly shocking scale of violence. The asymmetrical violence against the asylum seekers suggested something of greater signifcance–*a clear shift in the direction in which local public opinion was movin*g. It marked the very end of the patriotism of 'solidarity to refugees' in its very birthplace.

#### *8.4.2 The Threshold: Cultural Incompatibilities*

During the asylum seekers' occupation of *Sappho* square a threshold was crossed. This was primarily due to the religious mode of organising their political agency. For the frst time in the long chain of protests, the asylum seekers avoided to confate their mobilisation with local 'solidarian' actions or offer a recognizably secular, political identity to their protest. Instead *they exercised their political agency in their own cultural terms*. They pursued a stance of radical autonomy by explicitly articulating their protest in a religious, Islamic idiom. They almost turned the main square into an informal place of worshipping Islam.

The religious mode of mobilisation, which was employed by the protesting Afghans, worked as a powerful reminder of their ethno-cultural specifcity. Besides increasing further their visibility, in the local mind this strategy transformed them into a *threatening alterity* and turned their protest into an act of hubris. For some locals it was also a matter of cultural and aesthetic *incompatibility*. Because, as one prominent local opinion maker and 'sympathiser' to the asylum seekers' cause argued (from an allegedly secular perspective) in Facebook, Sappho and Islam do not go together!39

Under these conditions, the occupation of *Sappho* square worked as a catalyst among the 'tired' locals. Once the Afghan protesters phrased their public collective action in religious terms, they *energised the framework of 'hospitality' in the local mind*, they activated, in other words, a structure of control that demands from the guest to respect the host's culture, show cultural self-restraint and adopt a public stance of cultural conformity. The public projection of their ethno-religious difference in the context of a political mobilisation with big visibility clashed with the guest's assumed obligation to comply with local cultural norms. For many sympathisers of the refugee predicament, particularly for those who identifed with the refugees on the basis of a common humanity and not on ideological grounds of cosmopolitanism or radical equality, this behavior was too much: it suggested a selfish concern with (asylum) rights and the total neglect of the obligations (of respect) towards the host population.

It was under such conditions that the locals stopped tolerating the presence of the asylum seekers on the island. In April 2018, *they instead tolerated the exercise of brutal violence against them by the xenophobic attackers*. Those locals who, in 2015, were 'shamed'40 in some sort of pro-refugee action, now, *without shame, shifted to reaction*. The violent events signifed that the protest of the asylum seekers surpassed the limits of tolerance and energised a clear and important shift in public opinion.

#### **8.5 Conclusion: On the Cultural Limits of an Alternative Politics of Difference**

The new patriotism of 'refugee solidarity' proved to be ephemeral. Its fate was decided where it was born, at the *grassroots*, in the interaction of local citizens with the displaced people. As at the beginning the outcome of this interaction largely depended on cultural perceptions of difference, so it was at the end. Once the *logic* that organised the interaction remained the same, then the new patriotism was destined to fall under the weight of excessive bordering. The migration politics of the conservative government which came into power in the summer of 2019 just confrmed and translated into policy the shift in attitudes towards the asylum seekers that had already taken place in front line societies.

39On the intolerance towards Muslim immigrants in Athens during the early phase of the economic crisis, see Triandafyllidou and Kouki (2013).

40 I borrow the term from Miriam Ticktin's (2017) argument on 'innocence' as a criterion of 'deserving.'

A key lesson we get from the study of the developmental cycle of the patriotism of 'solidarity to refugees' concerns the formative power of moves on the ground, particularly in times of crisis. *'Refugee solidarity' was both born and concluded at the low level of politics.*

'Refugee solidarity' grew into a grassroots movement under *unique* historical circumstances: the open, caring border, the mass mobilisation of young volunteers and activists from Northern Europe, the establishment of a humanitarian regime on European soil. Most important, its upgrading into the new patriotism was made possible by the conjunctural placement of the displaced people somehow outside the realm of the Greek regime of difference and the terrain of 'hospitality' because of their reconfguration as 'refugees' in transit. The offcial adoption of these grassroots developments was also linked to an equally unique historical phenomenon, the transformation of a marginal political party of the Left, SYRIZA, into the dominant force in Greek politics during the frst years of the economic crisis.

The decline of the new patriotism (from 2016 to 2018) followed the same *bottom up* path. 'Refugee solidarity' frst demised at the grassroots while SYRIZA was still in power. The multifarious contestations around the presence of the displaced people on the island, which were organised around the slogan of 'decongestion', gradually undermined the potential of 'refugee solidarity.' As it has become clear, many factors contributed to this development, yet here I want to distinguish and discuss in greater detail one of them that became very salient in the *Sappho* square incident. I refer to the public mood towards the asylum seekers.

#### *8.5.1 Volatile Tolerance*

*Why has the new patriotism failed as a deterrent to the xenophobic backlash?* This is a key question. The answer lies in the exact character of mass 'solidarity.' 'Refugee solidarity' in the form of patriotism was *a matter of tolerance rather than of actual engagement* with the predicament of the displaced people. Through time, this tolerance, which had a shifting inclination either towards sympathy or towards indifference, proved to be quite volatile.

The majority of those who were once supportive of the cause of the 'refugees' were passive observers from a distance. They were agents not of empathy (that presupposes face to face interaction) but of an '*armchair sympathy,*' a sympathy from afar that is nourished by the mediatic humanitarian sentimentality41 and is often expressed in donations. *This* attitude of sympathetic tolerance was made easier (not to say possible) by the ongoing movement of the displaced people. However, as it became clear in the April 2018 events, sympathy to the 'refugees' lacked frm foundations on *alternative ways* of thinking the predicament of the displaced people. Therefore, as it was constantly undermined by a strong

41See Chouliaraki (2012).

undercurrent of 'primary' concerns about the self and 'tiredness' from the prolonged coexistence of local citizens with the 'problem,' it became easily exposed to political manipulation.

Most importantly, the tolerance towards the displaced people was defned from the start and remained under the terms of the historically hegemonic way of understanding difference, the assimilationist logic that evaluates the foreign migrant and the refugee on the basis of his (assumed) cultural compatibility with the (national) self. Tolerance is an endemic property of the Greek regime of difference. The puzzling or even challenging alterity of the other (irrespective of whether it is an alterity of sexual orientation, ethno-cultural identity or religion) is tolerated as long as it is kept at bay, in the sphere of cultural intimacy, remaining largely invisible in the informal margins of the everyday.42

The tolerance of many local citizens was initially perplexed by the immobilisation, i.e. the continuous presence, of the displaced people on the island. It was further challenged by their 'offensive' visibility (often associated with incidences of petty crime) and their insistence on rights and their identity. Therefore, when their presence assumed the 'aggressive' form of protest it touched a sensitive nerve. The 'protesting migrants' who claim their rights looked the opposite of the innocent 'refugees' who need help. On top of this, the use of a religious idiom seemed almost as a provocative act. Based on their own cultural understandings the protesting asylum seekers did not adequately assessed the severe cultural limitations of their mobilisation. Instead of, at least, *conforming* to the *local* ways of being a political subject they employed *their* ways that puzzled and alienated even the few sympathisers to their cause.43 The symbolic acts of reciprocity (e.g. gifts) towards the locals, which they employed during the protest, and some gestures of respect (e.g. cleaning the square) and obedience to the authorities were not enough in altering the local mood.

#### *8.5.2 Innovative Failures*

The upgrading of 'refugee solidarity' into a patriotic concern, not to say duty, and its conceptualisation as a national attribute further reinforced the articulation of local sentiment towards the asylum seekers in the terms of the assimilationist logic. The Left government did *not* work on the cultural foundations of patriotism. Probably, it did not have the time nor/or the political will. Therefore, *it failed to reconfgure the Greek regime of difference, to shift it in a new, more open direction informed by a post-culturalist, dialogical understanding of the alterity of the displaced people from Asia and Africa.*

42See Papataxiarchis (2006, pp. 25–39).

