LIVING IN THE EUROPEAN BORDERLANDS: REPRESENTATION, HUMANITARIAN WORK, AND INTEGRATION IN TIMES OF “CRISES” IN GREECE

Michail-Chrysovalantis Markodimitrakis

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2021

Committee:

Susana Peña, Advisor

Erin Felicia Labbie Graduate Faculty Representative

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Radhika Gajjala

Michaela Walsh

© 2021

Michail C. Markodimitrakis

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Susana Peña, Advisor

The migration flows that peaked during the 2015-2016 “refugee crisis” have had long- lasting effects to the countries of the European South. The latter have been deemed as border wardens of the European Union, filtering the “undesirables” who pose a threat to the European

North, and by extension a proclaimed “Western way of life.” This project examines the living conditions of displaced persons and the systems of support in place for them in the European borderlands of Greece, with a case study of Crete. Starting from an archival ethnography and textual analysis of the “crisis” in an institutional archive, the ethnographic research focuses on the experiences of humanitarian workers and displaced persons on the island of Crete, where reception programs for asylum seekers and refugees run since 2017. Through in-depth ethnographic interviews with six (6) displaced persons and (24) humanitarian workers, the project analyzes the views, experiences, and strategies employed by humanitarian workers in protection and assistance programs for asylum seekers and refugees that dominate the Greek borderlands. Moreover, the focus on the constant categorization of beneficiaries by Greek and

European authorities affects State policies and fieldwork daily, shaping the views of the displaced persons about themselves, their relationship to authorities, and the local community.

The present research finds that in Greece the nature of services offered is temporary, without any policies for the future, even though participants acknowledge that migration flows towards

Europe through Greece will only increase in the future. The lack of integration policies results in further reinforcing the role of Greece as a country-intermediary stop for displaced persons coming to Europe, offering few incentives for displaced persons to stay; in successful cases of integration, neighborhood communities have been critical in covering systemic deficiencies. iv

With no consideration, no pity, no shame, they have built walls around me, thick and high. And now I sit here feeling hopeless. I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind— because I had so much to do outside. When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed! But I never heard the builders, not a sound. Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world. — C.P Cavafy v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A dissertation that investigates the experiences of displaced people would not be possible without the persons themselves. I am forever indebted to the persons that trusted me with their experiences, their friendships. Not everything they told me made it into the final version of the text, but their perspectives have been critical throughout the process of researching and writing. I would also like to thank the humanitarian workers and administrators that talked to me about

their strategies and struggles while working with displaced persons under a State that has

progressively become hostile to those defending and promoting human rights.

Working in the borders of Europe is challenging and requires expert guidance. I feel extremely privileged to have worked with Dr. Susana Peña as my supervisor. The online meetings we had while I was in the Greek field were often my only contact with the academic world and a source of encouragement when things looked bleak, especially during the pandemic.

I would also like to thank the rest of the committee members: Dr. Anagnostou, Dr. Labbie, Dr

Gajjala, and Dr. Michaela Walsh took the time to read the manuscript and provide valuable feedback which I think about deeply as I move forward. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Sridevi

Menon: our discussions set the foundations for this project, and helped me start the journey of

this research.

The American Culture Studies Department and the wonderful people working in it have

been extremely supportive to this project. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Andrew Schocket and

Dr. Kim Coates, my American Culture Studies Department Chairs for their institutional support.

They had my back throughout the whole process of leaving the coziness of the Department to go in the field for more than two years. The present research would not be possible if it weren’t for vi

the support of the Stoddard and O’Neill fund from the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at

BGSU.

Finally, I want to thank my friends and family. A dissertation often makes a person grumpy and miserable, isolating them from those close to them. I hope I did not become

insufferable to them. If there was one thing that kept me grounded and full of energy, it was the

community theatre groups I was part of while conducting research in Crete. Who knew that

playing Thenardier would help me channel my frustrations with the Javerts of our world.

vii

PROLOGUE

Perimenete ligo [Wait a minute]. My grandmother knows the woman does not understand a word she says, yet she hopes her gesture will give the Afghani mother, with three children around her, the right message. The woman recently learned the words Ti kanete [how are you], although observing the interaction I doubt she understands the meaning of the phrase, other than the ritualistic repetition, a speech act of kindness she has observed whenever the phrase is spoken towards her. I stand aside as my grandmother slowly gathers a dozen of eggs and a box of sugar, puts them in a bag, and gives them to her. I try to make conversation, but neither she nor her children understand the words I say: “school,” “need,” “are you doing ok,” all are met with visible confusion. I resort to guessing their ethnicity, and they seem happy I guessed correctly that they are from Afghanistan. As they leave, I ask my grandmother about them, only to find out this ritual happens every other day; they can only exchange few words and nods, but understanding need and a mother’s plight does not require verbal communication from my grandmother. She often says the “prosfiges” [refugees as a blanket category] remind her of the survivors of the Viannos and Anogeia massacres1 after WWII, dwelling in Crete’s cities for food and provisions before they departed for their destroyed villages. Ever since she was young, a part of her upbringing has been to offer whatever she can to those in need, a Cretan form of hospitality that she instilled to me as well. Yet five minutes later she would complain about the

Albanian woman that helps her with housekeeping, “Is that what they learned in their country?

They take too many liberties here.” The domestic workers profession is a heavily gendered one, practiced predominantly by women from Balkans and countries from Caucasus (Georgia and

1 Anogeia and Viannos were Greek villages in Crete, destroyed by Nazi death squads during WWII as retribution for the guerilla forces that were fighting against the German occupation forces. In both cases the Nazi squads massacred the local population and scorched the land, destroying everything in their path. viii

Armenia). The women often face discrimination and are suspected of dubious behavior, suffering from disparaging stereotypes associated with low education and petty crimes. The categorization of the “xenoi” [foreigners] is not a “privilege” of the Greek State: although Greece prides itself on being hospitable and for its long history of multicultural interactions, it is also a country whose citizens routinely exhibit a strong xenophobic nationalistic pride that reminds other people living and working in Greece that they do not belong: discrimination has deep roots in Greek society.

The issue of language and verbal communication is a dominant issue with reception programs in Greece, as the COVID-19 pandemic has halted human interaction, limiting opportunities for immersive language learning. Even before the pandemic though, on a neighborhood level it was rarely easy for the newcomers from “other” countries to find ways to communicate with those around them. In Crete this shortcoming is mitigated by the intimacy of the one-to-one encounters: pressing as it might feel for a person that comes from more “discreet” cultures, in Crete it is customary to know and interact with the neighbors, developing strong communal ties. Staying true to those ties, my grandmother acts based on the principles of hospitality: she feels she is obliged to help, and based on her account, so do other neighbors. At the same time, this performance of hospitality is not contradictory to disparaging views about other categories of displaced persons she sees as xenoi (foreigners). This dissertation examines contradictions like the previous on a community and systemic level and helps unpack them in the context of the culture and geography of Crete.

Although I feel I am far from my grandmother’s way of classifying “foreigners,” I also see that in the early stages of this project I had a simplistic understanding of the displaced persons’ experiences: I tended to perceive the displaced as people needing help. When I came ix

back from the United States to study the Greek “refugee crisis,” I planned to volunteer at the

islands of the borderline. In 2015-2016, there was a wave of solidarity from academics, young

volunteers in Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), humanitarian organizations, and most of

the Greek society, all trying to do their best to accommodate the displaced and uprooted that

passed, in unprecedented numbers through the Greek space in the last century, escaping war

from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and neighboring regions. The images of people drowning at sea,

fishermen finding clothes and body parts in their nets, and tourists seeing survivors from the

wreckage washing up on the beaches are only some of the news stories I would read, and I

wanted to help. In retrospect, I consider myself lucky that my department funded me through a

fellowship to attend a training program about media representation of refugees in Berlin in 2017

and a summer school on “Cultures and Migration” in Lesvos in 2019. Particularly in the second,

I met several junior researchers and esteemed scholars, especially in the field of European

Border Studies. Previously, in 2017, I had participated in Berlin in discussions with media

experts and journalists about the coverage of news and the perceptions created from choices in

words, terms, and social media strategies. Berlin, as the capital of the country that exerts the most influence in the European Union (EU) presented me with the opportunity to learn more about the importance of public perceptions about the “refugee crisis,” particularly as they are formed by news and narratives coming from Greece and its borders. My experience in Lesvos,

the quintessential laboratory of border politics and policies in the Mediterranean, along with my

engagement there in lively discussions with academics in the same and adjacent fields and their

critical approaches have heavily influenced this dissertation. Attending intensive seminars from

scholars that problematize humanistic research with people in a precarious position brought to

my attention the issues of representation in my own work, especially in the process of voicing x the “voiceless,” those whose viewpoints have often been left out from mainstream media narratives and public discourse. Moving away from a simplistic view of “people needing help,” I learned to challenge “stable” categories and legal definitions and look for the people that fall in the cracks of bureaucracy, with multiple identities and differing needs. Thus, since beginning of this project I constantly reflect on the danger of a sensationalist approach of the “refugee crisis,” as my experience in Lesvos, which is teeming with researchers studying the populations at the reception camps, has helped me see how said approaches only contribute to short term relief efforts, leaving underlying systemic issues such as indefinite detainment and access to the means of unmediated advocacy unaddressed.

In the past decade, the Mediterranean Sea has become a graveyard for thousands of immigrants and refugees, with a mortality rate ten times larger than the US-Mexico border.

Images of death and the narrative of the “refugee crisis” destabilizes the economically strained

European borderlands, disrupting the stereotypical images of an idyllic Sea with cosmopolitan islands where rich north Europeans and north Americans spend their summers. The displaced populations currently in Southern European countries face an indefinite detainment where they currently reside: journalists’ reports and photographic evidence of detention centers, discriminatory policies, and hate speech/violence incidents raise questions about how the displaced people that now reside in Europe and the periphery warden-States are portrayed, managed, and treated both in life and in death. In the past five years the displaced population flows have been significantly reduced due to the expansion of the EU borders (through third state agreements with Libya and Turkey) and the increased policing of the maritime passageways with increased manpower and technological apparatus. For EU countries such as Italy and Greece, the political decisions that have led to reduced flows of ‘irregular migrants’ have stirred controversy xi over human rights violations and how on both EU and national levels humanitarianism and border control are to be understood and acted upon.

As I travelled through a fellowship with Humanity in Action in Netherlands and the EU

Parliament in Strasbourg, I came to understand through first-hand experience that there is something very troubling about the way the world perceives the European and Greek borders. I had already suffered in the past decade whenever I found myself in the Global North from the negative stereotypes against Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain (PIGS), blamed for the financial crisis Europe went through in the 2010s and receiving colonialist comments from drunken tourists in my island: “I have paid with my taxes for this. I own it,” is a comment I heard at a beach in 2018 from a Dutch tourist that I cannot easily forget. Yet I also started noticing that a visible change came after the EU-Turkey Statement in 2016. This Agreement resulted in curbing migrant flows, with Turkey functioning as a buffer State: the “refugee crisis” transformed into a

Greek problem, one to be solved with the aid of the European Union members, but also now understood as a localized phenomenon. Greek islands transformed into prisons for the incoming displaced persons, who could only move towards the mainland if they were granted asylum or deemed “vulnerable,” and thus accommodated into one of the (highly selective) relief programs in place. Given the concentration of the border crisis and the decline in numbers of migrants entering the EU, border challenges gradually became a pressing concern only for the countries that are Europe’s border passages towards the South and the East: Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece, and Cyprus. These border countries have had multicultural communities for centuries, often with repressive, racist policies of their own; however they are now also required to formally serve the role of a border warden, sponsored by the European North to filter out—detain and deport— those deemed “undesirable” and only allow the “desirable” workforce to move through. Living xii

in the European South, thousands of displaced persons live often in “invisibility,” outside State

control and regulation, susceptible to exploitation in their workplace; others choose to adopt to the cultures of the places they live in and attempt to assimilate, a process that is often easier if their skin tone is similar to that of locals, as they stand out less. The complex intercultural interactions of European borderlands are shaped by both media perceptions and political debates, showing the liquid meaning of what is perceived as the “border” and the “borderlands.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION: DISPLACEMENT IN THE GREEK BORDERLANDS ...... 1

Background Information ...... 3

Significance ...... 10

Theoretical Framework and Literature Review ...... 13

. Borders in American Culture ...... 13

..The Case of European Border Studies ...... 17

..The European Borderscapes and Borderlands ...... 20

..The Greek Space ...... 25

..Refugee, Migrant, Or..? ...... 28

..Nation, Society, the Other ...... 32

..“Crises” in Greece and Beyond ...... 34

Methods ...... 36

...... The Participants ...... 37

...... The Field ...... 40

...... Data Analysis and Positionality...... 42

Limitations ...... 44

Chapter Breakdown ...... 46

CHAPTER 1: WHAT DOES A “CRISIS” LOOK LIKE? REPRESENTING THE DISPLACED

IN INSTITUTIONAL ARCHIVES ...... 49

Lesvos: The Laboratory of the “Refugee Crisis” ...... 49

Reporting (and Remembering) the “Crisis” ...... 56

The Observatory and Repository ...... 59 xiv

The Observatory ...... 59

The Repository ...... 61

The Repository Authorities ...... 62

The Purpose ...... 63

The Language ...... 65

Content Present and Voices Absent ...... 67

From the Repository to the Observatory ...... 72

Constructing the “Crisis” ...... 75

Conclusion ...... 80

CHAPTER 2: FROM LESVOS TO CRETE, SEARCHING FOR HOME(S) ...... 83

Actors in Iraklion ...... 97

Visibility ...... 107

Conclusion ...... 117

CHAPTER 3: THE MOVING GOALPOSTS OF HUMANITARIAN WORK: LIQUID

FIELDWORK AND PERCEPTIONS OF ASSISTANCE IN CRETE AND BEYOND ...... 121

Reception ...... 123

Strategic Choices and “Biopolitics of Hospitality” ...... 125

Deciding to Stay—Continuing the Journey ...... 132

Navigating Services ...... 139

“Mia Malakia kai Misi” [A Bunch of Bullshit]: Insufficient and Shifting State

Support ...... 146

Decision Making ...... 150 xv

Emotions and Fatigue ...... 156

“Integration” and “Learning the Ways of the World and Other People” ...... 158

Conclusion ...... 163

CHAPTER 4: FINDING HOME: LIVING IN (THE MARGINS OF) CRETAN

COMMUNITIES ...... 166

Searching for Home ...... 167

Living in Crete ...... 178

Racism and Standing Out ...... 178

Life Outside Work ...... 186

Conclusion ...... 200

CONCLUSION: A GREEK STATE OF IMPERMANENCE ...... 203

From Greek Scums to the Greek Wardens ...... 204

American Studies and the Greek Border ...... 206

Crete as a Border Community ...... 213

Crete and “Integration” ...... 214

The Case of Iraklion ...... 216

Future Research ...... 221

Proposed Policy Changes ...... 223

Humor in the Face of Adversity ...... 225

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 228

APPENDIX A: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVAL ...... 244

APPENDIX B: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD ONLINE CONSENT FORMS ...... 245

APPENDIX C: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD ON-SITE CONSENT FORMS ...... 249 xvi

APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW TOOLS ...... 253 xvii

LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page

1 Frontex Map of the Migratory Routes...... 4

2 Map of the Schengen and EU Countries in 2021...... 19

3 The Topic Categories of the Refugee Observatory...... 60

4 The Topic Categories in the Refugee Depository ...... 70

5 Iraklion, Timpaki, and Mires ...... 89 xviii

LIST OF TABLES Table Page

1 Information of Displaced Persons Interviewed ...... 39 1

INTRODUCTION: DISPLACEMENT IN THE GREEK BORDERLANDS In this dissertation I study the living conditions of uprooted people and systems of support in place for them in the European borders of Greece, with a case study of Crete. Starting from the representation in institutional archives of displaced people in the Greek borders in the island of Lesvos, I then conduct an ethnography of Iraklion, Crete, paired with interviews with humanitarian workers and displaced people living in Crete. Throughout the research I use the term “displaced” and “uprooted” to describe inclusively all persons from other countries that live in the Greek space, irrespective of their legal status. In the case study of Iraklion, I investigate how representatives from State and civil society organizations provide relief and assistance to their beneficiaries, while facing their own preconceptions and systemic issues, often set forth by the Greek State. I argue that the reception programs for asylum seekers and refugees, the second step after the provision of immediate relief the Greek borders, train the beneficiaries of international assistance towards a Westernized way of life that would allow them to assimilate into the North European communities to which they wish to travel. My interviews with professionals working in the humanitarian sector uncover strategies of navigating the bureaucracy and the limitations of humanitarian system of assistance provision; the interviewees also discuss their motivation, role, and the distinct case of Crete. On the other side of the reception services, through ethnographic in-depth interviews with displaced persons I discuss their living experiences, their (limited) access to State support, the job market, socialization, and housing. With a humanitarian service industry oriented around the “refugee,” the project examines how the temporary character of protection and assistance programs for “beneficiaries” dominate the Greek humanitarian sector, affecting State policies and fieldwork daily, while shaping the views of the displaced persons about themselves and their relationship to authorities and the local community. 2

The dissertation contributes to Border Studies scholarship about Greece which mostly focuses on islands on the Greek borderline (Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros, Kos), the northern borders until the Balkan route closed in 2017, and the two largest urban centers which also function as transit sites (Athens and Thessaloniki). Instead, the present study shifts attention to places outside of the spotlight of ‘border crisis’ and with much smaller and dispersed displaced populations. Specifically, I focus on Crete which officially hosts 1000 asylum seekers, but also more than 50.000 displaced persons with varied legal status. Although Crete is technically considered part of the Greek “mainland,” it is arguably a geographical European border given that it is an island that lies to the north of Libya and Egypt, west of Turkey, and east of Italy. I investigate how intercultural encounters take place in places that are not included in narratives of

“refugee and migrant crises,” but still belong to a country recognized as a European borderland. I argue that Crete, while distanced from the immediate borderline with Turkey, is indeed part of the Greek borderland, as policies of detainment, relief, security, and control expand the border beyond the most commonly used migration paths.