43The strategic invocation of mainstream, culturally legible, identity discourses by African women struggling for citizenship rights of children born in Greece to migrant parents (Zavos, 2014) is a good example of the use of cultural conformity in recent migrant mobilisations.

'Solidarity to refugees' became popular in the wider population in the same essentialist terms with the old patriotism, particularly its Leftwing version, and, therefore, *lost its innovative potential,* its power to transform patriotism in a new direction on the basis of a critical awareness of the complex relation between national self and other.

As an effect, 'solidarity to refugees' was trapped in the same terrain with 'hospitality to migrants' that was reproduced as its counter-part. Both were anchored on a territorial sense of the self, conceived as essences endemic to place and nation. 'Refugee solidarity' eventually developed into a sort of humanitarian fashion which served well the functioning of the humanitarian regime yet lacked its distinct cultural logic. It became, therefore, vulnerable to the political struggles at the grassroots and eventually fell prey to the strategies of the xenophobic Right.

The asylum seekers are still around, living in hotspots, camps, apartments, and alternative structures. Their presence is still surrounded by ambiguity and suspicion and raises anxieties. In the recent past, SYRIZA dealt with this ambiguity through the realistic application of the Left, soft, tolerant side of traditional patriotism. The limitations of this strategy are clear. Since 2020 the New Democracy (*Nea Dimokratia*) party has eradicated the source of the 'anxiety' by eliminating the 'asylum seeker' as a distinct identity through the narrowing down of the legal category (and the undermining of legal protection), and by speeding up the asylum process and the reduction of the population of asylum seekers through pushbacks and legally controversial returns.

In these circumstances, the creative processing of this ambiguous identity remains a major challenge for the innovative political forces in Greek society. As long as the struggles of the asylum seekers continue, such challenges will be there, alive, a reminder that *their* predicament is a potential source of the host's critical *self*-awareness.

**Acknowledgements** I would like to thank Maria Kousis for the invitation to participate in the UCRC conference on 'Migrations: interdisciplinary challenges' and for her comments to an earlier draft of this essay. Many thanks also to Ef Avdela, Aspasia Chatzidaki, Effe Plexousaki, Katerina Rozakou and Alexandra Zavos for their comments.

#### **References**

Agier, M. (2011). *Managing the undesirables*. Polity Press.

Charitopoulou, E. (2020). *The European refugee crisis in Greece: Understanding host communities*. [Unpublished DPhil thesis]. University of Oxford.

**Evthymios Papataxiarchis** (PhD, London School of Economics, 1988) is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology and History, at the University of the Aegean, where he has been teaching and holding positions of research and administrative responsibility since 1987. He taught and did research in a number of institutions including the London School of Economics, the Research Foundation of the Commercial Bank of Greece, the Centre of Asia Minor Studies, the University of Crete, the University of Athens, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Boğaziçi University. As a PI or co-PI he has held several competitive research grants (e.g. Wenner Gren, Horizon 2020, Elidek), fellowships, scholarships and honors from several national and European institutions. Professor Papataxiarchis has published extensively in Greek, English and French on a wide range of topics. His recent books include: *Worlds of Domestic Labour: Immigration, Gender and Cultural Transformations in Early 21th Century Athens* (2008, co-author, in Greek); *Adventures of Alterity: The Production of Cultural Difference in Modern Greece* (second edition 2015, editor, in Greek); *The Politics of Everyday Life: Border, Body and Citizenship in Greece* (2014, editor, in Greek). He is also the editor of the series 'Anthropology' and 'Ethnographies' in Alexandria Publications, a founding member of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and member of the Scientifc Committees of several Greek academic journals. He is directing since 2012 the International Postgraduate Summer School 'Cultures, Migrations, Borders,' and since 2017 the Observatory and Archive of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean.

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## **Chapter 9 Claiming Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Migrants' Protests and Border Controls**

**Kostas Koukouzelis**

#### **9.1 Introduction**

Cosmopolitanism is, frst and foremost, a normative idea about global justice, which represents one of the various proposals in dealing with the problem of migration (Brock, 2009; Caraus & Paris, 2019; Nail, 2015). This is contrasted with the traditional approach founded on a treaty-based conception of international law and state negotiations, which come together with the supposed right of a sovereign, that is, a state, to exclude by unilaterally controlling its borders (Walzer, 1983, p. 62). According to a certain view, the current failure of dealing successfully with the problem of migration can be attributed to a large extent to the failure of realising the consequences of and dealing with global *interdependence* under traditional international law.1 For example, the failure of the European Union's (EU) migration policies, so far, is characteristic of a solution-oriented logic that is premised on negotiations among sovereign states seeking to promote their relatively narrow national interests. The cosmopolitan alternative can take, in my view, different normative forms: (a) the frst form recognises that we owe other people duties of humanitarian assistance beyond the state, but nothing more –this is a version of 'moral cosmopolitanism,' which I leave aside, because it just fails to go beyond morality; (b) the second form claims we have duties of justice to other people and the best institutional form would be a cosmopolitan order, either under the

1Talking about migration here I will limit myself to the case of migrants conceived as refugees or stateless people, that is, I will focus on *forced* migration, defned as the result of natural or social determinants of various kinds that leave in practice no space for choice (Castles, 2003). Therefore, I will leave aside the further complications immigration creates, which ask for a different treatment.

K. Koukouzelis (\*)

University of Crete, Crete, Greece e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
constitution of a world state (a solution that could notoriously create more problems for freedom), or under other supranational institutional forms; (c) the third form, which also claims we have cosmopolitan duties of justice, leaves open the foor for the possible institutional form they can take. This is also because it sees cosmopolitanism not only as a normative idea, which must be applied top-down, but having also a cognitive and epistemological dimension, which defnes the self-understanding of (cosmopolitan) political community, that is based on the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship.2

I will try to argue for the third normative form by describing and evaluating a particular instance of migrants' protests, which occurred in *Idomeni* Greece during the so called 'refugee crisis' of 2015–16. Looking closely at migrants' protests in this particular case, there seems to be a certain paradox, which I call 'the paradox of citizenship.' The paradox runs as follows: on the one hand, migrants protest against exclusionary policies of citizenship. If citizenship is allegedly always controlled by the state, migrants' protests seem to contest exactly this authoritative power of citizenship to exclude and control who can enter, who can be a citizen and what citizenship means. This might plausibly create the impression that migrants dismiss the notion of 'citizenship' *tout court.* On the other hand, what they are asking for is a certain status, which, after careful thought, seems akin to citizenship. How can this be possible?3 To be sure, there have been efforts to dissolve the paradox by completely scraping the notion of citizenship from what migrants are asking for, mainly by subsuming it under 'freedom of movement' and arguing for open borders. I will take another path here, arguing that migrants' protests, as expressed in the example of *Idomeni*, Greece, can be interpreted as a revival and redefnition, under modern circumstances of justice, of the old notion of 'cosmopolitan citizenship.'4

#### **9.2 Closed European Borders and Migrants' Protests in** *Idomen***i, Greece**

It is especially in the case of state borders, that is, of controlling, crossing, and challenging them –a case that is placed at the centre of recent discussions across disciplines in Europe (El Qadim et al., 2020)– that what we have just called 'the paradox of citizenship' is particularly revealed. To this task the example of the closure of the European borders between Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia (former

2Cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan citizenship occupy an important place in the history of ideas and there is no space here for elaborating on their origins that go back to *Socrates* and *Diogenes the Cynic*, *Stoicism* and, of course, *Immanuel Kant*; see Heater (1996, pp. 6–8) and Ypi (2012, pp. 11–34).

3For an acknowledgement of such a paradox see Tyler and Marciniak (2013) and McNevin (2007, p. 670).

4An earlier version of the argument presented here can be found in Koukouzelis (2019b). Here, the focus is more on cosmopolitan citizenship, its meaning and possible objections.

FYROM) in 2016 provides a useful and instructive case of migrants' protests. On March 7, 2016, the EU heads of states and governments declared in Brussels that the illegalised fows of migrants across the East Balkan path had been blocked. This was the result of the closure of borders and the obstruction of their crossing from Greece to North Macedonia, which left more than 46,000 refugees and migrants trapped in continental Greece (Amnesty International, 2016, p. 2). At the same time EU's promise that a legal way out from Greece for those applying for asylum would be found had remained unfulflled to a large extent. According to information provided by the European Commission on April 12, 2016, only 615 out of 66,400 asylum seekers for whom there was a commitment that they would be relocated from Greece on September 2015, had moved to another EU member state. Lack of political will on behalf of the receiving countries and the alleged right for state borders control were the basic reasons. Amnesty International accused EU member states of being responsible for failing to implement the agreed system of relocation adopted by Dublin II and therefore for having trapped refugees and migrants in Greece (Amnesty International, 2016).

Until March 8, 2016, when North Macedonia's borders closed permanently, the vast majority of refugees and migrants reaching Greece continued their journey towards other countries passing through Balkans.5 This was the result of a number of reasons. A major reason was and still is the desire of several migrants to reunite with members of their family who live in safe and rich countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom. Another reason was the hope that they could receive help and support from communities of co-nationals that had already settled elsewhere. One last, yet equally important reason, was the complete lack of humane conditions or the ineffective and time-consuming procedures of getting asylum and papers or work permits in many of the receiving countries –a situation that characterised Greece as well. Actually, in the case of Greece the last issue was of particular importance as Greece was convicted in 2013 by the Court of the EU because of the inhumane conditions asylum seekers were experiencing.6

The closure of borders between Greece and North Macedonia had the unfortunate result that more than 14,000 of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan (the so-called 'SIA countries') were trapped on the Greek side of the borders in *Idomeni* (The Guardian, 2016). There were extreme needs for food, medical help and shelter, something that had already started to be happening sporadically since 2015 when borders were also sealed at the same place (Amnesty International, 2015). The whole situation ended up in a severe humanitarian and migration governance crisis with people starving and having no shelter against weather conditions. Migrants became desperate since they could neither move forward nor go back. The *Médicines sans Frontiers* reported cases of refugees having met with severe violence from North Macedonia's border police (Amnesty

5For a good overview of migrant mobility in Greece since the early 2000s, see Mantanika and Arapoglou (Chap. 10 in this volume).

6Thus, the Court judged that asylum seekers should not be returned to Greece; see Court's decision in case C-4/11 Bundesrepublik Deutschland v. Kaveh Puid (2013).

International, 2016, p. 10). No refugee was given the opportunity to explain her status or situation. This complex situation created progressively a massive feeling of anxiety, despair and anger. Migrants started, for the frst time, to protest. Protests existed before both in Greece and elsewhere in Europe (Atac et al., 2016, pp. 528–9; Monforte & Dufour, 2013; Papataxiarchis Chap. 8 in this volume) but the claims now were different.

The protestors included immigrants, but also and mainly refugees from the SIA countries, who although formerly were allowed to use the Balkan route, they were now blocked because for the frst time they were considered to be coming from Turkey that was now characterised as a 'safe country.' Their protests between March and May 2016 involved efforts to cross the borders, their refusal to abandon their camps for other places in continental Greece and the occupation of the railway connecting Greece to Europe through North Macedonia blocking all cargos from *Piraeus* port and creating chaos in Greece's export fows to Europe. On March 14, 2016, several thousands of people who had been stuck in *Idomeni* for days or even weeks set off on what was later called a *March of Hope* and tried to cross into the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia at a place several kilometers away from *Idomeni,* where no fence had been built, but failed dramatically (Anastasiadou et al., 2017, pp. 61–63). Furthermore, on 23 March 2016, almost 500 migrants blocked the highway from *Thessaloniki* to North Macedonia, only 1 day after two migrants tried to set themselves on fre in the *Idomeni* camp. More than 2 months still followed before the *Idomeni* camp was evicted for good in late May 2016, and during this time migrants kept staging protests and blockades at borders, on the railroad tracks and on the highway, and acts of self-harm, like hunger strikes and lip-sewing, continued to take place (ibid., pp. 63–64).

What is important for us here is basically the claims put forward by migrants. Traditionally, migrants' claims either refer to advocacy for human rights, humanitarian aid, a fair asylum process and access to labor markets or involve resistance to deportation. The case of *Idomeni* can be interpreted as an overall different paradigm on two fronts: (a) it presented a paradigm of migrants' *protests*, which meant, as shown above, that contrary to most situations, where migrants were passive receivers of aid, they this time took a more active role. One should note here that *humanitarian aid*, as practiced mainly by Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) or grassroots movements, portrayed an image of victimhood regarding migrants, not only in the sense of innocence, but equally in the sense of powerlessness. Of course, this does not perhaps apply to every single NGO that is activated in the feld, nevertheless, a paramount part of the logic of humanitarian assistance in the form of satisfying many of the aforementioned claims reduces migrants' subjectivity to less than full agency, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes migrants internalise this image and are led to self-victimisation. This was not the case for migrants in *Idomeni* examined here. (b) It presented a case where protesting took a specifc content. Now protesting was about border controls or to be more accurate, the complete ban of border crossing for migrants.7 Protests that challenged border controls showed an 'amazing stubbornness' (Mezzadra, 2020, pp. 433–434) on behalf of people that did not want to be treated as mere victims but wanted to have their views heard and respected by others *despite* their not being citizens of the receiving countries.

More specifcally, such protests against borders closure, although grounded in a specifc context, contested frameworks and assumptions that were also wider in scope. Their targets were not only the particular state they were in, but also the EU's policies, so their goal was not just articulated in terms of state citizenship, but in terms of something autonomous and independent from it, claiming a distinct political subjectivity detached from any membership in a particular political community. Through protesting migrants constituted themselves as autonomous political agents, and therefore their status was no longer defned by the state they happened to be, but by the very act of *contestation*. This was moreover interestingly articulated in their refusal to be represented by Greek citizens or NGOs who acted in solidarity to them.8 What exactly did they claim and in virtue of what? Did they simply claim their human right to freedom of movement, or something else? We need to fnd the right conceptual language for comprehending this political subjectivity. This is, in my view, not just a thoroughly descriptive endeavor, but a distinct normative enterprise.

#### **9.3 Open Borders: Freedom of Movement or Finding a Place in the World?**

Contrary to much of the contemporary literature on migration and borders, I would like to stress the importance and the persistence of the notion of *citizenship* itself, casting some further light on the 'paradox of citizenship' mentioned above. It is true that much of contemporary thought on migration, both of liberal and post-marxist origins, argues for the case for open borders and freedom of movement, instead of citizenship.9 On the one hand, certain liberals argue that citizenship is as arbitrary a factor, as race, sex and ethnicity for justifying inequalities. Closed borders create injustices, because they differentiate rights based upon one's origins or political allegiances (Carens, 1987; Carens, 2013). Post-marxists, on the other hand, argue that at the normative level citizenship is always a restriction of mobility, thus at the same time a restriction of freedom (of movement) to cross borders. At the descriptive

7This is not of course the only case regarding border controls and migrants' protests. An important case study regarding borders can be found in *Calais,* France; see Rigby and Schlembach (2013).

8 Indeed, in the case study of *Idomeni,* citizens acting in solidarity created sometimes more problems, when they provided false information about open borders (Anastasiadou et al., 2017, p. 62).

9Freedom of movement within one's state, the freedom to leave it and the freedom to return to one's own state are now considered fundamental human rights; see *Universal Declaration of Human Rights* (United Nations, 1948), art. 13. Nevertheless, the *Declaration* does not specify any obligation on the part of States to accept migrants in their territory.

level, it is also argued that migrants who cross borders do not want to be integrated into the institutional regime of the frst hosting country but want to move on. To be sure, movement is part of their identity as migrants. Migration then is autonomous in the sense that it has the capacity to develop its own logics and its own motivation. This has been called 'autonomy of migration thesis' (Papadopoulos & Tsianos, 2013, p. 184).