The project asks

- How does an institutional archive contribute to the meaning of the term “refugee crisis”

and the construction of public memory in the Aegean islands?

- What does the “refugee crisis” mean for locations outside what is considered the

immediate borderscape of Greece? What is the infrastructure for displaced people in

Crete and how has it changed in the past decade? What is the impact of the distinct

integration strategy developed in Crete? 3

- What is the role of humanitarian workers in providing assistance to their beneficiaries?

What are the challenges they face, their opinion of the services provided, and the

strategies they use to overcome systemic issues and shortcomings?

- What are the challenges displaced people face in Crete? What do they think about the

island, the local community, and their future? What does Crete mean to them?

Background Information

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as FRONTEX, sees three migratory routes through the Mediterranean: (1) the Western Mediterranean route, mainly used by people wanting to cross to Spain through land and sea; (2) the Central Mediterranean route, which usually means sea transportation from Libya to Italy; and (3) the Eastern Mediterranean route, involving several Balkan countries inside and outside the EU. The latter, which is the main geographical focus of my project, is the one most difficult to police due to geographical and legal complexities, despite the extensive FRONTEX forces deployed in the area, NATO operations, and the involved countries’ coastguard efforts.

4

Fig. 1. Map of the Migratory Routes. Frontex (FRAN Q4,2018)

The “Eastern Mediterranean route” geographically presents both a challenge and an opportunity for authorities that want to deter migratory flows. For example, the Eastern route is challenging to police because of geographical and political complications (difficult terrain, multiple international jurisdictions). However, it also provides an opportunity to imprison/trap those crossing because the distance between the Greek islands and the mainland is not easy to cover with small boats, as the Aegean Sea is full of islands, increasing the chances of being intercepted before reaching mainland.

The “Fortress Europe” doctrine, named by its critics, enacted in its current form post

9/11, is the sum of regulations and legislation on EU and national levels designed to halt or slow down the incoming migrant fluxes to Northern Europe by limiting movement of people from the

Southern European countries or making the crossing to those countries from third non-EU States 5

(such as Turkey, Morocco, Libya, and to a lesser extent Egypt) as difficult as possible. Between the coasts of Turkey and the Greek mainland lie two thousand islands; of those, five have surfaced as major drop-off points for smugglers and people crossing: Lesvos, Leros, Chios,

Samos, and Kos. In accordance with an agreement between EU and Turkey, reception centers or

“hotspots” were established at those islands to deter (through notorious living conditions) and identify displaced persons. These “hotspots” which were introduced in March 2015 did significantly reduce the flow of migrants via this route, which had been used by more than half a million people between 2011and 2015 to reach Europe. However, the “hotspot” approach also overflowed these islands with people stranded at reception centers that look more like open prisons and have an adverse effect on local communities that were already struggling with the post-2008 financial crisis that hit Greece. By the time COVID-19 reached Greece in 2020, the

Greek islands of Leros, Samos, Lesvos, and Chios had overpopulated reception centers; in the case of Lesvos, the ratio of migrants/refugees to locals was 1:3. During the pandemic the displaced population at the Greek islands has been reduced by almost 50% in relation to 2019, due to a 90% drop in migration flows and the continuous illegal pushbacks of the Greek Coast

Guard. The living conditions of the displaced persons stranded at the islands has not improved.

Lesvos, the island on the Greek borderline that is also part of my ethnography, is notorious for the harsh living conditions it “provides” for displaced persons stranded there. Its detention centers host and detain asylum applicants well beyond their capacity. Despite an international consensus of NGOs, state actors, EU observers, and international media that recognize the despicable living conditions, little to nothing has been accomplished to improve them, as the sluggish bureaucracy, the continuous flow of applicants (albeit reduced due to the

COVID-19 pandemic) and the limited amount of government and UNHCR accommodation 6 capacity makes this a case of a borderscape: a border landscape with complex spatial, legal, and conceptual character, part of the Greek borderland that is consciously (by state and EU actors) kept in its current condition.

For those that go through the very long and time-consuming process of bureaucracy and interviews with authorities to gain the status of a refugee or subsidiary protection,1 the next step

is to be transferred to the Greek mainland or other islands considered “mainland,” such as the

one I come from (Crete). According to “Refugee Support Aegean,” a legal non-profit that

unpacks data from the Greek and European Asylum Services, the rate of recognition for first

instance asylum decisions (positive decisions for international protection with their first

application) in the first three quarters of 2020 is 64%, with an increase in subsidiary protection

mainly for Afghan nationals.2 The housing of refugees depends on how much money is allocated

to them from the local NGOs, the United Nations High Committee for Refugees (UNHCR), the

International Organization for Migration (IOM), the local government, and the central

government. In Athens and Thessaloniki, the two largest and most densely populated mainland

Greek cities, some refugees are hosted at apartments in the city, while others dwell at camps at

the outskirts of the urban grid in much harsher conditions. In contrast, in my primary research

site, Iraklion, the largest city in Crete, there are no refugee camps or detention centers.

Rather than establish camps, as Athens and Thessaloniki did, Crete in general and

Iraklion officials specifically, promoted a strategy that focused on urban “integration” of a

1 Subsidiary protection is to be understood differently from a refugee status. According to the European Council “The protection given to a non-EU national or a stateless person who does not qualify as a refugee, but in respect of whom substantial grounds have been shown to believe that the person concerned, if returned to his or her country of origin or, in the case of a stateless person, to his or her country of former habitual residence, would face a real risk of suffering serious harm and who is unable or, owing to such risk, unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country.” Migration and Home Affairs, “Subsidiary Protection.” https://ec.europa.eu/home- affairs/e-library/glossary/subsidiary-protection_en 2 “Asylum Statistics,” Refugee Support Aegean. 7 smaller number of refugees and asylum seekers. In the Greek context however, “integration” is a contested term, as there is no State policy in that direction: therefore, especially in the first years of accommodation programs, “integration” meant peaceful cohabitation with reduced visibility that would not agitate locals. Iraklion, the fourth largest city in Greece, is located on one of the biggest islands of the Mediterranean, Crete. The island is not traditionally considered part of the

East Mediterranean route that refugees and migrants choose when crossing from the East; the distance between Crete and Egypt is large enough to make trips with small inflatable speedboats precarious. Early on after the EU-Turkey Statement the regional director and local mayors made the decision to refuse the installation of refugee camps at the island. However, the mayors opted into the UNHCR and EU funded “Emergency Support to Integration & Accommodation

Programme” (ESTIA) and the “Hellenic Integration Support for Beneficiaries of International

Protection” (HELIOS) programs. The urban accommodation and cash assistance provided by these programs, along with the lesser numbers of migrants and refugees in comparison to continental Greece, provides me with a case study of attempted urban “integration.”

The term “integration,” as previously mentioned, is used quite gratuitously throughout the webpages of ESTIA and HELIOS, often concerning a small number of displaced persons in

Greece and Crete in particular. However, in its core the ESTIA program cannot provide opportunities for integration, as the services it provides are all oriented towards temporary relief, as Nikos Kourachanis also notes.3 Regarding the HELIOS program, while its goal is explicitly

the “integration of beneficiaries of international protection currently residing in accommodation

schemes into the Greek society,” it has severe limitations: two prominent include the previous

accommodation of applicants in housing programs or camps and their legal status as

3 Kourachanis, Refugee Housing Policies (trans.), 2019. 8

“beneficiaries of international protection” after January 1st, 2018, which make HELIOS a

program of a very limited scope, for a very limited timeframe of benefits provision: six (6) -

twelve (12) months.

“Integration” in the Greek context therefore means different things, depending on

multiple factors, including date of arrival in Greece, country of origin, and point of entry to the

Greek space. Access to the infrastructure developed in Greece by State and private actors and entities typically concerns those that have arrived in Greece post-2015, as the Greek State never showed particular interest for the displaced persons living in Greece before then, and the programs in place at the moment usually have arrival dates as prerequisites for the participation of beneficiaries. But even concerning those that arrived in Greece in the heat of the “refugee crisis,” few are fortunate enough to be selected for one of the UNHCR (ESTIA) and IOM

(HELIOS) programs, as the capacity of the programs is limited. The large majority of the displaced persons, especially post-2016, often never make it to sites like Iraklion; instead, they

spend most of their time in camps at the borders and/or camps around large urban centers, until

they “disappear.”

- A first category of “beneficiaries” thus includes those that have been granted temporary

international protection and wait for their asylum application to be reviewed, residing

either in a housing program (primarily ESTIA-funded if they are vulnerable) or at a

reception camp.

- A second category includes those that have been granted a status of international

protection, asylum as refugees or subsidiary protection, and are issued all the necessary

documents, including travel documents and residence permits for three and one years

respectively. They must leave camps and/or the ESTIA program within a month of the 9

decision and either provide for themselves or apply to the HELIOS integration program.

The majority of persons in this category can live and travel in Greece and the EU (with

restrictions depending on the state they choose to visit). The refugees are issued a three-

year residence permit in Greece, while the beneficiaries of subsidiary protection one year.

Most choose to travel to another EU country of the North.

- A third category, which usually concerns displaced persons living in Greece for extended

periods of time (often from Balkans and Pakistan), includes persons that entered Greece

through regular and irregular (without paperwork through checkpoints) means, and in the

course of their stay applied and obtained residence permits which give them legal access

to the Greek welfare system as well as health services and employment benefits.

- A fourth category of displaced persons includes those that have avoided detection by the

Greek authorities, living in a status of “invisibility” to the Greek law, often in precarious

conditions. In this category there are many persons belonging to the previous generations

of immigrants that have been here for the past twenty years.

Those currently in the process of applying for asylum are primarily from Syria and

Afghanistan, belonging to a wide variety of ethnic groups and speaking multiple languages.

There is a strong presence of people identifying as Kurdish, and research findings suggest a possible smuggling ring that brings people of that ethnicity specifically to Crete, bypassing the hot spots and reception screening. The island of Crete, which includes the city of Iraklion and the surrounding region, hosts a few thousand “invisible” displaced persons, primarily from Pakistan,

Iraq, and Afghanistan that arrived to the island after the 2003 Iraq and Afghanistan US invasion.

Through discussions with local actors, it became apparent that those “invisible” undocumented people became more visible through their application for monetary support from the local 10

UNHCR chapter, until the latter’s presence was concluded in the third trimester of 2019. The

“invisible” displaced persons primarily make a living through undocumented, tax-free (they do not pay taxes), insurance-free agricultural work, often in horrible living conditions.

Significance

Discourses of forced migration, containment, returns, and “integration” are volatile issues in many regions of the world. The purported “refugee crisis” in the EU has not been addressed on a central level by the EU body, but instead has been subject to national policies, defeating the point and purpose of a political and economic structure and experiment such as the one of the

“European Union.” Drawing from semi-structured interviews, digital archives, and the ethnographic case study of Iraklion, I show how the lack of political will, conservative views on an international scale, and racist discourses perpetuated by media are translated in the everyday practice of humanitarian work. Most often policies of immediate relief which are perceived as positive reveal an absence of long-term planning. For the Greek State that consciously lacks integration policies, the humanitarian workers’ views and experiences can be a starting point to reflect on the services offered and the persons providing them, the connection of social welfare policies to the needs of the displaced persons, and the influence of xenophobia and protectionism in the public discourse that affects the quality of said services.

The present research also examines dynamics of coexistence and transculturation among displaced persons and Greeks in Cretan communities. The majority of scholarship in European

Border Studies concerns places like Lesvos and Lampedusa, which are points of entry to Europe, or urban spaces that often function as transit sites. Crete on the other hand, while technically a

European border, is not a preferred point of entry for displace persons. Instead, Crete is often a secondary destination for displaced persons who choose to live on the island for an extended 11 period, pulling in turn other displaced persons who find support systems in place for them. The project thus sheds light on persons and communities impacted by the “refugee crisis,” revealing already-existing and forming communities of displaced persons outside the immediate attention of State and media, with limited presence in present academic research. Displaced persons in places such as Crete see the effects of humanitarian governance in their daily life and encounters with authorities and civil actors: “immediate relief” and “short-term support” organizations are formed, border control policies are enacted, all allowing for the discovery of threads connecting

Crete with the islands on the Greek borderline and their governance practices. On an international scale, Crete and Greece as European borderlands contribute significantly to the construction of the stereotyped image of the “refugee,” as the latter often lack access to media representation, and their stories are cherry-picked, co-opted, and presented by relief organizations as “successful” case studies of humanitarian intervention.

The present research also highlights the role of the views and practices of humanitarian workers, volunteers, and administrators who all are the immediate actors of the humanitarian landscape in Crete. The discussions with professionals tasked with providing social, educational, and mental health support further contribute to scholarship regarding the power dynamics between the benefactor and the beneficiary and the ethical complications of advocacy and service provision. Their views and strategies of mitigating systemic issues are particularly relevant to humanitarian workers and researchers that have to deal with a State that has gradually adopted a xenophobic position, such as Greece’s current stance.

The significance of the research for the fields of Cultural and Border Studies is twofold.

On the one hand it reveals details about the processes of detainment and relocation/integration of refugees and asylum seekers in EU borderlands and the challenges present in communities that 12 have been multicultural for years while following assimilation models that have been hostile to previous generations of displaced populations. On the other hand, the interviews with humanitarian workers and the displaced can show the different perceptions of the role of the

Greek State and the Greek society, challenging cultural stereotypes of “hospitality” and revealing how the performance of hospitable policies is exhausted in short term relief, as there is an absence of future planning for displaced populations living in the Greek space. The dissertation also positions the humanitarian worker at the borderlands as a critical actor in the displaced people’s experience; often the worker can make all the difference between a beneficiary receiving social services or assistance at a hospital, or a beneficiary receiving no support due to the indifference and hostility of a State employee.

The case study will fill an important gap in the literature. While most scholarship has focused on islands on the Greek border line and the two large urban centers, which also function as transit sites, this study shifts the focus to geographical sites further inside the national territory. As Crete is the only administrative region in Greece without any reception camps that hosts displaced persons, I analyze in the present research the particular relocation and integration model of Crete. I investigate how intercultural encounters (with positive and negative repercussions) make themselves visible in locations and spaces often thought to be both away from imminent sites of “crises” but still belonging to a country that in effect functions as a part of a (contained) borderland for the rest of the EU. I argue that Crete, while not located on the geographical border with Turkey, is part of the Greek borderland, as policies of detainment, relief, security, and control expand the border beyond the most often used migration paths.

Finally, this study becomes even more urgent as Greece still lacks a comprehensive integration policy for the displaced populations living in the Greek space. The planned expansion 13 of detention camps in several parts of mainland Greece and the systematic/systemic characterization of Lesvos as a European case study on effective EU migration policy despite the deplorable living conditions for displaced persons and locals’ intense negative attitudes against the overflowed and ill-equipped reception camps and their inhabitants, transform Greece into a

State that becomes a warden for the European North, along with countries in the Mediterranean in similar geographic positions.

Theoretical Framework and Literature Review

Borders in American Culture

Research in the field of Cultural Studies concerned with border communities often starts with the theoretical work conducted in Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Robert Alvarez Jr. provides an overview of borderland studies and significantly helps connect the epistemological threads between border studies in the US and Europe. Alvarez Jr. argues that despite the existence of hundreds of political borders, the idea of borderlands as an area of study was produced primarily from the work done by social scientists along the Mexican-U.S. political boundary.4 The scholar

describes the border as transforming into an “icon and model” for research into other borders and

border communities,5 challenging scholars to use comparative ethnographic research to identify

the parallels and differences between different geographical sites: in my case US-Mexico

borderlands and European borderlands. The challenge of defining a “border culture”6 is one also

anticipated in this study, as well as the dilemma of talking about “borderlands” in both “literal”

and “a-literal” (metaphorical, outside the geographical region of the borderlands but still affected by its dividing lines) ways without diminishing the effect of either on the people navigating and

4 Alvarez Jr., “The Mexican-Us Border,” 449. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid, 450. 14 living in them, while presenting an accurate ethnographic and research project.7 Discussing the

cultural implications of community interactions in borderlands, I have in mind the term as it

appears in the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa. The hybridity of identities and cultures described in

Anzaldúa’s work is not something I anticipated to directly deal with before my ethnography in

Lesvos and Crete. However, the scholar’s description of borderlands as a “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary…a constant state of transition” with “prohibited and forbidden”8 inhabitants have been present in legal texts,

everyday practices, and the lived experiences of my interviewees, workers, and civilians alike.

Studying the narratives of “vulnerability” and the medicalization of the discourse that contributes to this categorization, Alexandra Stern highlights the historical significance of the medicalization of the US-Mexican border, revealing the role of borderlands as a purported mechanism to protect against threats to public health and safety by US governments. Describing the unique (in relation to Ellis an Angel islands) quarantine and decontamination process,9 Stern argues that the pathologization of Mexicans represented “an extension of the association of immigrants with disease into new racial and metaphorical terrain,” which was then applied to other groups of immigrants entering the United States.10 A similar rhetoric is employed in

contemporary debates about borders in the US also appears in the EU: the current chair of the

Athens Medical Association has issued public warnings against refugees and migrants at

reception camps stating that they carry epidemic diseases, such as Ebola; during the pandemic

the detention of displaced people has intensified under the excuse of COVID-19 measures.11

7 Ibid, 449. 8 Anzaldua, Borderlands, 3. 9 Stern, Eugenic Nation, 62. 10 Ibid, 67. 11 Bregianni, “Patoulis diagnosed…Ebola.” 15

The borderland as the physical place that produces differences and cultures also materializes far from the geographical lines though, and becomes the metaphorical place for erasure and assimilation. Susan Coutin, studying the US-Mexico territory describes the term

“borderland” as “a space of nonexistence.”12 This space, she argues, excludes people, limits

rights, restricts services, and erases personhood, transforming the borderland to a space of subjugation to a great extent. For Coutin, living in the borderlands means both invisibility to the

law and simultaneously a freedom to act irrespective of it. An example of this “freedom” in the

Greek case can be those displaced who do not pay taxes or lack of engagement with Greek

bureaucracy. Speaking of nonexistence as a “space for illegality,” this study benefits from the

scholar’s examination of the expansion of the border outside the region the term describes:

Coutin’s conceptual definition of borderlands sheds light “on the nature and limitations of

dichotomies between globalization and localism, transnationalism and the nation-state, and law and the illicit.”13

Recognizing the role of the US as a trend-setter in global politics, David Brotherton and

Philip Katsedemas investigate how the Obama-era immigration policies affect global border

policies including border security, deportations, and larger immigration debates. While the

editors and authors recognize that it is still early to talk about the effect of Trump, they connect

the two presidents’ influence in terms of immigration policy priorities that are “articulated with

an agenda for market- based growth, global and domestic security, and international

diplomacy.”14 The editors and contributors of the collection open the question of the US influence on supranational perspectives on immigration and ask what the ramifications are for

12 Coutin, “Illegality,” 172. 13 Ibid, 193. 14 Brotherton and Katsedemas (eds.), Immigration Policy, 9. 16 the global migration status quo when the world’s “leading migration nation” loses faith in its own “mythology of immigration.”15 This study continuously investigates the relationship

between the US policies advertised through global media and on the ground responses by

interviewees and local media that set trends in the public opinion and politics. The question of

influence becomes imperative as the United States recognizes Greece as an important strategic

partner in South Mediterranean and has been consistently one of the major donors to

international assistance organizations.

Divided in five sections, a collection by Katja Franko Aas and Mary Bosworth deals with

immigration as a determinant factor in changes in criminal and refugee law, (border) policing

practices, and (im)mobility strategies targeting foreign populations in Europe, Australia, the US

and Canada.16 The latter speaks directly to parts of this research project, as the special detention

centers the authors discuss have been an intense subject of scrutiny in the Greek and EU context,

with their legality being continuously questioned, while their effectiveness is recognized by EU

and national actors: in many ways the detention camps that resemble open prisons are treated as

unavoidable strategy. The final two sections of the collection deal with expulsions and social

exclusion, two phenomena that are a reality for refugee and migrant populations as they live

under constant fear of having to forcefully return to the places from which they fled. Despite the

collection dealing mainly with criminal and immigration law, the project benefits from the

overview of the legal cultures presented and the intersection of debates on the right to pass and

the right to exist, in the context of a criminology of mobility. The collection informs the analysis

of temporary relief policies that are prevalent in the Greek space, but fail to account for future

15 Ibid. 16 Aas and Bosworth (eds.), The Borders of Punishment. 17 steps, leading displaced persons to social marginalization once they leave the protection of the programs, often ending up homeless or back in camps, dwelling as irregular guests there.

The Case of European Border Studies

‘Europe as borderland’ is not a solution or a prospect. It is, rather, a ‘fact,’

or a name for the accumulation of facts and problems that call for choices:

first of all, the choice to deny them or to acknowledge them.17

The “European” borders hold a particular place in Border Studies due to their diverse

character and multiple actors involved. Even though they appear in media and EU narratives as a unified concept, they are in fact compiled by diverse geographic terrains, nations, laws, security practices, ideological approaches, preventive tactics, and even international partners. A source of this diversity of practices and laws is the nature of the European Union and its malleability:

Brexit for example redrew the Union’s borders, and some European State through inter-State agreements with countries belonging in other continents attempt to extend the European border to alleviate the perceived pressure from incoming displaced persons at their own doorstep. The

“Schengen Area,” an agreement in which twenty-six (26) European countries participate, dictates that all participants abolish all passport and other types of border control between their nations.

However, from time to time, European countries have suspended the agreement, citing

“emergencies” or “crises:” for instance Hungary suspended the Schengen Agreement in 2015, following the beginning of the displaced persons flows towards Germany’s short-term “open- border” response. Although talking about a “European” culture is an endeavor that is outside the scope of the present research, treating the concept of “Europe” similar to that of the “United

States” would be a fundamental misconception. There is sharp cultural, social, and economic

17 Étienne Balibar, “Europe as Borderland,” 2009. 18 divide between countries of the European North and those of the South, which manifests whenever there is a purported “crisis,” be that the 2010s debt “crisis” or the 2015 “refugee crisis.” In both these cases, many in the European North believed both the weight of immediate responsibility and reaction lay in countries of the European South. Paired with the colonial past of many European countries and neocolonial practices, such as austerity measures and paying off the Mediterranean countries to curb migratory waves, the “European” identity seems more like an ideological construct fueled by the needs of a strong economic union, rather than a need for a common (multi) cultural and political framework.

The use of the term “borderlands” in the European context differs from the American context in that (i) many of the current borderlines of European States have been shaped in the

20th century and (ii) many of the European States have strong ethnocentrism that constructs

“Others” both inside the European geographical space, in the form of ethnic conflicts and

geopolitical rivalries with financial motives, and outside in the form of external threats that

reproduce orientalist tropes of incoming threats that seek to destroy a “European way of life.” 19

Fig. 2. Map of the Schengen and EU Countries in 2021, schengenvisainfo.com 20

The map above that depicts the countries participating in the Schengen Agreement shows how the borders of the European Union are not necessarily the borders of what is considered

“Europe:” most of the Balkans do not partake in the free movement of persons, although some countries in the region are expected in the future to sign the relevant international agreements.

Thus the “European identity” is an elusive concept, shaped by the dominant political forces of the European Union, not the European continent: Russia, a large part of which geographically belongs to Europe, is rarely included in discussions of a “Europeanness.” Greece, often lauded as the “cradle of democracy,” is seen as the black sheep of the Union, understood as cashing in on its ancient history and cultural influence to counteract its limited political influence.

The European Borderscapes and Borderlands

Talking about the EU, or peripheral regions of it, as “borderlands” for this project requires not only following the tradition of American Studies, but also engaging with scholarship produced in Europe that discusses the term, such as Étienne Balibar and Michel Agier’s in the fields of social philosophy and anthropology respectively. Balibar, discussing border politics, argues that the “sacralization” and “absolutization” of the border transforms it to a property of the State.18 The population and its rights, Balibar notes, are primarily owned/represented by the

State: paradoxically, the State is also the “people’s” property. Therefore, the protection of said

properties, the border, and the State, become a national issue and a matter of national security.19

In the analysis of the peculiarities of the European space, Balibar notes that the constitutive

relationship between territory, population, and sovereignty is no longer taken for granted. Some

borders are reinforced (mainly the external ones due to migration and trafficking of goods and

persons), while others weakened (mainly internal due to fiscal exchanges, and the Schengen

18 Balibar, “Europe as Borderland,” 193. 19 Ibid. 21

Agreement). The complexity of the European project, with countries submitting voluntarily to supranational authorities (highest levels of judicial power, constitutional changes, fiscal policies just to name a few) while maintaining certain political and cultural markers of sovereignty

(military integration, police, border control) reveal a Union that is at the same time “invaded” and “protected” from the rest of the world.20 The antinomies and paradoxes of the EU, namely the deployment of FRONTEX to several borders of the EU, the establishment of buffer areas in certain countries, the strict monetary policies enforced across the EU, as well as the

dysfunctional Dublin agreement21 make this piece a cornerstone of understanding the ideology that preserves the precarious situation displaced persons are in during their stay in the

“periphery,” in an effort to protect the “center.”22

Balibar’s analysis of who gets to be “European” is significantly relevant to this

dissertation. The theorist writes that discourses of ‘European citizenship’ mean that people from

member-states of the EU are no longer “full foreigners” or “fully strange” to one another. In

stark contrast, people from “third States,” such as refugees and migrants, are strange to them.

However, even the category of the 'thirds' is also split, “because all the places of the world are

not equivalent from a European (or an American) point of view, in terms of security, economic

20 Ibid, 194. 21 The Dublin regulation (currently also commonly referred as Dublin III) defines which state has the obligation to process the asylum application of a person entering the European space. The way it works is that a person entering the European space has to have their asylum application processed by a “competent” State. For example. If a person enters Europe through Italy undetected and goes to Germany to apply for asylum, they will be returned to Italy to have their application processed. Another factor is the central data bank “Eurodac” where biometric data of all people presenting asylum cases are stored. Through this system a person that is registered for example in Greece cannot apply for asylum in any other EU country, even if that is their desire. The Dublin Regulation is currently suspended, which complicates migration routes and journeys because the Eurodac system is still in place. In theory at this point, a person entering Europe and not registered in Eurodac can apply for asylum wherever they desire, if they can make it to that country. Otherwise, they are trapped at the European country that processed them. The European Commission (one of the governing bodies of the EU) has admitted that the current Dublin Regulation is unsustainable in its current form. (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-18-5714_en.htm) 22 Balibar, “Europe as Borderland,” 198. 22 partnership, cultural difference, etc.”23 From the perspective of the European North, a “third”

could be a Bulgarian or Greek laborer, an Afghan refugee, or a Nigerian migrant: in terms of

legislation, the Greek laborer would have preferential treatment due to Schengen, with the

Afghan refugee due to their status also finding it easier to travel and work than the Bulgarian and

Nigerian nationals, who in turn would also have different treatment due to cultural prejudices

(Bulgaria is “corrupt”) and phenotype (racism) respectively. This shows that an ethnography of the European borderlands has to take into account the different categorizations of displaced persons based on their financial situation, their country of origin, their race/phenotype, the social

perceptions about that geographical region, their religion, political affiliation, and even their

desired country of destination.

The concept of “borderland” as it appears in Agier’s anthropological work in Europe and

Africa is useful for this project in connection with Anzaldúa’s studies in in the case of the US-

Mexico border. Agier, coming from anthropology defines “borderland” (2016) as a prolonged

time and space, where people learn the “ways of the world and other people.”24 Bringing examples from Greece, France, Libya, and Italy, Agier argues that the “borderland” becomes a point of reference for people on the move who do not find a natural place within societies or cities they wish to reach. For Agier, the borderland is a place of transition, where the

“undesirables” are “trained” to assimilate and integrate into the predominant idea of Western-

European culture of the country (more than often that is in the European North) where they aim

to arrive.25

23 Ibid, 204. 24 Michel Agier, Borderlands, 9. 25 Agier, Managing the Undesireables. 23

The use of the term “borderscape” in the present research helps describe the geographies, physical and human, and the landscapes that undergo bordering policies: in this research this concerns Lesvos and Crete, but also progressively Greece as a whole. The term does not originate in European Border Studies, as “borderscapes” is coined by Suvendrini Perera, who uses it to describe the case of the Australian borders in an edited collection by Prem Kumar

Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr.26 Perera describes the borderscape as “reconstituted through technologies and discourses of securitization as well as through forms of new and ongoing spatial relations and practices that defy the categorizations of the border, and unsettle the

univocity and stability of the ‘proper;’”27 Chiara Brambilla further contextualizes the term,

producing a genealogy of “borderscapes” a few years later.28 In this dissertation, I use the term

“borderscapes” as complementary to “borderlands,” to describe the “border landscapes and their

complex spatial and conceptual character,”29 including the interactions of displaced persons and

locals with the changing dynamics with authorities, the spaces through which they move.

In an examination of the philosophy behind the design and goals of policies for displaced

persons in the Greek periphery, my approach is informed by the concept of the “humanitarian

border,” a term discussed in-depth in the work of William Walters. Walters discusses the absence

of discourse on the subject of borders in Foucault’s work and argues against a generic use of the

philosopher’s concepts without a providing a genealogy or updating to fit the issues described.30

Connecting the issue of borders with governmentality and the power of the State towards its

26 Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (eds.), Borderscapes; Perera, “A Pacific Zone.” 27 Perera, “A Pacific Zone,” 207. 28 Brambilla, “Borderscapes Concept.” 29 Ibid, 19. 30 Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers,” 2011. 24 subjects, Walters combines Fassin’s “humanitarian government”31 concept and the debate on

migration management from both State sponsored and private institutions32 to describe what he

calls the “humanitarian border,”33 which he recognizes as a “singularity.”34 Walters traces its

birth at Lampendusa35 in 2004, when the island found itself at the epicenter of international attention due to its role in the Central Mediterranean migration route. Walters identifies four characteristics of the humanitarian border: (i) it is quite specific in its nature, with the political agency of the NGOs playing a central role, (ii) it is the effect of a particular government strategy

situated alongside ongoing (policing, detainment, security) strategies, (iii) it is not a fixed border, but fluctuates according to the changing migratory routes, and (iv) big NGOs both construct

“emergencies” and participate in acts of colonization and appropriation but also help those

suffering in practical ways. The “humanitarian border” is a geographical and conceptual topos,

where a State and the NGO humanitarian industry converge to face a “crisis” caused by influxes

of displaced persons, often with a mix of securitarian (border policing, border crossing

deterrence and detainment) and temporary relief (accommodation, welfare assistance) policies.