In my view, both defenses of the case for freedom of movement and open borders fail for various reasons I cannot pursue here in detail but suffce it to mention here the core issues (Hossein, 2013; Owen, 2014; Wilcox, 2009). First, it is revealing that, at the descriptive level, migrants do not ultimately aim at mobility, but the opposite. It is because they are forced to move for reasons of persecution, personal liberty and poor income, that they long for a place where they can feel at home, that is, they can be treated as free and equals.10 Second, and at the normative level, our duties towards migrants are sometimes reductively described as duties to protect and enforce their fundamental *human right* to free movement. I think this is neither what they are asking for, nor what we owe them as a matter of priority. Freedom of movement however important it may be for enhancing autonomy retains, nevertheless, an instrumental value. By defnition, movement presumes direction towards a destination (literally and metaphorically speaking) and it is connected with certain goals to be achieved (feeing from danger, association with others, professional career etc.). The instrumental approach explains why the importance of mobility is a changing parameter.11 In the end, freedom of movement takes value and gets importance when it is equally accompanied by a certain status that protects people from being *forced* to move and secures that they get to decide for themselves where to move to, should other considerations apply. Otherwise, we just talk about the movement of a*utomata,* that is, creatures that perform functions according to predetermined instructions, as long as there are no external obstacles to this. However, this is neither a descriptively accurate nor a normatively satisfactory picture.

Hannah Arendt, a migrant, and refugee herself, described in 1951 what is at stake in migration fows nowadays. Her writings on the status of refugees are in my view still relevant and pregnant with important and revealing insights. Migrants, whom Arendt calls 'rightless,' suffer from the loss of their homes in the sense of a loss of the entire social texture into which they were born. This means they have lost, in her terminology, a place in the world, 'which makes opinions signifcant and actions effective.' In another formulation 'they are deprived, not of the right to freedom, but of the right to action, not of the right to think whatever they please, but of the right to opinion.'12 Together with a loss of government protection migrants have therefore lost what she has famously called as the 'right to have rights.' She fnally argues that '[m]an, it turns out can lose all so-called Rights of Man without losing his essential

10This is a normative conception of 'home,' and does not necessarily coincide with a psychological or, indeed, a geographical conception of 'home.'

11The valuing of mobility is different for a US businessman and an Afghan migrant.

12All quotations are from Arendt, 2004 [1951], p. 376.

quality as man, his human dignity. Only the loss of a polity itself expels him from humanity' (Arendt, 2004 [1951], pp. 376–377).

According to Arendt's argument, it seems that there is an important connection between humanity, rights and membership in a polity, or, in other words, the status of citizenship. In Arendt's conception, humanity is not just being conceived *in abstracto* but *in concreto,* which means that it can be sustained and developed not by mere reference to nature or history, but to a specifc institutional order. For example, in the social contract tradition outside a political community one fnds herself in the so called 'state of nature,' a condition variously described as fear of sudden death, insecurity, vulnerability to the arbitrary will of another, and so on. In that sense, every human being has the right and the duty to enter with others and constitute a political community, that is a state. This is the meaning of Arendt's 'right to have rights,' conceived as a universalistic foundation of citizenship. Now, to be sure, the 'right to have rights' is not just another right, at least not of the same plane as the rest of rights, but a political status that everyone must enjoy in order to participate in humanity and in order to enjoy other rights (Michelman, 1996). This particular status means one has a voice, a capability to speak and fnd an addressee for her claims –this is what having a 'place' in the world really means. Nevertheless, ιt is most of the times argued that migrants' status –in our case refugees' status– should be normatively defned either as a severe basic human rights violation, or more extensively, as a threat of suffering serious harm that undermines human dignity.13 Both approaches lead to the claim that we have duties to provide aid, because migrants are above all human beings and in order for them not to lose their humanity, conceived as life, food, movement etc. we should protect them. Open borders are therefore conceived as a human rights or humanitarian correction to the state's right to self-determination. Yet, I think, this is not the whole story.

Hannah Arendt goes much deeper than the aforementioned two approaches, both at the level of normative foundation and of the nature and scope of accompanying duties. Loss of a place in the world, that is, loss of a home is not unprecedented in history. 'What is unprecedented is not the loss of a home, but the impossibility of fnding a new one' (Arendt, 2004 [1951], p. 372). The problem is not one of overpopulation, but of political organisation. Furthermore, she argues:

The trouble is that this calamity arose not from any lack of civilisation, backwardness, or mere tyranny, but on the contrary, that it could not be repaired, because there was no longer any 'uncivilised' spot on earth, *because whether we like it or not, we have really started to live in One World*. *Only with a completely organised humanity could the loss of home and political status become identical with expulsion from humanity altogether* (emphasis mine) (Arendt, 2004 [1951], pp. 376–377).

Arendt's insight is therefore that what is lost cannot be regained at will, because under current circumstances of justice what she calls 'One World' also constitutes the fgure of the migrant in our times. Taken at its face value, this argument shows

13An example of the frst can be found in Hathaway and Foster (2014) and of the second in, among others, Zolberg et al. (1989).

that borders and especially unilaterally border controlling does not just separate places through states, but unify what is separated, otherwise migrants would fnd themselves in a desert when crossing borders, not in the territory of a foreign state. Thus, we are not merely talking about separate states, but about a unifed space that, conceived systematically as the total aggregate of interconnected 'places,' excludes whoever has lost what everybody else enjoys. This form of interaction and interdependence creates duties of justice, not just moral duties, because, in that sense, borders can be coercive or dominating when excluding people merely because they are not members of the polity. Exclusion in our sense here means without adequate justifcation (Abizadeh, 2008, also Koukouzelis, 2019b). From the point of view of the excluded, the latter is already the victim of *such a* political organisation.

The force of Arendt's argument is, I think, still, unappreciated or, to say the least, partially appreciated. On the one hand, everyone should have the right to be a member of a particular polity. However, on the other hand, who might have the duty to fulfll this right? There are, of course, states that can do more than others in fulflling their duties towards migrants, because of their economic power. However, the crux of our argument is that, if it is this political organisation that victimises migrants *all* states should change their attitude towards them, not because the latter are *human beings* with certain human rights, but because migrants are thus prevented to act *as citizens* within a political organisation that already includes them only to ultimately exclude them (Cohen & Van Hear, 2019).

I think this is one of the lessons migrants' protests teach us. There is a sense that the moment of exclusion makes people migrants, whereas the moment of inclusion reminds us that the same people, conceived before as migrants, are already citizens of a common world. The case of *Idomeni,* Greece, was one that unveiled efforts to reclaim such a status. When migrants protested, they protested as cosmopolitan citizens.

#### **9.4 Migrants as Cosmopolitan Citizens**

Let us frst try to recapitulate and come to a preliminary conclusion. Opening borders and allowing for mere freedom of movement is doubly misguided. First, migrants do not ask to be treated merely as *humans*, because they do not protest or contest borders as humans, but as (former) citizens who have lost this essential feature that makes their humanity something more than membership in a biological species. Migrants' protests in *Idomeni* were an example of this. Second, what we owe them is not just humanitarian assistance, not even just granting them the right not to be deported (*non- refoulement*), but a specifc kind of protection, which goes beyond survival or protecting physical existence. Freedom needs space, albeit not in the sense of geographical space (which is not unlimited), but in the sense of a 'place' in a political community (Arendt, 2005, p. 170; Lindahl, 2004, p. 478). Such an approach has further consequences on two fronts. First, focusing exclusively on freedom of movement only works along with a misconception of migrants' statuses

conceived as mere nomadic populations who are rootless. This does not entail that freedom of movement across borders is not important, yet it is not the major characteristic of refugeehood. Second, it puts pressure on the recent ad hoc solutions promoted by the EU, which involve the politics of funding detention camps in the so called 'secure' receiving or third countries that supposedly guarantee, at least, survival.