The humanitarian border, with sensationalist approaches towards the needs of displaced persons,

which are often spelled out in campaigns without the latter’s’ input, contributes to the

31 “Humanitarian government can be defined as the administration of human collectivities in the name of a higher moral principle which sees the preservation of life and the alleviation of suffering as the highest value of action” (Fassin, 2007, 151). 32 As Walters argues, the value of Fassin’s definition is that no particular state, or a non-state form such as a nongovernmental organization, are the necessary agents of humanitarian action. Walters talks of an assemblage, with multiple forms of “humanitarian reason,” specific forms of authority (medical, legal, spiritual) but also certain technologies of government—such as mechanisms for raising funds and training volunteers, administering aid and shelter, documenting injustice, and publicizing abuse” (Walters, 2011, 143). 33 “Holding together in an uneasy alliance a politics of alienation with a politics of care, and a tactic of abjection and one of reception, the case of Lampedusa offers in microcosm a series of elements, contradictory processes and events that I am calling the birth of the humanitarian border. Lampedusa is of course not an isolated case. While it exhibits certain unique features, it also contains many elements that are being repeated at other sites and on other scales.” (Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers,” 145). 34 Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers,” 152. 35 Lampendusa, along with Lesvos are two islands that have been under the spotlight of academics for their transitional role in the migration flows of the 21st century. 25 perpetuation of the regime in place that is justified by being labelled as an “emergency,” inviting approaches that are temporary in nature, instead of a more permanent set of policies. The case of the maritime Greek borders might not exactly match Walters’ criteria, as the Greek State has the responsibility of the reception camps at the islands and the mainland, although NGOs are often invited to complement government policies. Nevertheless, it could be argued more clearly that in other sites, namely big cities such as Iraklion (my case study), Athens, and Thessaloniki, displaced populations live in uncertainty. The precarious living conditions of displaced persons often start right after they leave the care of NGOs and international organizations such as the

UNHCR, who only provide short-term relief and support to asylum seekers. The legal maze for asylum applicants is not over if they are recognized as beneficiaries of international protection, as they then find themselves facing a State that has no integration policies. Therefore, unless they move north, displaced persons usually end-up in similar conditions to those living in invisibility due to their legal status, in the fringe of society, prone to exploitation by employers. This complex system of societal and legal interactions in the Greek space can be understood as an instance of a “humanitarian border” site”36 outside the immediacy of the Greek borderline.

The Greek Space

The humanitarian border is discussed in the Greek context prominently by the scholar

Polly Pallister-Wilkins. In a series of publications, the scholar critically examines the

Mediterranean “migration crisis” asking if treating the migration flows as “crises” limits the

scholars’ perspectives on the causes of the flows and the deaths at the (maritime) borders, used to

36 Deportations in Greece is a task the Greek police force is unofficially avoiding. This information I have procured from anonymous informants in the humanitarian sector. The case is very different at the land borders between Greece and Turkey, where there are multiple journalistic reports of illegal pushbacks of refugees and migrants in silent co-operation with Turkish authorities. 26

“further pre-existing migration control practices and techniques of governing.”37 The scholar’s

ethnographic research in both Morocco and Spain questions the position and purpose of walls,

connecting it with Spain’s colonial past in the region. In the scholar’s research and interviews

with border guards and police officers at Greece’s land border at Evros, Pallister-Wilkins argues

that the conflict between humanitarianism and border control arises in the “paradox of protection

between the subject of humanitarianism and policing, the population, and the object of border

control, the territorially bounded state or regional unit.”38 The conflict Pallister-Wilkins

describes is most tangible in my discussions with first responders, when the latter describe their

interactions with a displaced person. When the rescued inquire about where they would go next,

the humanitarian workers ponder on the ethics of informing them what would follow, as it is

known that the living conditions at the reception camps are deplorable, and that there is a

possibility of them illegally being pushed back into the sea during one of the frequent covert

operations by the Greek Coast Guard.

Pallister-Wilkins’s work provides a critical examination of hotspots,39 the violence at the

borders,40 along with the contextualization of NGOs that provide humanitarian work.41 The

scholar investigates the links between humanitarianism, the meaning of “crisis,” and State

responses to migration flows across the Mediterranean terrain. In that direction, Pallister-Wilkins

participated along with several other scholars in a forum organized by the journal Mediterranean

Politics with two entries on the methodological dangers of limiting the analysis of migration

37 Pallister-Wilkins, “The Tensions;” “Interrogating the ‘Migration Crisis,’” 1. 38 Pallister-Wilkins, “Humanitarian Politics,” 1. 39 Pallister-Wilkins, “Geographies of Humanitarianism.” 40 Pallister-Wilkins, “Humanitarian Rescue/Sovereign Capture.” 41 Pallister-Wilkins, “The Making of a Humanitarian Borderscape.” 27 flows in the context of “crises” and the relationship of current policies to preexisting practices that are consolidated, such as pushbacks and reception camps.42

A work that further contextualizes the different disciplinary approaches scholars have

used to analyze the migration flows and the 2015 “migration crisis” is also the review article

Pallister-Wilkins co-wrote with Reece Jones, Wendy Brown, Gabriel Popescu et al. that offers a

comprehensive critical overview of border practices around the globe. The scholars from

different disciplines identify humanitarian work as often contradicting State policies, citing the

violent practices of States and the temporary character of relief efforts.43 The contextualization of

the scholars’ work within the same discourse of border control and border practices informs my

research into the contradictions between providing humanitarian assistance to displaced persons

while working within the context of the Greek State: many of the workers interviewed are State

employees and often reflect on the limitations of their position and their role in the policy

changes that target their beneficiaries.

Several ethnographic projects have focused on the island of Lesvos and the greater Greek

space with scholars of varied fields examining the governmentality practices, its connections

with the humanitarian regime, the State and non-state responses to the 2015 migration flows, life

in the borderlands, and borderscapes policing.44 A monograph that stands out for its rigor and

depth of cultural understanding of the Greek space as a transit to the European North as well as a

European border that is precarious to navigate is Heath Cabot’s On the Doorstep of Europe. In

the book Cabot produces an ethnography of the asylum process for refugees and migrants and

the complex social cultural reality the applicants must face as they navigate a Greek bureaucratic

42 Pallister-Wilkins and Jeandeboz, “Crisis, Routine, Consolidation.” 43 Jones, Brown, Pallister-Wilkins et al., “Interventions,” 6. 44 Rygiel et al, “The Syrian refugee crisis;” Cabot, “Refugee Voices;” Eleftherakos et al., “I prefer dying fast;” Miller and Chtouris, “Postcards;” Papataxiarchis, “Being There;” “Being There: Pt.2;” “Solidarity Patriotism.” 28 system with little help or information. In the center of Cabot’s ethnographic project is the connection of the Greek financial “crisis” with the Greek asylum application system and the

“Europeanization of migration management and fiscal policies.”45 Cabot’s work also adds the

aspect of the refugee “crisis” and how to move forward in a new reality that sees Greece not only

as a buffer state for those fleeing from the Iraq-Afghanistan US invasion, but also those fleeing

the turmoil of the 2011 Syrian civil war and the skirmishes in Afghanistan and Iraq that still rage

in the region.

Adding to the challenges of an investigation into the problems displaced persons face

with Greek bureaucracy, while also describing the precarious situation of displaced persons at

islands of reception on the Greek borderline is Katerina Rozakou’s work on the reality of

“nonrecording.”46 The term contests the bureaucratic fantasy of the all-knowing system of

knowledge, especially during the great migration flow of 2015, when more than 500.000 people

went through the Greek maritime borders. The “nonrecording” concept was a significant

cautionary tale in my fieldwork research, as I often had to deal with information about displaced

persons and practices by humanitarian workers that were common knowledge among them but

did not appear in policy documents or any other form of archived material describing the

governance of displaced persons and the “refugee crisis.”

Refugee, Migrant, Or..?

This dissertation uses extensively the term “displaced” and “uprooted people” to describe

refugees, migrants, people with international protection status, and those that live in the Greek

space without a legal status, often described in policy reports, political and public discourse as

“illegal” or “irregular migrants.” The categorization of the populations that cross borders has

45 Cabot, On the Doorstep of Europe, ix-x. 46 Rozakou, “Nonrecording.” 29 direct implications towards the assistance they are to receive: legal, material, or otherwise. The discussion of how to name those often referred to as “people on the move” also came up in the

2019 University of Aegean “Cultures, Migration Borders” summer school by participants and invited experts. The varied input and lively discussion by field experts and participants in the seminars has helped me reflect on the importance of terminology and its implications for academic research. I therefore adopt a position that avoids legal definitions, which are often exclusionary in their nature. I choose to adopt the term “displaced” and “uprooted,” which include the aspect of forcibly leaving one’s home, allowing for the dynamic and ever-changing reasons for migration to be discussed separately when necessary.

Rather than restricting this study to any specific legal category, I use a much more inclusive category of “displaced” or “uprooted,” which includes all persons that have been forced to leave their homes due to a variety of reasons and different forms of hardships and violence.

This choice is a reflective attempt to distance the research from the discourses of deservingness pervasive in the field of European Border Studies, which often concern only the legal category of

“refugees,” stretching the definition of the term depending on political decisions and stereotypes of “vulnerability” and “deservingness.” I recognize three important variables in my choice of terminology that aid my research. First, discussions about “forced displacement” or “forced migration” reproduce a hierarchical thinking that affects public opinions and policymaking and privileges war, often underestimating other forms of persecution (political and religious), as well as climate change, factors that affect population movement, particularly towards the Global

North. Second, it is common for people to move multiple times in search for a new home, even after they are away from immediate danger, often due to systemic discrimination or unfavorable living conditions. Third, “stable” categories such as that of the “refugee,” appear with different 30 definitions in European and international legislation, leading to a hierarchization of needs and claims for “deservingness,” of assistance, State or otherwise. The issue of terminology in academic research is also examined by scholars in the field, such as Heaven Crawley and

Dimitris Skleparis, who stress that policy categories are affected by politics that “lie at the heart of the of policy-making processes,” often shaping and concealing the dynamic processes and interactions associated with migration.47 Through their qualitative interviews, Crawley and

Skleparis conclude that the “categorical fetishism” of “migrants” and “refugees” and their

arbitrary definitions that (do not) exist in the EU context can be the difference between being stranded in Greece or Italy (as two examples of borderlands) and being given the right to travel directly to their desired country of destination. Describing how the categorization of asylum seekers in one or the other category creates discourses on deservingness, they warn academics to challenge the conceptual categories to avoid recycling the same stereotypes produced by the arbitrary legal typologies in place. While I resist said categorization, unavoidably I occasionally use the term “beneficiaries” in my discussions about humanitarian organizations to denote those that belong in State-sanctioned assistance programs, especially in the context of the interviews with the professionals of the field.

Holmes and Castañeda’s research delves deeper into the discourses of deservingness, expanding the scholarship on the consequences of categorization of displaced persons.48 Through ethnographic interviews and participant observation, Holmes and Castañeda showcase how classifying terms produce narratives (among affected populations, media, and legislature initiatives) of “deserving” (refugees) and “undeserving” (migrants) beneficiaries. In their case study with refugees and migrants in Germany, the researchers notice that the interviewees

47 Crawley and Skleparis, “Refugees, Migrants, Neither,” 50. 48 Holmes and Castañeda, “Representing the “European Refugee Crisis.” 31 hesitate to identify as migrants, because of the perceived “deservingness” of the Syrian refugees in comparison to migrants from Africa or other regions. The narratives of “deservingness” inform the present research, as they affect strategies used by fieldworkers towards their beneficiaries, and often influence the ease of access to welfare services. For example, in my field discussions with displaced persons, the latter often describe themselves and their case through similar narrative frameworks. Research into access to welfare services and representation is also informed by Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of “homo sacer” and “state of exception.”49 The first

term describes people stripped of their political entity (bios), occupying only a space in the fringe

of society in sole possession of their biological existence (zoe); the second describes a political

condition during which the rule of law has been suspended to maintain a sense of peace and

order. Agamben’s concepts appear in the discussions with displaced persons, workers, and

administrators, who see the reception camps (hotspots) and the migration policies of Greece and

the EU as dehumanizing, often enforcing detainment and forms of violence with a pretense of a

continuous” state of emergency,” not only at the Greek borders, but also across the Greek

territory.

The instability of categories of displaced persons, and its effect on humanitarian work at

the Greek borders and beyond is also discussed in research projects such as one by Danilo

Mandić. The researcher concluded through interviews with refugees and migrants that smugglers

functioned as guides, informants, and allies in understudied ways and were treated as such by the

people they were smuggling, resulting in “refugee perceptions [that] diverge dramatically from

government policy assumptions.”50 The issue of smugglers functioning as allies, or even allies

accused as smugglers has come up in Greek media as well, with several reports of the Greek

49 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer; State of Exception. 50 Danilo Mandić, “Trafficking,” 28. 32

Coast Guard coercing testimonies from or arresting NGO members and prosecuting them as criminals and “spies.”51

Nation, Society, the Other

Part of this study involves discussing with both native Greeks as well displaced people

high concepts such as those of the country in which we live and their countries/places of origin.

To understand the perceptions of nation and State, and the source of perceptions about the self

and the other in public discourse, I turn to relevant pieces in Cultural Studies.

I intend to deploy Edward Said’s “orientalism” (1985) as a critical concept for the

ideological suppositions, images, and fantasies about the “orient”52 currently prevalent in my

data. In preliminary talks with officials as part of the education program I was running I often

came across stereotypes by officials that attribute certain characteristics to “Arabs”: the use of

the word seems to denote certain historically overdetermined and saturated stereotypes as Said

has observed.53 Orientalism, the scholar explains, is not only present in texts and political theory, but also materializes in creating a geographical distinction and sociological description, maintaining a dichotomy that also describes the power structure between “us” and “them.” The dichotomy is used in political, media, and public discourse to construct a duality of purportedly contrasted worlds, the “Occident” (West) and the “Orient” (East). The latter is constructed as always foreign: the people that come from the “Orient” as is the case with many displaced persons during the “refugee/migrant crisis” are often treated as uncultured, or in constant need of training to become members of “our world,” the “West. A topic of debate among governments

51 Angelidis, “A Conviction;” There is also an extensive research project by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani which debunks a popular narrative that paints NGOs that conduct search and rescue operations (mainly in the Central Mediterranean passage) as a significant pull factor for migratory flows. The report is available at https://blamingtherescuers.org/. 52 Said, Orientalism, 90. 53 Said, Orientalism. 93. 33 and aid organizations, displaced persons are often treated as difficult to integrate or assimilate because “‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do.”54 The framework of “Orientalism” can help

explain the expression of anxieties over the displaced persons’ future in connection to the Greek

society, the difference in assimilation and integration practices among different ethnicities of

displaced persons, and the instances of racist behavior exhibited by media, public servants, and authorities.

Anderson’s work on the birth and function of nations helps this project critically examine the context of national phobias expressed in media and everyday encounters with displaced

persons. Anderson describes the nation as imagined (because not all nationals will ever meet

each other), limited (needs others to separate itself from), sovereign (belongs to the people), and

as community.55 The need to separate the “Others,” push them back and secure the border

originates in the anxiety to protect the notion of a stable nation and materializes in the form of hostile treatment by media, conservative opinion makers, and the conservative New Democracy

(ND) administration against displaced persons that are stranded in the Greek space. Racism for

Anderson “dreams of eternal contaminations”56 and it is easy for a country that struggles

financially to find scapegoats in those least privileged that suddenly occupy the Greek space and

are visibly different, other. The perceived “threat” to the country or “nation” that displaced

persons seem to pose can be better understood by deconstructing what the Greek “nation” and

“national identity” are perceived to be in the popular imagination and public discourse.