Let us unpack these claims. First, we have in front of us a completely organised world that also has a spherical shape, which means it is fnite, as Kant reminds us in *The Metaphysics of Morals* (Kant, 1996 [1797], p. 489). Second, it is after all a matter of *place* in the normative meaning of the word, our place in the world, and the impossibility for migrants to fnd their place in it. It is therefore not a matter of state sovereignty or international relations, but a matter of cosmopolitics, not just morality. In virtue of these two features every human being in this world is at the same time a *cosmopolitan citizen*. Such a strong statement could attract accusations that we are arguing either for too much, or for too little. Too much, for without a (world) state any talk about citizenship is futile; too little, for mere change of terminology achieves nothing. Nevertheless, arguing for such a status –and citizenship is such a status concept– silences any misleading discussion of whether migrants can be 'allowed' to be present somewhere in the world. Migrants are already citizens of a common world of interaction, which means that they should enjoy the status of nondomination by exercising at a minimum the normative anti-power to contest. Without such a normative capacity even a system of human rights can become a system of infantilisation, fostering what we termed in the case of *Idomeni* as victimhood.14 This does not of course give migrants any right to secure permanent settlement, no further criteria applied, but gives them the recognition that whatever is decided for them by citizens of the hosting state or of any state can and should be *contested* on a fair basis. Note here that this might imply that if such a 'place' could be secured or re-established back in the polity migrants have lost, then the duties of justice would have been fulflled. Admittedly this also puts pressure on dealing with the *structural* causes of transnational migration, which include, but are not limited to, environmental risks, such as climate change, as long as there is a fundamental lack of the ability to claim remedies regarding the situation other than fight.15

Migrants' protests, as described in the case of *Idomeni*, can be conceived as a kind of 'cosmopolitanism from below' (Ingram, 2016; Kurasawa, 2004; Nail, 2015). These protests provide empirical manifestations of cosmopolitan citizenship through their engagement with a transnational mode of contestation of border controls. In that sense, they challenge methodological nationalism regarding borders.

14 'Non-domination,' briefy speaking, means not to be dependent on the arbitrary will of another, and have the *ability* to contest, as neo-republican political philosophy argues. Arendt's argument is exactly that stateless people suffer from this particular *vulnerability*. For an elaboration of this point see Koukouzelis (2019b) and Gundogdu (2015).

15Arendt's argument unveils, in my view, a *structural,* among others, injustice, which is the fruit of intended and unintended consequences of collective action and institutional interactions. The current regime of state borders creates such an injustice as it has been recently argued by Uhde (2019).

One of the errors of methodological nationalism is that it naturalises borders, which are taken as natural walls, something that is surprisingly enough given the borderless fows of goods and services worldwide. To be sure, borders demarcate politically organised communities, which are self-determined and are necessary because politics must occur somewhere. Nevertheless, they are still social constructions and need to be justifed externally, because, as we have seen, they can dominate nonmembers. The local should be aware how it is connected to other localities and/or non-members, who have lost state citizenship.16

Our notion of 'cosmopolitan citizenship' bears differences, but also some affnities with other similar notions proposed, past and present. Two examples should be enough for our purposes here. First, our notion should be distinguished from the view that migrants' struggles put in motion a new notion of citizenship, which is formed in and through relations of solidarity that transcends boundaries. The inspiration for that comes from the notion of 'international citizenship,' which, according to Michel Foucault (1981) who put it forward, 'is obliged to stand up against all forms of abuses of power, no matter who commits them, no matter who are the victims. After all, we are all governed, and, by that fact, joined in solidarity.' Although useful, if taken as a kind of 'supplementary citizenship' (Gordon, 2015) the use of solidarity is too quick and neither corresponds directly to migrants' claims, as presented here, nor is suffciently political. Second, there is a certain affnity with the notion of 'citizens without frontiers,' which wants to describe migrants' actions that do not only involve physical crossing of borders, but actions that question the very idea of borders (Isin, 2012, pp. 11–12). Furthermore, it exactly sees acts of contestation as acts of citizenship, which transform migrants into 'acting subjects' or, in other words, citizens not attached to any specifc body politic, but to something that challenges constituted forms of authority, legitimacy and belonging (Caraus, 2018, p. 801). Nevertheless, although it escapes the shortcomings of the one-sided insistence on freedom of movement, this approach gives too much weight on the performative value 'acts of citizenship' have, and completely misses the normative content the notion of 'place' brings in the discourse. Migrants' protests instantiate what citizenship means: the capacity to be heard and address people who cannot just unjustifably dismiss one's claims.17

However, there are also some potential objections. One of them that could be raised to our argument here would be that not all, indeed very few, migrants

16We should therefore distinguish methodological nationalism from the state's right to selfdetermination. Self-determination implies that those who are subject to the state's authority must be given an equal say in what that authority does. According to our argument here those who are subject to the state's authority are not only those who are within the state's territorial borders. The 'self' in 'self-determination' is expanded with border controls, as migrants are included (and dominated) when subject to the state's 'right to exclude.' See, especially Abizadeh (2008)*.*

17Therefore, not every migrant protest is an instantiation of cosmopolitan citizenship. See for further criticism of this approach Koukouzelis (2019b, pp. 66–67). Interestingly, Mezzadra (2020), who defends a version of the 'autonomy of migration' thesis has nowadays clarifed his position arguing that a politics of freedom of movement 'emphasises the moment of struggle and claim, it does not envisage as its goal the opening of borders by decree' (p. 436).

conceive themselves as cosmopolitan citizens. Migrants can be diverse with many of them having different agendas or wishing to be assimilated to nationalist narratives, therefore they fear rather than endorse cosmopolitanism. This is true as far as protests contain a rich mixture of motives. Yet, frst, I do not think this is relevant because migrants' protests only show that their civic activity (contestation) is not exclusively defned or demarcated by the state they are currently in but should be a part of a more fundamental political status, ascribed to their humanity. Second, cosmopolitan citizenship does not lead to a denial of one's particular identity. Politics of assimilation has proved to be wrong-headed, and cosmopolitanism is not about the imposition of a single substantive identity, but a political status. Migrants' protests claim a voice, that is, repeating Arendt's words, they claim a place in the world, 'which makes opinions signifcant and actions effective.' Third, migrants' protests have a cognitive and epistemological dimension. As mentioned above, migrants constitute themselves as political agents. There is also a process of translation going on through the activity of contestation. They bring new interpretations of rights, and they also acquire a critical refexive capacity that might have not existed before. Claiming cosmopolitan citizenship migrants reconnect cosmopolitanism with its Kantian meaning, that is, learning and the expansion of our own horizons. In that sense they broaden the scope of the demos, which extends as far as justifcation goes.18

Despite the current shortcomings of the EU's migration policies there has been a recent effort on behalf of the EU to present itself as the laboratory of turning the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship into reality. The Lisbon and Rome Treaties defned a new kind of citizenship –European citizenship– as additional to that of the member states. This was built around a 'free movement' discourse yet recognised that this should be accompanied by a certain political status. EU citizens who reside in a member state of which they are not nationals have the right to vote and stand as candidates at local elections and in the elections of the European Parliament. In that case the Lisbon Treaty proposed 'enacting European citizenship' as it connected citizenship with action that gives individuals the right to make claims to legal and political forms of access to rights –in Arendt's formulation the 'right to have rights.'19

Our aim in this chapter was mainly to contribute some fresh thoughts to the ongoing debate on migrant mobilities. I take it that the conceptualisation of migrants' protests in *Idomeni,* Greece, as part of migrants' reclaiming a particular status, opens the feld for rethinking whether it is truly mobility that matters or something else that comes prior to it. By realising that their urge for protesting is a manifestation of their *lost* status of citizenship on which they have a claim our contribution seems utterly to be that it is high time that migrants should be treated not just as

18The cognitive and epistemological aspects of cosmopolitanism are well described by Delanty (2014). For the claim that cosmopolitanism is fundamentally about the public use of reason see Koukouzelis (2019a).

19For the argument that migrants' protests exercise some form of cosmopolitan citizenship, putting in practice what the EU has been preaching see Urbinati (2015).

human beings, but as cosmopolitan citizens. I will conclude by noting that migrants claim cosmopolitanism in yet another respect, which shows why cosmopolitanism is primarily a political concept, not just a moral one, because it reveals itself not as an idealisation of humanity, but as a political concretisation of humanity. This is both a matter of justice and of urgent importance to *us.* Arendt argues with much insight: 'The danger is that a global, universally interrelated civilisation may produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages' (Arendt, 2004 [1951], p. 384). The twenty-frst century will be the century of the migrant. I hope it will also be the century of cosmopolitan citizenship.

**Acknowledgments** Many thanks to Maria Kousis for the invitation to participate in the conference organised by the University of Crete Research Centre for the Humanities (UCRC) under the title 'Migrations: Interdisciplinary Challenges,' the editors of this volume and Konstantinos Papageorgiou for reading and commenting on an earlier draft.

#### **References**

Cohen, R., & Van Hear, N. (2019). *Refugia: radical solutions to mass displacement*. Routledge.

**Kostas Koukouzelis** holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of London and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies, University of Crete. He is a member of the Centre for Bioethics and sits on the National Ethics Committee for Clinical Trials since 2010 as an alternate member. His research interests lie in political philosophy and philosophy of law, global justice, Kant, and bioethics, with a special focus on sustainability, climate change, and intergenerational justice. Some of his publications have appeared in *Globalisations, Journal of Global Ethics, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Synthesis Philosophica, Public Reason: A Journal of Political & Moral Philosophy, Politics in Central Europe,* and *Theory, Culture & Society.*

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Part IV Mobility Reception Transitions in Times of Crises**

## **Chapter 10 The Making of Reception as a System. The Governance of Migrant Mobility and Transformations of Statecraft in Greece Since the Early 2000s**

**Regina Mantanika and Vassilis Arapoglou**

#### **10.1 Introduction**

This chapter focuses on the governance of migrant mobility by examining the reception system in Greece during two key periods. We view the reception system as an intermediary space which engages diverse policy actors who question the established understanding of the relationship between mobility and inclusion in distinct ways. More specifcally, we examine how, different policies and measures have shaped this intermediary space since the beginning of 2000s. We also comment on the participation of grassroots organisations, other than formally recognised policy actors, 'whose objective is a different form of conduct' (Foucault, 2007, p.194), in the confguration of this process.

In this analysis, reception, as a term, refers to varied practices around migrant mobility that apply once migrants have crossed the border. In offcial discourse, the term 'reception' has often been used in a euphemistic way, as in the examples we provide in subsequent sections, to cover up the inadequate provisions and protracted violation of basic rights for persons arriving in Greece and seeking international protection, and to deter or impede migrant mobility. Our intention in this chapter is to shed light on the different, complex and sometimes apparently conficting rationales that establish reception practices, and their ambivalent use in multiple levels of migration management.

Migration management is a form of governance that treats migration as a kind of irregularity (Ceiger & Pecoud, 2013); it is part of what Fassin (2011) calls the 'humanitarian state' or 'humanitarian government.' Humanitarianism has become an approach that links values and affects inextricably, and serves both to defne and justify discourses and practices that govern human beings (Fassin, 2011).

201

R. Mantanika (\*) · V. Arapoglou

University of Crete, Crete, Greece e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2022 M. Kousis et al. (eds.), *Challenging Mobilities in and to the EU during Times of Crises*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11574-5\_10

Humanitarian and security actions are both actions which frame 'border-care' governance and conceptualisations of protection (Bigo, 2006; Walters, 2010).

We consider the making of reception as a system during two key periods in Greece – at the early 2000s and in the post 2015 era. These are pivotal moments in which to investigate the different forces that have shaped the governance of mobility, and indeed, these have been important periods for migration in the EU in general. In the frst period, during which transit migration was being established as a result of specifc EU regimes, Greece became one of the major frontline areas of the EU. In the second period, Greece's external and internal borders became the main corridor for migration to Europe leading the European border regime into a period of crisis (Kasparek, 2016b). Both periods were important in the shaping of the reception system, and in our analysis, we draw attention to the different governmentalities that are activated within them.

Before moving on to the exposition of the two periods we briefy locate our approach within the literature on the governmentality of migration and refect on the discourses and practices of the main actors involved in the construction of this intermediary space. In contemporary policy making, 'governance' refers to the diverse interactions and modes of co-ordination between political authorities, social and economic actors. The term governmentality was adopted by Foucault to address the rationalities and technologies of governing by different agencies in many areas of everyday life, i.e. in directing the conduct of others and oneself (for a concise defnition see Dean, 2017). Governmentality studies draw upon Foucault's writings to analyse the exercise of political power through multiple interactions, stressing the role of conficts and confrontations that the offcial discourses seek to minimise. Foucault (2007, 2008), in his earlier lectures during 1978–1979, traced the origins of modern governmentality in the eighteenth century, whereby liberal government was associated with the knowledge of controlling the population, and regulate the behavior of various groups and individuals. In his later lectures, during 1982 and 1983, Foucault (2005, 2010) expanded his conception of governmentality to examine how political government was linked to ethical self-government. Since then, the analysis of governmentality has been increasingly concerned with how specifc 'problems' (health care, crime control, welfare assistance, migration etc.) are constructed as objects of government (i.e. 'problematised') through competing forms of knowledge and ethics.

#### **10.2 Problematising Mobility, Reception and Inclusion**

Over the last 20 years, studies on the governmentality of migration have fourished and have contributed in two main ways to the critical analysis of migration policies. On the one hand, earlier studies of governmentality elaborated the role that expertise, bureaucracy, humanitarian agencies and technologies of government play in the production of borders, the management of mobility and differential inclusion (Bigo, 2002; Fassin, 2011; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013; Nyers, 2010). On the other hand, more recent studies have shifted attention to the contingency of bordering. Thus, research has looked at the specifc political alliances and historical circumstances within which technologies that channel migrant mobility come to be stabilised or destabilised. Current research further focuses on the inclusive possibilities that civil society and migrant agency open up, by examining how routes, trajectories, informal knowledge and settlement practices emerge through migrant networks and struggles (Mitchell & Sparke, 2018; Tazzioli, 2014; Walters, 2015). Cities have become prominent sites for research into how certain practices challenge and potentially transform the hierarchies into which migrants are inserted, as well as the stratifcation of their capacities for belonging. These include commons, sanctuary spaces, welcome and solidarity initiatives, everyday cosmopolitanism and practices of coexistence and emplacement (Bagelman, 2016; Darling & Bauder, 2019; Glick-Schiller & Çağlar, 2016; Oomen, 2019; Trimikliniotis et al. 2016; Wessendorf & Phillimore, 2018). In the present chapter, we seek to further understand the changing dynamics of inclusion by exploring the distinct governmentalities that unfold in the spaces of reception.

In one of his most cited statements, in which he introduced the concept of governmentality, Foucault (2007, p. 109) suggested that 'What is important for our modernity, that is to say, for our present, is not then the state's takeover (etatisation) of society, so much as what I would call the "governmentalisation" of the state.' He went on to explain that the transformation of the state and the continual defnition of its competences and the relationships between public and private have 'allowed the state to survive' (Foucault, 2007, p. 109). As key theorists of governmentality have maintained (e.g. Dean, 2009; Larner & Walters, 2004), this statement implies that the state extends its power by connecting to and remaking existing networks of power, thereby reconstituting its relation with society. Dean (2002) further elaborates the relationship between the state and civil society, arguing that it can be conceived of as a series of 'foldings.' These combine freedom with coercive instruments, thus allowing for the possibility of certain amalgamations of liberal and authoritarian practices, as in the examples of poor relief, colonial rule, and the so called 'War on Terror'. Critical within this system is the 'liberal police,' which is primarily concerned with security, and works through three inter-related processes, he calls 'foldings': 'an unfolding of the (formally) political sphere into civil society; an enfolding of the regulations of civil society into the political and a refolding of the real or ideal values and conduct of civil society onto the political' (Dean, 2002, p. 45).