The insecurity of the national “future,” an uncertainty and instability that refugees and

migrants represent for many Europeans and Greeks, is also traced in Homi Bhabha’s description

54 Said, Orientalism, 12. 55 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 56 Ibid. 34 of the ambivalence of the idea of the nation: despite the certainty with which historians and history books (a cornerstone of Greek education) speak of the “origins” of the nation, its cultural temporality “inscribes a much more transitional reality.”57 The uncertainty of the

governmentality of the displaced populations that live in Greece, not only in the past five years,

but also for decades, as well as those yet to come, means that there is a possibility of the country

facing a reality as not only a “transit” space but also as a nation that needs to develop

“integration” strategies for its populations that do not fit the imagined “national body.”

“Crises” in Greece and Beyond

In the past decade, the name of Greece has been associated with “crisis” and

“emergency.” Using crisis with and without quote marks is to differentiate between commonly

referred narratives of what is perceived as “migration crisis,” even though for European and

Greek authorities the numbers of those crossing to Greece in the past three years, in comparison

to 2015-2016, do not justify the emergency the term “crisis” denotes. However, measuring the

numbers of those crossing and those dying during their journey is a highly contested practice, as

there is an absence of accurate and reliable data: in the case of documented deaths and mortality

rates for example, an IOM expert report argues that the calculation is challenging due to

incomplete data and choices made during the calculations that can bias the produced figure.58

Using the term “crisis” without contesting the term, even with quote marks, only serves to

reproduce this phobic syndrome that has permeated European politics. While I use the term

throughout the research, I contest the meaning and thus put it in quotation marks whenever I

refer to State and media narratives. However, while there is no “crisis” of displaced persons

influx, the crisis in place is directly related to how Greece and other EU members abuse

57 Bhabha, Nation and Narration, 1. 58 IOM, Calculating Death Rates, 4-6. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mortality-rates.pdf 35 displaced persons that are trapped at hotspots and at various parts of its maritime and land border.

The use of the term “crisis” has been the object of critical engagement for the past century: from Walter Benjamin’s often cited note on “the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule”59 to Craig Calhoun,60 the concept has been under heavy scrutiny. Calhoun describes

“emergency” as an analytic concept of comprehending problematic events, emphasizing their

unpredictability, abnormality and brevity, and the necessity for a response-reaction.61 Calhoun

differentiates between “emergency” and “crisis” recognizing in the second an immanence that is

absent in the first: both require intervention, but only “crises” require an immediate solution

because they signify a turning point.62 Anna Lidley further contextualizes the contemporary uses

of “crisis,” providing a genealogy of approaches from historical, social, and, economic

perspectives.63 This project benefits from the approaches of “crisis” through “bottom-up” lived

experience and “practice” and the political construction of crisis64 in terms of border

governmentality and humanitarian government, as they are manifested in the daily practice of

field workers and administrators.

A dissertation project that analyzes the current humanitarian management of the “refugee

and migrant crisis” from the perspective of field workers and the displaced persons involved

cannot avoid a review and contestation of the multiple “crises”65 the country has faced in the past

59 Benjamin, “On the Concept of History.” https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm 60 Calhoun, “A World of Emergencies.” 61 Ibid, 375. 62 Ibid. 63 Lidley, Crisis and Migration. 64 Ibid, 4-6. 65 There is extensive bibliography about the multiple “crises” the EU faces in the past decade. In a 2019 volume by Gregor Fitzi, Jurgen Mackert and Brian Turner, Giorgia Bulli (2019, 11) the contributors associate populism and the “crisis of democracy” with migration policies in Italy by the coalition of Lega Nord and the Movimento Cinque Stelle, both on a national and local level. 36 decade. The austerity policies that were violently enacted by the IMF and the EU since 2008 have been the subject of multidisciplinary analysis. Dimitris Dalakoglou and Georgios

Agelopoulos are the first to attempt a comprehensive anthropological engagement with the various aspects of “crisis” the country has dealt with: deaths at the border, financial decline and neoliberal policies in health and education, far-right extremism, and strategies of resistance through solidarity projects are some of the topics the collection covers, examining “the impact of the crisis-discourse on anthropological understandings of Greece and vice versa.”66 On the topic

of “crisis” in the Greek space, Cabot (2018) through her extensive ethnographic research and

interviews argues that the nexus of financial and migration policies signals the emergence of

what she calls “humanitarian citizenship” which positions both “citizens and non-citizens” in a

shared continuum of precarity.67

Methods

This dissertation focuses on the lived experiences of displaced persons, humanitarian workers and administrators in the field of refugee reception and integration. I employed different methodological tools, depending on the research questions posed for each chapter, and the environment I found myself in. In the period of May 2019-December 2020, I conducted ethnographies, both of digital (Repository-Observatory) and physical spaces. This included ethnographic fieldwork during a ten-day trip to Mytilene, Lesvos in July 2019 and ten (10) months of fieldwork in Crete, from May 2019 to March 2020, primarily focusing on Crete’s administrative capital, Iraklion. My methodological approach draws on Gordon Matthews’s concept of “hanging out.” Matthews describes it as a mix of wandering around his research space and interacting with its inhabitants, socializing, and volunteering, all while keeping notes

66 Dalakoglou and Agelopoulos (eds.), Critical Times in Greece, 2. 67 Cabot, “Terrains of Asylum.” 37 simultaneously or at a later time.68 In the course of this ethnography, I conducted semi-structured

interviews with humanitarian workers, administrators, and displaced persons; I also conducted

ethnographic research through “hanging out” at the A&M Kalokairinos Foundation in Iraklion,

Crete, where I was running a volunteers’ school for adult displaced people from September 2018

to March 2020. I also hung out at public spaces, public events concerning refugees, and

participated in local government committees’ sessions as a representative of the Foundation

where I volunteered. My note-taking process during/after public events and hanging out in public

spaces included writing-up entries in Microsoft Word when I returned home, keeping scratch

notes in my phone, and recording voice messages.

Starting from the digital Repository and Observatory of The Refugee Crisis, I conducted

a mixed methods critical review, through textual analysis and archival ethnography, attempting

to uncover the underpinnings of the organization of the material, its presentation, and the content

itself. I look at some of the organizational categories, the artifacts featured, and the dates of

submissions of materials to study the representation of the people described and how the

meaning of “crisis” can be extrapolated from the material featured. I make observations based on

the metadata of the material and the possible consequences for future academic research that

relies on the two digital topoi to shape the public memory of the “refugee crisis” and the persons

who experienced it.

The Participants

For the ethnographic chapters of physical spaces and the semi-structured interviews, part of the original plan of the research was to interview a similar number of displaced people and humanitarian workers/administrators. I recruited for both categories through snowball sampling:

68 Mathews, Chungking Mansions. 38 the process proved particularly effective in the case of humanitarian workers and administrators, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic started. For the present research, I define humanitarian workers and administrators as the State and NGO employees, volunteers, their supervisors, directors of administrative parts of local and regional government, and private citizens that run aid organizations related to services whose mandate includes displaced persons: education (Crete and Lesvos), welfare (Crete), legal aid (Crete, Lesvos), immediate relief (Crete and Lesvos), reception (Crete and Northern Greece), and rescue (Lesvos). I identified the workers and administrators through research into the organizations involved in Crete and Greece with refugee management, social services to displaced persons, and through early discussions with informants in the field, and then proceeded with snowball sampling.

During the pandemic, I was provided with a list of names of employees that had expressed interest in participating to my research by an administrator of one of the organizations in Crete, and I proceeded in contacting them, explaining my project, and if they were interested in participating, I scheduled interviews. In the course of the research, from May 2019 to May

2020, I interviewed twenty-four (24) humanitarian workers and administrators, fifteen (15) women and nine (9) men. To protect their identities, I have assigned pseudonyms and I have removed all identifying information, as the field in Crete is quite intimate and there was a danger of identification through personal information. 30% of the participants have a displaced/migration background, 30% have worked on the frontline of rescue and reception, over

50% have more than four (4) years’ experience in the humanitarian sector, while 20% currently work outside Crete in sites that have reception camps; 60% of the interviews were conducted online due to the COVID-19-related lockdowns. The interviews with the workers and administrators were highly specialized and focused on issues regarding their work and 39 knowledge of the field: the structure of the interview guide allowed for questions regarding their opinions of the field and the challenges they face in their practice. Many offered details about their own experiences, background, and motivation for the work they do. A pervading sense I had when we concluded the interviews is that their work progressively became more difficult with the change of administration since July 2019; I had a question specifically about the ways they combat stress at the end of the interview guide, and based on the responses, most of them were on the verge of burn-out.

Table 1: Information of Displaced Persons Interviewed

Name Nationality/Region of Origin Occupation

Abdul Afghanistan Seasonal

Kumar Iraq/Kurdistan Seasonal

Faazel Afghanistan Car mechanic

Helen Africa Unstable

Mary Africa Unstable

Tariq Pakistan Seasonal

I also interviewed six (6) displaced persons, four (4) men and two (2) women, and all of these interviews occurred in-person (which was the original limitation of my IRB approval). The interviews with the displaced persons were structured around their living experiences, and thus during the in-person interviews we discussed sensitive topics in-depth, such as the racism they have experienced, their journey to Greece, and their interactions with locals. I have removed the age and nationalities of the humanitarian workers and administrative officials, as the field in

Crete is still very small and there is a chance of identification through that information; I have 40 used pseudonyms and removed the nationalities of some of the displaced persons (and instead referred to regions or continents of origin) because some communities are small and they could be identified.

The Field

Prior to conducting the interviews, I realized in the very early stages of the research that I needed to learn more about displaced persons and communities in Iraklion. Even though it is my hometown, Iraklion has multiple spaces and hosts intercultural interactions that I was not aware of, especially regarding the life of displaced persons. One of my first moves was to meet with social workers and administrators whom I met to during public events concerning refugee programs in Crete. I then collaborated with a colleague that specializes in teaching Greek language and we created a non-formal school for adult displaced persons in Iraklion, irrespective of their legal status. The school was a successful initiative, as during the first year it had over sixty (60) registered students, of which fifteen-twenty (15-20) regularly participated. During its second year, we had over eighty (80) registered students, of which around forty (40) attended the morning and afternoon classes, and the instructors’ team included three (3) more volunteers. The classes took place at A&M Foundation, where I often was also hanging out.

It was through the Foundation that I created strong connections with displaced communities and displaced persons, and many field workers. Between recruiting displaced persons, talking with stakeholders, attending meetings on a municipal level, and advocating for funding for the school, I was immersed in the field and came to learn a lot about the challenges displaced persons face in Crete daily. Outside my teaching responsibilities, I was also often volunteering, mediating requests between displaced persons and social workers during the food and clothes distributions. A consequence and a struggle I often had to deal with was that I was 41 seen as an extension of the Foundation, even though I was not their employee for the great majority of time.69 Nevertheless, through my work at the Foundation and the Greek language

classes we taught, I had the opportunity to create meaningful connections with displaced persons

and local actors alike, who saw my everyday engagement in the field: when the time came to

interview many of them, it was easier to explain the scope of the research and the possible

implications for the local communities in the future.

I expanded my knowledge of the field in Crete through revisiting places on the island I

already knew, trying to notice people and behaviors I was disinterested in or ignorant of the past.

I frequented the Iraklion waterfront where I saw many displaced families hanging out, the

Iraklion Venetian walls, and other places in the city that I thought I knew well, but now revisited

as a researcher with an ethnographic outlook. The festivals in Iraklion squares and my

involvement as an employee-laborer during the summer of 2019 allowed me to stay for many

hours in the same public locations, observing the people that traversed them, their interactions,

and the social dynamics that developed. After a while, students of my school would recognize

me and greet me, explaining to their friends who I was, and in-turn I would try to provide

information to anyone interested about services and activities to do in Iraklion. Through these

relationships, I tried to identify individuals interested in my research project. I made brief visits

to Messara valley, Chania, and Sitia, locations and cities in Crete that have significant displaced

populations and host reception programs.

My research was obstructed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns in Greece

(implemented March to May 2020, and November to May 2021) forced me to stop all fieldwork

69 The language program received funding from the Foundation in March 2020, and I became, along with a colleague, an employee of the Foundation for one month. I was let off on April 1st, 2020 due to pandemic shortcuts; during the summer of 2019, I worked for the municipality of Iraklion, under a laborer contract, providing support for cultural events that sometimes featured/were about refugees and displaced persons. 42 activities and lose contact with members of the communities in Iraklion that I interacted with in person. At the same time, it became easier to talk to humanitarian workers and interview them remotely, as their fieldwork was limited and had more time available due to remote work.

Data Analysis and Positionality

The data I collected from the thirty (30) interviews were rich, and I proceeded with open coding to trace topics that emerged among them; I coded the humanitarian workers/administrators and the displaced people separately. For the humanitarian workers, the process resulted in dozens of topics, many of which were unexpected. I then chose the topics that had most of the coded entries, and open-coded the entries again, which resulted in coding categories that are discussed as frequent themes in the interview chapters. I followed a single open-coding process for the interviews of the displaced people. Because the limited amount of interviews with displaced individuals, this data was more limited and focused.

My primary concern in the chapters that utilized the interviews and ethnographic notes is the accurate representation of the voices and views of the participants; I offer my interpretations and a critical perspective but respect their experience. Yet I recognize that there is a distinct power difference between the displaced persons and the humanitarian workers and administrators that are part of Greece’s “humanitarian government:” a very similar power difference exists between the displaced persons and myself as researcher/volunteer/instructor.

Even if the field worker assists the displaced persons daily, they cannot put themselves in a displaced person’s position, nor experience their frustration towards a system that is created to disappoint and deter them from trying to receive services, protection, and assistance they deserve. 43

My data analysis is informed by feminist epistemological underpinnings, as Judith Wuest describes them; first, “participants are the experts about their experience and subjective experience is valid data;” second, I understand the “relational nature of knowledge” which sees dichotomies such as “personal versus political or theory versus practice” as artificial; third, researcher bias influences research questions and analysis.70 The ethnographic approach I use for

this research is critical, in that I conducted my research keeping in mind what Soyini Madison

describes as an ethical responsibility of the researcher to address “processes of unfairness” and

injustices within the lived domain I study, striving to contribute towards changing the conditions

I observe and avoid the role of a bystander.71 Following Michelle Fine’s outline of positions in

qualitative research, I adopt the positionality of representing voices and activism:72 the interlocutors are the focus of my research, but in my everyday practice in the field I strived to take a clear position and intervene in hegemonic practices, serving as an advocate of those in society’s margins where I could.

Despite my motivation and efforts to always be an ally, my positionality in relation to my research and my research participants shares similarities to ethical concerns most of my colleagues face the field: I am a Greek, European man, trained in the United States, writing about displaced persons that live in my hometown and my country. My identity in Greece is uncontested and my rights are undeniable, which is more than most of the displaced persons can say for their experience with Greek authorities and the Greek law. My cell phone has the phone numbers of multiple high-ranking local actors, and I can speak Greek and English proficiently: I am able to voice my concerns, opinions, and demands to those that matter without any need of

70 Wuest, “Feminist Grounded Theory,” 128. 71 Madison, “What is Distinctive About Critical Ethnography,” Critical Ethnography. 72 Madison, “What is Distinctive About Critical Ethnography,” Critical Ethnography. 44 mediation, maintaining a minimum risk of misunderstandings. Thus, I need to reflect constantly on my assumptions and conclusions in the present research about displaced persons’ lives and behaviors. I recognize that my first impression of a situation that unfolds before my eyes does not always take into account the experiences of displaced persons, nor the power play and strategies of negotiating their needs with humanitarian workers and civil servants that routinely show indifference or hostility. Through constant reflection in my writing process, I examine my position and trace the origins of my conclusions and how they are affected by my own experiences, shaped by my ideology, exposure to media, and societal position.