Our conceptual innovation stands in our effort to extend and modify Dean's thesis (2002) by considering an issue that escaped his attention, as he was only concerned with explaining the articulation of liberal with authoritarian practices. We introduce Foucault's notion of 'counter-conduct' [*contre-conduite*] (cf. Foucault, 2007, pp. 191–226) to capture the effects of two additional processes: the process of 'counter-folding' initiated by those struggles, which resist and modify the operations for conducting others and, what we term 'transfolding.' 'Transfolding' refers to the political response which, in partial and contradictory ways, attempts to mirror and model the practices of those who question the dominant operations and want to be led differently.

The unfolding of the political into civil society may take extreme forms when linked to sovereign power and the exercise of territorial control. The use of offcial spaces and infrastructures for detention, reception and accommodation thereby serve as a means of fragmenting migrant populations, by deciding who will be excluded and who will not. Refolding involves the remodeling of administration and society to the regulations of the market, and, as we suggest, may combine with the exercise of 'pastoral power,' i.e. a productive power of life and care (Foucault, 2007). Through refolding, migration and humanitarian agencies may be subjected to compliance with the inscription of managerial logics onto their operations. Enfolding, following Dean (2002, p.45), can be seen as merely a 'replication' of 'what is presumed to occur within civil society' in order to buttress the obligations of authoritarian government. Enfolding becomes evident in the engagement of parochial communities with xenophobic attitudes in local government. We argue, however, that the contingency of migration policies is shaped most especially by the operation of counter-folding, grassroots initiatives and migration struggles. Moreover, 'transfolding' may involve attempts to incorporate the informal techniques of civil agencies and grassroots initiatives, and may, as a consequence, be shaped by pro-migrant sentiments within civil society. Thus, this modifcation of Dean's thesis enables us to capture the effects of those political struggles and informal techniques which modify authoritarian tendencies; and the rescaling of the care and control competences of the state.

Indeed, the 2010–2018 bailout agreements and reforms on debt crisis management that occurred on Southern Europe, combined the dismantling of rudimentary welfare state structures with the piecemeal rebuilding of decentralised and privatised forms of social support but were challenged by solidarity initiatives (Arapoglou & Gounis, 2017). A concomitant attempt to decentralise and privatise asylum schemes has been observed in the context of the so-called refugee crisis and the closing of the Balkan route.

In keeping with the scholarship on counter-conduct and bottom-up governmentality, we identify those elements of inclusive experiments that can foster diverse cosmopolitan and egalitarian spaces. Moreover, it is important that civil society in the European South should not be understood as confned to formal charity, Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs), or humanitarian assistance, but should rather be extended to include grassroots organisations, a variety of local solidarity initiatives and even transnational movements (Kanellopoulos et al., 2020; Kanellopoulos et al., 2021).

In order to proceed with an analysis of the reception system, we frst need to make a number of conceptual clarifcations of the term 'reception.' As a system of governance, reception must be seen in relation to mechanisms of migration management and the invalidation of migrant mobility and settlement that happen through the different (re)labelling processes that characterise these mechanisms. The distinction between deserving refugees and undeserving migrants is presented as crucial and necessary for protecting people in need. The invalidation of immigrant or migrant mobility –as opposed to the migration of refugees– is occurring because the crossing of borders is considered to be a free and autonomous *choice*. Such a conception of free choice positions migrants 'as unworthy of social, economic, and

political rights' (Holmes & Castaneda, 2016, p. 17). This kind of invalidation of movement of different categories of migrants is directly related to the design of policies and infrastructure that function in specifc border areas as well as on the mainland.

In the Greek case, reception emerges and unfolds both as a narrative and a practice that is marked by the complexity described above. Local and humanitarian agencies working in the feld of reception implement European Union (EU) and governmental regulations that aim to flter mobility and sort newcomers. At the same time, they continue to uphold a humanitarian rhetoric. The end result is often the creation of fragmented spaces and practices, whose management combines humanitarian spirit with parochial or nationalistic values.

Yet, through our examination of the recent history of migration policy in Greece, we also observed that reception has had to accommodate a parallel world of intramigrant relations that are developed in contexts of overlapping displacement (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016). Fiddian-Qasmiyeh points out how multiple periods of protracted displacement in (peri)urban settings can be considered as periods of overlapping displacements in at least two senses. Firstly, because refugees and displaced persons have already experienced secondary and tertiary displacement before reaching the EU borders. Secondly, refugees are experiencing overlapping displacement as they share physical space with other displaced people in the asylum system's many spaces (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016). In addition to this world of intramigrant relations reception has had to accommodate also diverse welcoming and solidarity initiatives. Thus, it has become an intermediary space where practices, performances and narratives on short and long term solutions for the settlement of migrants in the context of protracted staying (in limbo), generate narratives and practices around inclusiveness. We argue that the intermediary space of reception must be considered together with the concept of the sociabilities of emplacement (Wessendorf & Phillimore, 2018). The concept refers to some of the ways in which migrants forge social relations which enhance their connectedness with the place in which they settle and the wider society around them. Therefore, the relationalities and proximities that are tied throughout the short and long term procedures of settlement could render some aspects of this intermediary space of reception more inclusive. We move now to a discussion of the two key periods that we consider important in the emergence, evolution and consolidation of this intermediary space of reception.

#### **10.3 The 'Transit' Era: The Unfolding of Exclusions and the Counter Folding of Solidarity**

The concept of 'transit migration' frst appeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Despite not having any basis in legal or institutional defnition, it became a key concept (Duvell, 2011) and international organisations; EU agencies and national governments started referring to 'migration movement' that had to be stopped or

controlled. From this point on, the external borders of countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain were treated as the EU's external borders, and they became frontline EU countries. These areas were therefore expected to prevent migrant mobility from moving further onto other EU countries; which is why, together with the mobility they 'hosted', these areas were named transit areas. For these latter, this designation meant EU intervention and critique of the way in which border controls and the reception of newcomers were carried out. For migrant mobility, it meant protracted periods in situations of limbo, in between border areas and border countries.

The concepts of transit migration and countries of transit have been viewed critically as they simplify and depoliticise migration movement. At the same time, they usually attribute an irregular status to that specifc form of mobility. In order to avoid reproducing the same line, we view migrant mobility from that era through the lens proposed by Angels Pascuals de Sans (2004). Thus instead of transit, we refer to 'a sequence of movements that are linked to each other by periods of settlement in spaces of relationships, in socially constructed places' (p. 350).

The context in which this sequence of movements unfurls is the one defned by the establishment of the so-called European External Border or Border Regime.1 This border regime was produced from the nexus between the Schengen Agreement and the Dublin System. It was during this period that the EU started 'doing border' (Kasparek, 2016a) by forcing migrant mobility in Europe into a constant cycle of departure and deportation (Kasparek, 2016a, p. 60) through the use of the Dublin convention. Kasparek suggests that we view the above mechanisms as the evolving art of government that is represented by this process of constantly interrogating the patterns of migration and adapting to their concrete manifestations (p. 66). This constitutes not so much a prevention or reversal of mobility, as the disenfranchisement of migratory populations and the implementation of social practices of differential inclusion (p. 68).