Limitations

The primary limitation to the extent of the research has been the COVID-19 pandemic. I had to stop my ethnography of Iraklion and Crete on March 2020, as Greece entered a period of quarantine lockdowns, with a 3-month break during summer and mid-fall (June-late October) that was also heavily regulated with curfews and limited inter-region mobility during March to mid-May 2020 and November-April 2021. I was since unable to continue my ethnographic research in Iraklion and Crete, as movement across the island has been heavily regulated. The

Foundation hosting the Greek language classes decided to close its space for any group activities to prevent any possible spread of the virus: the Greek State has promoted distance-learning for all formal and non-formal educational activities, but the students of my school did not have the means to continue the classes online. To protect the health of my family, as some of them have preexisting conditions, I had to withdraw from my volunteering activities, and consequently I gradually lost contact with the field and the displaced communities. I had originally planned to visit all major Cretan cities, including the Messara Valley in the South of the island and conduct ethnographies of the reception organizations and their services. However, the lockdowns have 45 been detrimental to this plan, as well as to a return visit to Lesvos I had originally planned. The

COVID-19 lockdowns disproportionately affected the displaced participants recruitment, as building relationships of trust became impossible under the present conditions, and I did not have

Institutional Review Board (IRB) permission to conduct interviews with them online. On the other hand, I was able to interview a larger number of humanitarian workers and administrators, as due to lockdowns they spent most of their time at home and were easier to reach.

Language has also proven to be a significant barrier: recently displaced people in Greece are of many different ethnic backgrounds, and I do not know any of their first languages (Arabic,

Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish, Sorani). The IRB did not approve the use of interpreters, therefore limiting the possibility to interview people that have not yet learned Greek. I had to limit my recruits to speakers of Greek and English, which excludes a significant part of the displaced population in Crete that lives in a status of invisibility to the Greek State and Social Services.

Gender has also been a challenge in my research. While for humanitarian workers the majority of interviewees has been women, for the displaced the majority of them have been men.

As a cis-straight “white” man, I could not easily find displaced women that have been here for years and know Greek who were also willing to talk to me. This has been a particular issue with

Muslim married women, who often socialize with outsiders less than their husbands, and my access to these spaces of socialization was limited.

Finally, I did not manage to speak with all humanitarian organizations and actors in

Crete. While I was received warmly by most of the actors in the island, that has not been the case with HELIOS, as IOM denied my request for an interview with the program manager in Crete. I also did not manage to book an interview with an employee of the local Greek Asylum Service, or the Center for Migrants’ Integration in Iraklion due to scheduling conflicts. 46

Chapter Breakdown

In chapter 1: “What does a Crisis look like—Representing the Displaced in Institutional

Archives,” I conduct a mixed methods critical review, using archival ethnography and textual analysis, of the online Repository and Observatory of the Refugee Crisis in the Aegean islands, which are provided by the University of the Aegean’s Anthropology Department in Lesvos.

Starting from the languages it offers as options, the organizing categories of the Repository, and its mission statement, I discuss the state of the current datasets and the role of the digital archive in understanding the everchanging field of Lesvos and the continuous shifts in the discourses about the displaced populations it hosts. I then proceed to present the Observatory and argue that its continuous updates make it a useful digital place to consult about the “refugee crisis.” I conclude that for future researchers the initiatives will be a predominant source of information for the study of the “refugee crisis,” and as such they should strive to become more inclusive and accessible to the communities they feature.

In the chapter 2, “From Lesvos to Crete—Searching for Homes,” I start an ethnography from the field of Lesvos and gradually move to that of Crete. I briefly trace the multicultural history of the island and map its current multicultural communities and the services offered by the State-sponsored humanitarian organizations. I then focus on the primary site of ethnography:

Iraklion. I discuss issues of visibility for displaced populations in the city, map its urban organization and the issues displaced people face, as I observed and lived them during my ethnography of the city in 2019-2020. I am particularly interested in the administrative decisions that shaped the reception program in Iraklion and the consequences it has for beneficiaries, as 47 well as the latter’s interactions with disenfranchised Greeks in the site I offered volunteering services, the charity A&M Kalokairinos Foundation.

In chapter 3, “The Moving Goalposts of Humanitarian Work—Liquid Fieldwork and

Perceptions of Assistance in Crete and Beyond,” I delve into the twenty-four interviews with humanitarian workers and administrators working in Crete, Lesvos and Northern Greece. The workers have been in the field from a few months to a decade, thus having varied experiences with displaced people, not only after the “refugee crisis,” but also well before. Their decision- making process, their position within their organizations and their positionality all play heavily into how they provide assistance to beneficiaries and how they interact with other workers and services in the field. The primary fields the interviews cover are education, social services, and health services. I show particular interest into the strategies workers and administrators have to circumvent systemic obstacles by the central government to assist their beneficiaries and expand the scope of their role and organizations to cover displaced people that are outside their mandate.

Chapter 4, the final ethnographic chapter of the dissertation, “Finding Home: Living in

(the Margins of) Cretan Communities,” features the six in-depth interviews with displaced people I conducted in 2019-2020. With great attention to the participants’ experiences, I feature their stories and compare their experiences, revealing the different aspects of living in Crete as a xenos, an “other.” Starting from the journey that brought them to Crete, I discuss the interviewees’ life in the island, their jobs, the communities they are part of and the transculturation that occurs on a local level with Greeks. A central topic is the comparison of

Crete to Athens and the absence of overt racism in Iraklion. I analyze how Crete makes the participants feel safe, even though they describe instances where the local community has been 48 hostile to them or exploited their labor. I also record their dreams and aspirations for the future, all linked to them staying in Crete.

In the conclusion of the dissertation, I connect the threads of the research project, and reflect on the role of Lesvos, Crete, and Greece in the construction of the image of the “refugee.”

Reflecting on my role and my experiences as a researcher and a resident of a borderlands country, I draw connections among American Studies, American politics, and the case of Greece as a border warden and strategic partner in the region and offer suggestions for policy changes on a local level regarding displaced persons and communities.

49

CHAPTER 1: WHAT DOES A “CRISIS” LOOK LIKE? REPRESENTING THE DISPLACED

IN INSTITUTIONAL ARCHIVES

Lesvos: The Laboratory of the “Refugee Crisis”

When I first arrived in Lesvos, in July 2019, I saw a small airport that had a disproportionate number of advertisements and signs in English, German, and a few other

European languages. In Mytilene, the island’s administrative capital and biggest town, I noticed an abundance of English signs, with multiple stores offering services one would not easily find in other islands of the Aegean: quick repair of Apple products, chargers of multiple types and voltages, a number of places serving vegan food and a lot of street art. There was a cosmopolitan atmosphere that could not be justified by the relatively low popularity of the island among tourists: I quickly concluded that most of the services were oriented towards the humanitarian workers surging to the island post-2015. I visited Lesvos in a period that the “new patriotism of solidarity,” as Evthymios Papataxiarchis calls the Greek State and civil society’s positive initial responses to the waves of displaced persons coming through Lesvos and the Greek space, had shown clear signs of withering.73 During his lecture at the summer school I was attending in

Lesvos on “Cultures, Migration, Borders,” Papataxiarchis identified three phases in the Greek

“refugee and migrant crisis,” a categorization that uses key events and international agreements

to contextualize the humanitarian governance of the displaced persons in the Greek space.

The first phase of the “refugee crisis” in Lesvos and the Greek space, which began in the

summer of 2015 and ended with the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016, is characterized by

the bulk of the displaced persons’ flows towards Europe (500.000 crossed through Lesvos alone

in 2015) and the emergence of the “humanitarian regime:” a trifecta of State responses, private-

73 Papataxiarchis, “A Big Turnaround.” 50

NGO actors, and civil society on rescue and immediate relief. The focus of the Greek and

European efforts was heavily supplemented by grassroots humanitarianism and “solidarity from below:” Lesvos in 2015-2016 received not only hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, but also thousands of volunteers, primarily from Europe, who arrived at the island to help in rescue and relief efforts. For the Greek State and its primary ruling party, the center-left SYRIZA, this

“solidarity” and “hospitality” became a state project, supported both by (limited) Greek State resources, but also by employing a friendly-to-the-displaced discourse. The narrative by the

Greek government associated the Greek identity with the concept of “hospitality,” a cultural stereotype often employed in tourism campaigns almost annually by the Greek Ministry of

Tourism. Two fishermen that rescued shipwrecked displaced persons and three elderly women who were photographed taking care of a displaced woman’s baby became symbols of this new

“patriotism of solidarity” narrative and one of them became a candidate for a Nobel Peace prize.

The narratives of “solidarity” soon moved well beyond the grassroots movements and national borders,74 particularly after the circulation of the picture of Aylan Kurdi’s corpse in the Turkish

shores in September 2015. After the picture and the news of the three year-old boy that drowned

along with his mother and brother circulated widely, their story waves of solidarity from civil

society and the Western world, a new framework emerged on an EU level becoming the starting

point for a set of humanitarian relief policies by the EU and the Global West.

In the second phase of the “refugee crisis” which began after the 2016 EU-Turkey

Statement and ended in April 2018, the humanitarian regime was firmly established in Greece.

The aforementioned “Statement” is an agreement between the EU and Turkey that curbed

significantly the displaced persons’ flows towards Greece and Europe, with detrimental

74 Ibid, 20. 51 consequences for the displaced persons on both sides of the Aegean. In this phase the framework of the “crisis” did not only use “refugees” as a blanket category for all displaced, but also included classifications of “asylum seekers” and “irregular migrants,” calling for an essentially differentiated approach of the displaced persons crossing to Greece, inserting the question of

“deservingness.” The main reason behind this policy and media framework was that the EU-

Turkey Statement contained a provision that all “irregular migrants” caught in Turkish waters would be returned to Turkey, a measure called in the document “temporary” and

“extraordinary,” yet still in place 5 years later.75 The role of Lesvos in this second phase was to

serve as a “laboratory of the ‘refugee crisis,’” where focus shifted gradually away from

unregulated accommodation, protection, and education services provided by NGOs. Instead, a

hybrid model of governance was established, with the Greek State and a select number of

regulated, large NGOs dominating the humanitarian borderscape: most humanitarian

organizations withdrew from Lesvos citing disagreement with the EU-Turkey Statement and the

new framework which seemed to promote the operation of hotspots like Moria as a successful

border policy. “Solidarity” and “hospitality” gradually started becoming contested concepts from

multiple sides of politics, society, and academia. Researchers and members of local

communities, for example, with different motivations heavily critiqued the “state of exception”

in Lesvos. Much like the concept Agamben describes, the Lesvos as a “state of exception”

operates under a regime that is justified by a sense of emergency and a need to protect a sense of

“normalcy” for the rest of Greece and the EU: mixed border patrols (Greeks and other European

forces) in Greek waters, European officers working on identification and security at the camps,

indefinite detention at the camps for displaced persons even after they have resolved their asylum

75 European Council, “EU-Turkey Statement.” 52 applications status, and problematic access to asylum applications are only some of the gray areas of the allowed legal vacuum of the island. The “refugee crisis” and the governance policies that followed transformed the economy of Lesvos, from an agricultural economy with limited tourist services to an economy oriented primarily towards services to displaced persons and foreign workers alike, and cemented its role in the region as a border warden. On April 22, 2018 at Sappho Square in Mytilene there was a violent anti-immigrant and anti-refugee protest with significant numbers of neo-Nazis and far-right protesters, which had the characteristics of a

“planned attack:” the protesters attacked squatters at Sappho square, who were there since April

17, 2018 demonstrating against the EU-Turkey Statement and the deterioration of their living conditions in the reception camps of Lesvos, especially the Moria camp.76

The third phase, which started in April 2018 after the events at Sappho square, is a period

that Lesvos and Greece still experience. It is marked by intense protests by Greeks, mostly with

xenophobic-racist motivation, and mobilizations of “asylum seekers” in islands demanding

respect for fundamental human rights the Greek State denies them, for example the right to

move, due process, and the fair and timely examination of their asylum application. The

conservative party, New Democracy, in power since July 2019, to this day has attacked squats

and occupied public spaces used by leftists and anarchists to support displaced persons and has

adopted a securitarian and xenophobic approach towards displaced persons, all while trying to

suppress local communities’ protests against plans to open more reception camps in the mainland

while maintaining the capacity of those at Aegean islands.

Recording the different phases of the “refugee crisis” is a task with political choices

about the vocabulary and the bestowal of meaning on the terms “refugee” and “crisis,” one the

76 Refugee Observatory, “On the Events.” https://refugeeobservatory.aegean.gr/en/events-22-april-2018-sappho- square-mytilene 53

Greek State has a vested interest in shaping in accordance to policy changes it implements.

Although this has been such a contested site of both national and global concern, where more than a million people have traversed, there is no museum in the Greek space to reflect on this history. Lesvos, as a place at the center of the “refugee crisis,” to this day does not have a physical public collection of artifacts concerning the recent “refugee crisis.” The only museum on Lesvos that concerns refugees is that of “Refugee Memory 1922” at a village populated by descendants of the 1922 Greeks forcibly displaced from Asia Minor. When the President of the

Greek State, Katerina Sakellaropoulou visited the museum in August 2020, some of the comments she made stirred controversy, as she paralleled the hardships the displaced 1922

Greeks suffered then with the current tense situation in Greece with displaced populations concentrated in Lesvos and other sites. The President felt the need though to clarify that “not all

[displaced persons] are refugees,” reproducing the language of deservingness the Greek State uses to justify the deplorable living conditions of displaced persons in Greek reception camps.77

Greek public historical memory of refugees, migrants, and displaced persons has been

part of the country’s contested history with its Turkish neighbors. In the early 20th century after

a war with Turkey, almost a million refugees from Asia Minor were violently pushed back or

exchanged with Greek-Muslim populations as part of the peace treaty signed by the two

countries. Then, just as now, the islands of the Eastern Aegean have been on the frontline of the

historical events with ample evidence of the refugees’ interactions with the Greek State and the

inhabitants of the Greek borders they crossed. Oral histories, photographs, testimonies and

memoirs are only some of the artifacts documenting the harsh living conditions the refugees

faced then because of hostile behaviors by local populations and the Greek authorities: the

77 amna.gr, “Mytilene.” https://www.amna.gr/print/481893 54 artifacts can be found in State and private archives, libraries, and museums, reaffirming the various aspects and histories the Greek ethnicity.78 Contesting archival politics, Dominique

Daniel discusses how the empiricism and postmodern approach to archiving heavily influenced

the development of ‘ethnic archives’, collections that document immigration and ethnic history

in North America.79 Daniel’s epistemological concern is that archives both shape and document

the identity of group(s), having a significant effect in the public perception of the documented.80

Daniel concludes that archives are affected by the context and they are developed and managed.

Archives are often a product of government policies regarding “multiculturalism” and “cultural

pluralism,” and promote a stable sense of ethnicity and nationhood, affecting the conceptions of

certain ethnicities and ethnic groups at the expense of others.81 What are then the implications of

an institutional archive that documents the “refugee crisis” when its character is institutional and

how does it contribute to the construction of perceptions of ethnic identities and public memory

of a “crisis”?

Lesvos and the interactions there among locals, humanitarian workers, and the civil

society have a much wider reach than the geographic limits of the Greek borderscape,

(re)producing “crises” and shaping the public opinion in Greece and Europe about the Greek

borderlands, the identities, and the behaviors of its inhabitants. To highlight the importance of

representation and the role of Lesvos in the construction of the “refugee crisis” in academic

research and public memory, in this chapter I examine an institutional/academic initiative that

78 A recent work that examines the construction of memory by and regarding Greek refugees is Emilia Salavanou’s Formation of Refugee Memory (2018). In the work, the author investigates the surrounding historical events and political discourses before and after the Greek populations displacement in 1922 in tandem with first-hand narrations by the refugees to present how the materiality of the displaced people’s history shaped their present and future. The book also deals with how the sum of narrations, political decisions, policymaking, and artifacts leave a ‘truth’ behind for future researchers to explore and contend. 79 Dominique Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 170. 80 Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 171. 81 Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 179-182. 55 centers on displaced persons’ voices and keeps a record of refugee-related issues in the Aegean islands and the Greek space in general. Specifically, I conduct a mixed methods overview, in the form of archival ethnography and textual analysis, of the “Repository” and the “Observatory” of the “Aegean Observatory of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis:” the first is a digital archive of the

“refugee crisis” in the Aegean islands and the second is an academic initiative offering updates on the “refugee crisis” from an academic and civil society perspective. The Repository is the only archive based in the Greek borders, producing knowledge about the 2015 “refugee crisis,” the locals, and life on the island of Lesvos for researchers and all interested parties. An archival ethnography, as Salah Punanthil notes in his discussion of Comaroff and Comaroff’s work, offers the “opportunity of a (new) interpretation of an archive if the particular circumstances of the construction of its ‘voices’ are taken as an object of analysis.”82 The initiative produces

knowledge about the Greek borderscapes for researchers and interested parties: with its

purported role in humanistic research as an archive, the Repository decisively contributes to the

construction of what “crisis” looks like in the Aegean islands. Through a close examination of

the archival material and their organizing categories, I identify emerging issues concerning the

persons represented, the languages used, the media included, and the origin dates of the featured

material. I then situate the Observatory and the Repository in relation to the phases of the

“refugee crisis” and production of knowledge in the Greek borderlands, and conclude with a

discussion on the importance of (digital) archives and their contribution to displaced person’s

experiences and construction of a public memory of “crisis.” Daniel’s notes on the significance

and role of ethnic archives are also applicable in the case of the Repository, even if the latter is

not solely dedicated to recording the experiences of the ethnic groups of displaced persons that

82 Punathil, “Archival Ethnography,” 8. 56 crossed the Aegean in the past decade. The Repository, as the only academic initiative in the

Eastern Mediterranean tasked with documenting the “refugee and migrant crisis,” much like an ethnic archive, plays an important and complex role in the construction of the “very object [it strives] to document,”83 the displaced persons and the “crisis” of which they are part.

Reporting (and Remembering) the “Crisis”

When the “refugee crisis,” as it is often referenced in media publications, started, an

ample volume of publications and reports detailed the journey and living conditions of those

trying to cross to Europe while endangering or losing their lives at Europe’s periphery. The

narratives of displacement, loss, but also life in Europe is central to displaced persons forming

communities. Their lived experiences are rarely present in mass media narratives without the

mediation of West-oriented individuals, be those journalists or humanitarian nonprofit workers.

The sensationalization of pain and loss is widely covered, but life and everyday struggle to make a living rarely make the headlines. An exception to this selective news coverage about displaced people and communities is the coverage of the horrific living conditions at reception camps, but even then, there is an aspect of voyeurism and sensationalism: an attempt to “warn” people against making the journey to the West, in fear of what they will find at the borders. Because of this selective media coverage, it is also common for locals and displaced persons to live in parallel realities: some dictated by media reports in Greek and English print and on (Greek) television. Others are apparently unaware of those media narratives because they do not know

Greek and learn of recent developments through rumors and backdoor channels (message groups). It is indicative of the media landscape in Greece that there is no television channel that broadcasts in another language other than Greek. The Greek State media group (ERT) offers a

83 Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 171. 57

Sudanese-Arabic translation on its website, however it translates a limited number of news stories of interest for its readers. ERT also offered from 2016 to 2019 a short newscast in Arabic, a service that stopped during summer 2019. At the same time, most Greek news websites have featured simplified versions of their reporting in English, without offering any other language options.

The move between Greek and non-Greek versions of news stories can transform more than just the language of delivery. An example of the discrepancy in news topics between Greek and non-Greek speakers comes again from the Aegean islands. In April 2019 the controversial removal of a huge cross in an archeological zone at a rural location of Lesvos, an island on the

Greek borderline that hosts thousands of migrants and refugees at its detention centers (also known as hotspots) sparked a round of Islamophobic news reports by conservative and centrist media narratives. The cross, symbolizing the dominant religion of both the island and Greece, was seen by many conservative Christians and local religious leaders as a historical monument, despite being a very recent addition to Lesvos’s cultural geography that was placed on the site illegally by locals in September 2018. The cross was then destroyed a month later, only to be put up back again (illegally) by locals and Golden Dawn sympathizers from Chios in 2019.84 These

Greek media narratives suggested that migrants, presumably Muslims, and NGO members had taken down the cross soon afterwards, committing “sacrilege.” The perpetrators of this act were described as vandals, and far-right politicians brought the issue to the Greek parliament, depicting the act itself as a crime against the sense of Greek identity and an attack on

Christianity. Members of the island’s civil society and activists saw the cross and its continuous attempts to reinstate it as a warning to incoming asylum seekers to not upset the religious and

84 A few examples include: tanea.gr, “Cement cross torn down in Mytilene” (08.10.2018); ethnos.gr, “Arrests in Mytilene for a cross” (03.03.2019); stonisi.gr, “Apeli’s cross and Golden Dawn members from Chios” (10.10.2020). 58 cultural sentiment of their hosts. Although this incident was widely reported in the news and discussed by Greek nationals, few if any of the displaced persons I talked to and taught daily had even heard about the incident, regardless of their level of Greek and English comprehension. The cross still stands at the same spot to this day, although there have been attempts to remove it by

Greek left-leaning and anarchist activists.

In another example of the disparity between the narratives about displaced persons and narratives that center their voices, a local conference aimed at identifying solutions to problems about displaced persons produced a series of paradoxes. While its focus was centrally about the displaced persons’ experience, it hosted academics and government officials with little to no experience of fieldwork and knowledge of the refugee and migrant needs they were discussing, which was pointedly noted by social and humanitarian workers in the audience. It was also reported that the absence of displaced persons in the proceedings was notable.85 Both examples

underline the disjuncture between the reporting of events in several parts of Greece, the inclusion

or exclusion of displaced people in the construction of those narratives, and the

awareness/understanding of those events by the displaced people at the center of those stories.

The people under discussion rarely get to offer their own view of the unfolding events that

concern them. Even when those voices are recorded, the journalistic interpretations and the local

reactions are prioritized, filtering the non-Greek voices through multiple subjectivities, often

rooted in Islamophobia, racism, prejudices, and Orientalism. In addition, these media narratives

about displaced individuals are typically consumed by non-displaced individuals, to the extent

that the objects of this media gaze are often not aware of the narratives circulating about them.

85 For more information on the incidents at the conference, see Anna Carastathis and Myrto Tsilimpounidi “Experts, Refugees, and Radicals.” 59

The Observatory and Repository

The Observatory

The Aegean Observatory, which hosts the Repository as a core component, is a useful research tool and news hub for academics and members of the civil society interested in the developments for displaced people and local communities in the Aegean islands during the

“crisis.” The Observatory offers frequent updates on developments regarding arrivals to Aegean islands and changes in policies: it is an information hub with reliable information and analysis on the various actors of the “refugee crisis,” even though its updates have slowed down during the

COVID-19 pandemic. The Observatory and the Repository are hosted by the Greek National

Archives (EKT), curated by The University of Aegean, funded by the Hellenic Research

Foundation and the Wenner-Grenn Foundation, all with the support of UNHCR.

The Observatory’s organizing categories are designed to orient a reader regarding the different actors engaged in the continuing “refugee and migration crisis” in the Aegean area:

- Refugees, Migrants & Humanitarian Governance

- Local Societies

- Research 60

Fig. 3. The Topic Categories of the Refugee Observatory. http://refugeeobservatory.aegean.gr/en, 14 March 2021. Apart from the thematic categories, the Observatory also offers the possibility to readers to learn more on the conception of the initiative in its “About” page, or navigate the entries through thematic categories that include: art, economy, education, environment, health, institutional arrangements, justice, material culture, media, politics, religion, support of refugees and migrants, technology, and tourism. The entries are in Greek and English, and listed in chronological order. The site offers the opportunity for readers to search based on their island of interest, date, and content type.

The “News Bulletin” featured in the website’s homepage is one of the Observatory’s most successful tools to present holistically an emerging theme or controversial policy change.

Published monthly, the “News Bulletins” are all concerned with collecting and presenting articles from the Greek and international press and digital media in Greek and English (even if they were originally published in another language), government documents, reports from

NGOs, audiovisual material, as well as interviews with political actors and members of the civil society. The News Bulletins, accompanied by an introduction by the Observatory editors, are 61 periodically updated to reflect recent developments, collecting different news updates from a variety of sources. The News Bulletins also offer a comprehensive periodic summary for researchers that seek to get a quick sense of the updates but do not have the time to delve into the legal and sociocultural context of the developments around the “refugee and migrant crisis.”

The Repository

The “Repository of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean” is a component of the Observatory website in the form of a digital archive. According to the website, the

Repository’s main aims are to collect, document, organize, preserve, digitize, and disseminate various categories of material referring to the “refugee and migration crisis” in the Aegean Sea.

The Repository also documents and promotes research by members of Greek and the international academic community. It contains people's testimonies, diaries, published or un- published statistical and institutional records, articles originating in both print and digital formats, images, film, and video, in accordance with copyright rules. The Repository infrastructure was funded as a component of the Repository Service of the National

Documentation Centre (EKT), a Greek State organization that collects, documents, disseminates and provides long-term preservation of “quality digital content and data produced by Greek scientific, research and cultural communities.” 86 The Repository’s role is critical in the study of

Greek borderlands as its mission statement echoes pressing research concerns present in refugee

and migrant research: the representation of the displaced persons in the borders of the West, the

dissemination of information about them, and the multiplicity of sources regarding developments

in Greece.

86 ekt.gr, “Our Mission.” 62

In its mission statement, the Repository highlights the “refugee crisis” and the need for a systematic, “well-rounded, and reliable” study of the ongoing “crisis.” The Repository underlines their dependence on researchers and the documented evidence those researchers provide to depict the scale and quality of this “extremely complex, and in many ways urgent, phenomenon.”

The second epistemological concern the Repository addresses is the origins of the documented material: some of it is documented by government agencies, some by humanitarian organizations and locals through everyday practice, and some by refugees and migrants themselves. However, as the Repository team notes, there are also entries that have not been documented by any of the groups and find their place in the archive, such as artifacts of material culture in the form of photographs and oral histories. What emerges out of the Repository is a volume of material that documents displaced people’s activities during their first days, months, and years in Europe.

The Repository Authorities

A central concern in analysis of the organizational structure and featured material in the

Repository is the positionality of the authors and the representation of the featured voices. In an in-depth study of representations of Syrian refugees in UNICEF media projects for example,

Aysehan Jülide Etem underlines the importance of representation in public material, as the choice of how a subject is presented, catalogued, and the context in which it takes its final form can produce power inequalities.87 In most of the Repository entries, the voices of refugees,

migrants, and asylum seekers are mediated by authors that have little relationship with the people

and their cultures. In the case of the Repository the vast majority of contributors are not

displaced persons, but instead journalists, local members of the civil society, and third State and

non-profit actors involved with the “refugee crisis.” The Observatory itself is run by a scientific

87 Aysehan Jülide Etem, “Representations,” 2. 63 team of university professors and PhD researchers; the contributions go through careful examination and are filtered. While this is not necessarily a disadvantage of the Observatory and its Repository component, it is a choice that complicates the featured material; the selection process privileges the choices of the “experts,” over those (re)presented in the Repository.

The Purpose

In its website, the team critically reflects on the use of the term “Observatory,” citing the

“institutional surveillance” the term denotes; the team notes that the data in the Observatory are organized around the “inter-subjective relationship” of the people examined and their documented experience, and acknowledges possible blind spots inherent in the power structures and relations in such efforts.88 In the description of the Observatory the word that stands out is

“critical.” The Observatory describes its role as reframing the material featured in it in terms of

“methodological transparency and through meaningful reflection on the role and position of the

‘Observer.’”89 The team behind the Observatory (and its Repository constituent) describes its

value as dependent upon the critical approach to the production of qualitative and quantitative data as well as its role in the “advancement of data surrounding less visible aspects of the refugee crisis.”90 The Observatory team also briefly discusses the use of the term “crisis” and the

distinction between “refugee” and “migrant” and justifies the adoption of the terms due to the

legal, social, and cultural context in which they appear in the featured material. The editorial

team consists of highly trained graduate students and PhD holders who do the reporting,

cataloguing, and publication of the Observatory entries.

88 Refugee Observatory, “A critical Observatory.” https://refugeeobservatory.aegean.gr/en/refugee-and-migration- crisis-aegean. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 64

The Repository, as a vital part of the Observatory, was created as a response to the 2015

“refugee crisis.” As noted above, it is a large database, resembling a curated digital collection of articles, oral histories, testimonies, videos, and reports, with a particular focus on the “refugee crisis” since 2015. However, it also features digital artifacts as far back as 2009. The Aegean

Observatory, the Repository’s “parent” website, functions as an independent watchdog of legislation, news reports, incidents, and op-eds by academics concerning refugee and migrant issues in the Mediterranean, with a special focus in the Eastern Aegean. Focusing on the geographic region of the Eastern Aegean Sea, and Lesvos in particular, the Repository’s goal is to contribute to a systematic, complete, accurate study of the “crisis” according to its mission statement.91 The aforementioned study of “crisis,” as the editorial note describes, is dependent upon the length and quality of the databases used for the study of a phenomenon—the “refugee crisis”— characterized by extreme complexity and urgency.92 The Repository currently features digitized first- and second-hand sources and material from 2008 to late 2018: one hundred and sixty-eight (168) entries from 2015, two hundred and twenty-eight (228) entries from 2016, one hundred and seventy-three (173) entries from 2017, thirty-eight entries (38) from 2018, and eleven (11) entries from 2019: the 2019 entries cover meeting notes (minutes) from organizational meetings among stakeholders. The entries cover a wide variety of themes for academic study and public information purposes, but even though the purpose of the Repository is to provide an up-to-date reflection of the “refugee and migrant crisis,” the artifacts from the period 2019-2021 are virtually nonexistent.

91 Archive of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean, “About the Repository.” 92 Ibid. 65

The Language

The Observatory and its Repository, are unique in terms of their institutional nature, as they are the only initiatives in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean to date that are systematically collecting a wide variety of digital artifacts. Despite this wide variety though, the initiative only hosts entries in Greek and English. This effectively limits the audiences to those with a good knowledge of those languages. While some of the entries feature persons that speak a wide range of languages, from Arabic and Farsi to Sorani French and Turkish, there is no translation of the curated artifacts to languages other than Greek or English and descriptions of materials in the Repository are not provided in other languages either.

Al Jazeera, for example, is one of the few media outlets featured in the Repository with videos and documentaries in languages other than English, sometimes accompanied with English subtitles. The Doha-based network is featured through several of its reports and short documentaries on the situation of refugees and migrants featured across several of the

Repository’s artifact categories, spanning from 2014 to 2018. With twelve entries in English, the artifacts collected are presented in their original form, accompanied by content descriptions and keywords in Greek. The featured displaced people in the audiovisual material have English voiceovers, and in a few cases, Greek, or English subtitles.

Most of the featured reports, newspaper articles, and opinion pieces from both Greek and international media, are featured in their original language, predominantly Greek and less so

English. Identifying categories including the abstract, keywords, descriptions, spatial coverage, licenses, digital object availability, and subjects also appear in both Greek and English. The featured documentaries, either as embedded videos or links to external sources, feature languages according to the choices made by their creators. Documentaries and testimonies from private 66 sources, news websites, and organizations such as the UNHCR, are featured either as shortcuts to the original place of publication, or embedded videos. However, as is the case for example with

Kaz Firpo’s “REFUGE,”93 there are some works in the languages of the displaced, featured in

their entirety, offered with English subtitles. The issue of language directly affects the nature of

the Observatory and its mission statement. The Repository is a collection of artifacts, a place of

memory for researchers and (displaced) persons alike, concerned though only with the history of

the “refugee crisis:” it does not have an urgent nature, nor should it have in the future. However,

its present form complicates the issue of memory-making, as well as who has access to the

artifacts that tell the history of the displaced people during their stay at the Greek borderlands.

The mediated language leaves the question of what is left out of translations and word choices

that could have significant meaning in the language first spoken. The same issue also persists

with the Observatory: as an initiative, the Observatory documents policy shifts and unfolding

local events, but limits its outreach to the Greek community and interested researchers with

excellent English language skills. It is quite possible that in the Greek space interested parties could also be thousands of asylum seekers that have internet access, but few means to learn local news of specific interest to them, or even international developments; outside the Greek space, there have been more than a million people that crossed through the islands of the Mediterranean towards the West, displaced persons that now predominantly live in the European North and should have access to updates about an important place of their own history in a few more languages other than the two offered.