From the late 1990s onwards, Greece began to play the role of the EU's external border. It did so by reinforcing the surveillance of entries at the Greek-Turkish borders and blocking departures by air (Athens) or sea (*Patras* and *Igumenitsa*, which are amongst the country's main points of departure). Even though this era was marked by a lack of coordinated policies vis-à-vis migration, both parties alternating in government, PASOK (*Panelinio Sosialistiko Kinima* [Panhellenic Socialist Movement], the centrist 'third-way' party) and *Nea Dimokratia* (the right-wing section of the political scene) adopted conservative and exclusionary policies in order to address migrant mobility and to divert public discontent by mobilising antimigrant sentiments. As Tramountanis (Chap. 13 in this volume) presents, the frst national plans for the integration of immigrants in 2002 and 2005 remained on paper and their subsequent development until 2014 adopted a clear assimilation rationale with evident nationalistic tones.

1Dimitriadi (Chap. 11 in this volume) describes how Greece continues to be seen as a transit country after the EU-Turkey Statement.

However, the asylum system of the time was one of the most stringent in Europe, with a recognition rate of less than 1%. Further, newly arrived migrants picked up at the border were detained (Law 3386/2005). According to EU law, detention should be considered a last resort and decided on an individual basis. However, as noted at the time in the *Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants* by the United Nations' (UN) General Assembly (2013) in the case of Greece being a migrant in an irregular situation constituted a crime for which non-custodial measures existed. For that reason migrants in Greece were systematically detained. The reception infrastructure was limited to very few special detention facilities for newly arrived migrants. These were called 'Special Accommodation Centres for Aliens' (created by Law 3386/2005) and were located mainly at the Greek-Turkish borders. Reception facilities for unaccompanied minors and the most vulnerable migrants were almost non-existent. Therefore, at the start of 2000, Greece's reception system was made up of a plethora of different detention-like sites which could be set up practically anywhere: in regular police cells or at police or border guard stations, as well as in yards and other improvised facilities adapted for this purpose.

This frst period, which we consider key in the creation of the reception system, was characterised by complex mobilities. During that period, frontline states as well as EU institutions were concerned primarily with what they termed 'irregular crossings.' These were the object of statistics and analyses aimed at controlling and channelling them by means of established policies. However, these policies and mechanisms of control provoked other types of crossing such as push-backs, deportations and returns. These last mobilities remained unnamed in the narratives of the different stakeholders (policy makers and practitioners) who designed the constant cycle of departure and deportation that Kasparek (2016a) refers to.

The spatial patterns traced by this constant cycle highlight the interplay between departure and return, between irregular and unnamed mobility. That mobility which was observed in border areas, provoked by returns and push-backs, remained unnamed. The same is true of the perpetual to-and-from Italian ports which was induced by the mechanisms of control implemented at Italian and Greek ports. Two further forms of mobility that went unnamed are the transfers of migrants to holding facilities –dispersed across Greece– and the roaming itineraries of those released from these holding facilities.

During the frst key period, a vast number of places such as encampments, transit areas, 'jungles' and so on, became visible within the (social, political and media) daily life of different countries. And in a broader sense, camps or encampments have become the places of everyday life for tens of millions of people around the world (Agier, 2014).

In Greece, such infrastructures started to develop during this period in the context of overlapping displacements. The grassroots manifestation of this sequence of movements was the proliferation of different types of enclaves of precarity in various urban and peri-urban areas. The spontaneous makeshift camps of *Patras* and *Igumenitsa* –port cities that border the Adriatic– constitute such an example. In these, migrants organised their daily lives as a response to the blocking of their onwards mobility to Italian shores. The camp of *Patras* in particular, had a very long

life as it was established at the beginning of 2000 and was fnally demolished only in June of 2009. Starting as a small settlement, it evolved into a large camp inside the city.2 In Athens, migrants who found themselves in limbo took shelter in overcrowded apartments and squatted buildings. In addition, public squares and other public spaces were precariously inhabited by homeless migrants for short periods of time.

As noted above, in the early 2000s, there was no centrally organised reception plan, neither in policy nor in practice, for dealing with 'new-arrivals.' Nevertheless, the grassroots spaces produced by the sequence of movements as in the cases of *Patras* and *Igumenitsa*, manifested different subversive practices. These rendered reception more inclusive and in a sense challenged migrants' state of waiting and the transit character of the places that hosted them. In *Patras,* migrants transformed city spaces into an important stage in their itinerary, thereby forming atypical urban constellations, that is to say, ephemeral confgurations with a permanent character. Such urban confgurations provoked the emergence of solidarity initiatives at the local, national and European levels. According to Hole (2012), activist groups were involved in migrants' struggles in *Patras* and, rather than giving rise to a coherent solidarity movement, they forged a complex space made up of competing political voices.

One could view the intermediary space of reception as being built, during this long period, by diverse negotiations for the location of migrants' informal settlements between, on the one hand, those living in the camps and the different solidarity initiatives that supported them, and, on the other hand, the various manifestations of anti-migrant sentiment by municipal/national authorities and some locals. These negotiations occurred during a period in which reception did not even exist as a package of measures and practices, and instead a handful of detention facilities were operating as explained above. Migrants and grassroots initiatives, were increasingly treated with hostility by the Greek governments and public authorities, implementing harsh austerity measures.

In December 2008, the murder of a secondary school student by a special unit police offcer in central Athens sparked weeks of civil unrest across the country (see Vradis & Dalakoglou, 2011). This event triggered the emergence of an underlying discontent that existed on multiple levels. State narratives and practice approached youth protests as a problem of lawlessness in Athens' central districts. Along the same lines, the government and media stigmatised migrants, qualifying them as a 'health bomb' in the city centre (Filippidis, 2013). Emblematic of this attitude was the 'witch hunt' against HIV positive sex workers (many of whom where migrants) in downtown Athens initiated by the then Health Minister *Andreas Loverdos*. 3 Equally representative of the period is *Antonis Samaras'* (*Nea Dimokratia*) key statement, made during a pre-election rally, on the issue of migration in Greece:

2For more on this see Hole, 2012; Lafazani, 2013; Teloni, 2011.

3Sex workers picked up on the streets of Athens where arrested and detained, while mainstream media stigmatised them by broadcasting their photos.

'We shall reoccupy our cities and our neighborhoods…And the feeling of security shall be reinstated among their residents' (Filippidis, 2013).

It was in this climate that, between 2008 and 2012, the practice of 'zero tolerance' was extended to also include intensifed police raids on makeshift camps, together with what are known as 'sweep operations' in central Athens, *Patras* and *Igumenitsa*, amongst others. In June 2009, the makeshift camp in *Patras* was demolished by the police and municipality. In May 2011, police raids resulted in the dismantling of the *Igumenitsa* 'jungle.' From August 2012 onwards, police raids were more centrally coordinated under operation '*Xenios Dias'*. The name of the operation draws from the Greek mythology, and refers to the hospitable *Zeus*; therefore, coordinated police raid operations in the government's narrative were conceived as operations of hospitality. This describes in the most cynical way certain aspects of the management of migrant mobility (and thus, certain aspects of the reception practices) of that era.

However, the hesitant introduction of a formal reception system occurred after pressure of international and humanitarian agencies. Between 2010 and 2014, varied measures were taken in an effort to transform informal reception practices into an institutional system of governance for channelling migrant mobility. Greece became the object of severe criticism for its non-existent asylum system, arbitrary detentions and inhuman reception conditions for migrants.4 In early 2010, the Greek government took steps to take asylum procedures out of police hands. Law 3907/2011 aimed to respond to criticisms of arbitrary detention by creating new structures called 'frst reception centres,' along with new detention facilities and asylum services. It was during this period that both the concept and institution of 'frst reception' initially appeared. The contradictory reshaping and expansion of this system took place after 2015 amidst the turmoil of political events regarding the fate of the bailout agreements and international concerns for the escalation of migrant mobility during this period.

#### **10.4 The Post-2015 Period: The Contradictions of Reception, Refolding Humanitarianism and 'Transfolding' Solidarity**