93 Firpo, REFUGE. 67

Content Present and Voices Absent

As of April 5th 2021, the Repository featured six hundred and twenty-five (625) unique items, organized in over fifty (50) different “qualified types” (categories), for a total of five thousand and seven hundred ninety-five (7975) digital objects. These entries include official reports, film trailers, documentaries, first-hand accounts, podcasts, newspaper articles, policy briefings, and forms of artistic expression. The cited locations include mainly the Greek islands in the region: Lesvos, Chios, Leros, Kos. Most of the material cover Lesvos, which can be attributed to the Repository’s location—the Anthropology Department in Mytilene, Lesvos—and the role of the island in the “refugee crisis.” The contributors of the Repository vary in terms of their position, mostly consisting of organizations and individuals that are involved in the

“refugee and migrant crisis” in one way or another. Notably absent from the category of contributors are the unmediated voices of the protagonists of the “refugee and migrant crisis,” the displaced persons. In most cases the persons whose life stories and experiences are featured are absent both as first-hand producers of documents and artifacts, as well as receivers of the information. The editorial team edits and presents the material through a Greek-Western epistemological perspective, as most of its members are Greek academics. The issue of language, as previously discussed, also affects the content, as it is only offered in Greek and English, thus excluding audiences who do not understand Greek or English from certain narratives present for example in the local press. Displaced people are absent from the Repository as receivers/consumers of the artifacts and information concerning them, which could pose problems to the accuracy of featured information and testimonies.

The artifacts in the Repository heavily feature the people that live in and have passed through the Greek islands located on the frontline of the “crisis,” mostly in interviews, 68 documentaries, datasheets, Facebook pages, and captured material from volunteers and non- profits. One of the seven categories of artifacts is called “Refugees and Migrants in the Aegean,” which is subdivided into seven artifact collections. Of particular interest in terms of the representation of refugees and migrants is 1.2, ‘Stories -Testimonies of Refugees and Migrants.’

The subcollection features several artifact categories, with the most populated being documentaries (55), newspaper articles (53), interviews (37), news (36), raw material (23), video recording with mobile phone (23), and excerpts (21). In this artifact category the filters and limitation of a westernized perspective becomes apparent: the entries originate predominantly from NGOs, the news pieces from local newspapers, and most interviews are from corporate media, all in Greek and English, therefore unavailable to speakers of other languages. The documentaries, mostly from international media, feature displaced persons as interview subjects, protagonists in the stories about surviving the trip or narrators of their own stories. What is notably absent is the unedited and unmediated voice of the displaced persons, footage recorded by them, or documentaries and films edited by those personally involved, from below.

The problem of the displaced people’s representation in the Repository echoes a prevailing issue in the field of Refugee and Media Studies. The role of media, broadly defined, in the representation of displaced persons, particularly in the context of the European “refugee crisis” has been widely discussed (see for example Pierluigi Musaro and Paola Parmiggiani;

Anna Triantafyllidou; Lillie Chouliaraki and Tijana Stolic; Bruce Bennett94). The authors argue

that the positionality of news coverage, especially in the face of “tragedies” would often invite

sensationalist approaches that would eventually bring up questions of deservingness, or would

sway the public opinion towards short-lived reactions without long term plans for the

94 Musarò and Parmiggiani, “Beyond Black and White;” Triantafyllidou, “Media Coverage on Migration;” Chouliaraki and Stolic, “Rethinking Media Responsibility;” Bennett, “Becoming Refugees.” 69 populations’ relief efforts. Media Studies research has also shown a particular focus on the shifting discourses of rescue and the moral obligation to act when it comes to the role of countries of the West, particularly European as Triantafyllidou notes, while Syrine Hout discusses the importance of refugee fictional accounts and the subsequent methodological concerns in the research of refugee representation.95 The Repository as a digital archive, in

accordance to its mission statement, is an active participant in creating an image of the displaced

in popular culture across different media. Consequently, the limited presence of displaced

contributors is notable, as it reinforces the institutional character of the Repository and

perpetuates an outsider’s perspective towards the protagonists of the “refugee and migrant

crisis.”

The interviews, documentaries, films and documents in the Repository paired with the

limited number of contributions by displaced persons show how the “refugee crisis” is also a

continuous “crisis” of representation (see also Anna Carastathis and Myrto Tsilimpounidi;

Holmes and Castañeda 2016; Monica Colombo 201896), bound to shape the research data of

academics in the future, as the latter delve into archives to see public perceptions and related

research related to first-hand testimonies. The question of who has access to the means of

producing the displayed in the Repository artifacts, which in turn contribute to the construction

of public memory, raises the additional question of who shapes the public perception and the

artifacts themselves. For example, in the case of the Repository, there are forty-eight (48) videos

taken with a mobile phone. Of those videos, based on the metadata provided, none is taken by a

displaced person, although all of them feature displaced persons. In another category, labeled

95 Triantafyllidou, “A Refugee Crisis Unfloding;” Hout, “Novel(istic) Realities in/of an Unsafe Haven.” 96 Carastathis and Tsilimpounidi, “Experts, Refugees, and Radicals;” Holmes and Castañeda, “Deservingness and Difference;” Colombo, “Domopolitics, Securitization, and Humanitarian Communication.” 70

‘Raw Material,’ containing fifty-seven (57) videos, there is only one (1) video posted by a

displaced person: it lists as creator Masouma Hashimi, a then leading figure of the local Afghan

community speaking against the EU-Turkey Statement.97

Fig. 4. The Topic Categories in the Refugee Repository. http://refugeeobservatory.aegean.gr/en, 19 October 2019. In the homepage of the Repository, keywords in the entries are organized alphabetically, with a visual outlook that has increased font sizes based on the frequency of the indexed themes of the archived content. The visual size of the keywords though exemplifies the content, revealing what is present and what is absent: it orients researchers towards most frequently encountered topics, with “solidarity,” “border,” “rescue,” and “refugee rights” standing out. The visual first impression sets the tone for the archived material through lens of the quantity of submissions: the larger font predisposes the reader to focus on the topics covered and the number of submissions indexed under that theme. Consequently, topic categories concerning

“integration,” “pushbacks,” “housing,” “non-formal education,” which have been dominant

97 Hashimi, “Masouma Hashimi from Afghanistan.” Artifact from the Repository. 71 issues in refugee research are visually less distinct. The explanation for this issue comes back to one of the biggest shortcomings of the Repository: it does not contain many entries for 2018, while there are only eleven (11) entries of stakeholders’ meetings notes from 2019.

The lack of material from 2018 onwards could also create a false sense that the “refugee and migrant crisis” has been resolved. However, in this third phase of the “refugee crisis,” from

April 2018 onwards, would directly cast doubt on that impression. On the one hand there was an overpopulation of the hotspots in 2019, which produced stark tensions between displaced persons and the local community, which became openly hostile against displaced persons at the island, organizing protests and pogroms that led them to terrorizing humanitarian workers and displaced persons alike. On the other hand, the 2020 pandemic gave the Greek State the opportunity to move displaced persons to the mainland, temporarily alleviating the tensions at the Greek islands, but the public opinion at the border islands and Greek mainland has remained hostile. For a researcher that follows routinely news from Lesvos and Greece, the absence of artifacts in the Repository to showcase the tense dynamics in Lesvos becomes quickly apparent.

However, in a few years a researcher that conducts archival research about the third phase of the

“refugee crisis,” both before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic will have a hard time finding collected information on the prevalent topics of violence against displaced people and humanitarian workers, routine pushbacks of boats between Lesvos and Turkey, integration policies (or lack thereof), and housing (especially after the fire that destroyed the Moria camp in

2019): all topics emerged more pressingly at the Greek borders post-2018, portraying the

“refugee crisis” as a Greek problem rather than a European one.

The borderscape of Lesvos has gradually taken a different form in the years following

2018: it has become a “prison island” under the “European Asylum Regime” as Alexandra 72

Bousiou calls it in her study of the changes gradually taking place in Lesvos since the 2015-2017 period.98 While information about these events and the shift in politics can be found in the

Observatory, the first-hand accounts that would provide more information from a “bottom-up”

perspective need to be sought elsewhere. One of the reasons that could explain the fewer entries

from 2018 onwards, is that one of the steady sources of artifacts and information for the

Repository have been volunteers and humanitarian workers, that work in much fewer numbers

on the island nowadays. The Greek State has also been more careful in allowing researchers and

volunteers at the camp, both for security reasons but also to shield the Greek State and the EU—

often unsuccessfully— from bad press.

From the Repository to the Observatory

The Repository is very ambitious in its mission statement, promising the inclusion of

materials that it cannot, to this moment, deliver. While it does feature first –and second –hand

accounts of the “refugee and migrant crisis,” its mission statement states that the Repository’s

goal is to present not only certain aspects of the “refugee crisis” already featured in other

collections, but also material “chronicled through written or audio-visual accounts, often

unofficially and in rough-form, by refugees and migrants themselves, or by members of local

communities, in the context of everyday practice,” in addition to overlooked material culture

items.99 However, the diverse material the Repository contains does not come from diverse

sources, as there is a disproportionate representation of the local communities’ outlook of the

“crisis.” Most of the featured artifacts are produced by Western-born and Western-trained

content creators, professionals, and community members and presented within Western-oriented

traditions, narrative structures, and visual conventions. The artifacts indeed provide valuable

98 Bousiou, “Prison Island.” 99 “About the Repository.” http://repository-refugeeobservatory.ekt.gr/refugeeobservatory/about. 73 insight into how the local communities received and interacted with the displaced populations, serving to exemplify the allyship local organizations and non-profits showed to their beneficiaries, as well as media reception and elements of everyday life. The content however does not tell a researcher much about how the displaced persons see themselves in their current predicament, except in the cases the latter are interviewed in media products (documentaries, interviews, films). The same issue of positionality is present in most of the research produced by

West-oriented and West-trained researchers, and it is a constant challenge that the present dissertation attempts to highlight as a problematic area of Refugee Studies.

The Repository as a project will have a fundamental influence on forming public memory about the “refugee and migrant crisis” for the future. The entries in the Repository about the rescue operations and the role of non-profits are extremely rich, albeit unevenly focused on the viewpoint of those receiving rather than those arriving. Daniel, discussing Bodnar’s (1991) definition of public memory, argues that public memory emerges as a compromise between the expression of national and cultural leaders and small scale, “specific and heterogeneous communities.”100 The Repository project in that sense heavily relies on the documentation efforts

of parts of the local, host communities, excluding (even if that is not on purpose) the emerging

displaced communities formed there in the past 5 years. There are nevertheless several entries,

both reports and videos, featuring festivities where local populations mingle with displaced

people and form transcultural bonds, finding common cultural ground.

While the most recent entries in the Repository seem to be from 2018, the Observatory

continues to be updated regularly, taking up some of the archival properties of the Repository.

The Observatory as a broader initiative attempts to address some of the aforementioned

100 Daniels, “Archival Representations,” 175. 74 methodological concerns. For example, in featured articles by Katerina Rozakou and Maria

Tamboukou, both written specifically for the Observatory, the scholars debate the methodological concerns of doing research in Lesvos and the use and purpose of the Aegean

Obsevatory. Rozakou ponders the issues of access to information at State-managed refugee camps and the temporal frame of produced research, which often is very limited to catch up with the popularity of the “refugee crisis” as a ‘hot topic’ within the “neoliberal university.”101 Citing methodological concerns and criticism by scholars such as Michael Herzfeld102 on how

Eurocentric and US-centric anthropology sees and treats the Mediterranean as a research field

that produces material but not theory, Rozakou sees the Observatory as an initiative that can

contribute to the production of original ethnographic theory. Tamboukou, on the other hand,

focusing on the “Living Archive” of Lesvos as a place and assemblage theory, argues that the

“real” in her understanding of Lesvos is constructed both by her presence as a researcher there

and her subsequent interactions, but also through the depiction of the people in social media and

webpages heuristically.103 Discussing the uprooted women on the move and their mobility

assemblages through the Aegean archipelago, Tamboukou attempts to construct genealogies

through the inconsistencies of the traditional historiography at play, treating Lesvos as a living

archive where a perceived linear evolution of history is disrupted.

Rozakou and Tamboukou’s epistemological concerns provide useful insights into the

multiple functions of the Repository and the Observatory, while also underlining the academic

nature of the Observatory, and the current shortcomings of the Repository. The Repository,

which currently falls short of keeping up with changes in the borderscape of Lesvos in

101 Rozakou, “‘The Observatory and the ‘crisis industry.’” 102 Herzfeld, Anthropology Through the Looking Glass; Cultural Intimacy. 103 Tamboukou, “The Living Archive.” 75 comparison to the Observatory, is notably absent in both scholar’s op-eds, despite being an archival collection that serves an equally important role for present and future research. The

Repository becomes a ground where history is produced, with limited voices from the protagonists, the displaced people. Rozakou’s commentary on the approach of US- and EU- centric anthropology approaches is echoed in the content missing from the Repository having to do with the displaced people’s everyday life outside the “crisis;” the “crisis” post-2018 has taken a different meaning in relation to 2015-2017 period, moving past immediate relief to reception and containment and this shift needs to be reflected in the entries of the archive. Therefore, following Tamboukou’s research concerns, constructing a genealogy of the displaced people using the Repository’s current material would reveal the disruption of the people’s histories through the lack of their own voices and control of their stories, or access to the content for educational purposes, or even to catch up with recent developments of immediate interest. The

Observatory, as well as most initiatives that produce research concerning the “refugee crisis” constantly must be self-reflective regarding the positionality of their authors. The impermanence of the “in-betweenness” of borderlands shows how the Observatory has a critical role in academic research, but currently falls short in connecting with all the communities it concerns and strives to serve.

Constructing the “Crisis”

The human geography of Lesvos partially justifies the difficulties the Observatory and

Repository have in capturing voices from the local migrant and refugee communities. Lesvos as a constant place of transition for migrants and refugees and a deadly geography does not host stable populations for too long; then again, a year in a camp feels like a lifetime for those trapped in the muddy grounds of Moria and Kara Tepe. Setting aside the people native to the island, 76

Lesvos as a hotspot serves the purpose of the first European border, where processing of asylum applications, detainment, and relocation of people takes place. Marc Auge describes non-places as spaces that cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity.104 Those

places are primarily concerned with the accelerated circulation of passengers, be those first-class

tourists or as in the case of Lesvos, the uprooted persons stuck there until their asylum

applications are processed and then moved to other destinations. For Auge, “the space of non-

place creates neither singular identity nor relations: only solitude, and similitude.”105 The

Repository is a product of Lesvos (a hotspot and a ‘non-place’), and at the same time it attempts to combat its dehistorihization through the preservation of digital and digitized artifacts. The

Repository, therefore, has the difficult task of documenting the experience of the displaced persons mediated through the European lens. The result of the contrasting forces at play is that in the Repository the refugee and the migrant are, much like in Lesvos, ‘guests’ and secondary characters in their own stories.

The Repository is also a “place” by itself: archives and repositories can function as places that construct history and develop organic relationships with the physical places where they are located. In the case of the Aegean Repository the relationship reflected is a power dynamic of the

‘observer’ and the ‘observed’: the deposited material, lacking the direct contributions of

displaced people themselves, reflects Europe’s gaze towards asylum seekers focusing on the

“crisis” as a localized phenomenon that needs containment. “Crisis” then becomes a topos for

one-sided cultural and social anxieties, producing a temporal narration that would paint an image

of displaced persons having no agency over their representation and their life in Greece outside

formal channels.

104 Auge, “Non-Places,” 77. 105 Ibid, 103. 77

The Repository, with its spatial scope on the Aegean islands, creates a historical archive that documents entry and processing of displaced people, focusing on the first phase of rescue and reception of displaced people. Lesvos, functioning along with Lampendusa as Europe’s Ellis islands, is dominant in terms of the collected material and the localized interest. The focus transforms the narrative of the “crisis:” the term currently should denote a complex phenomenon of population movement that needs a long-term approach to alleviate the suffering of those stuck in Greece’s reception camps and bureaucracy. Instead, the study of Repository’s current material favors a reproduction of a perpetual need for immediate responses, rescue, relief, and short-term responses: there are very few entries that show what happens after the populations move to inland Greece or other countries. Along with the absence of voices of the displaced persons, there are also very few entries about the continuous warnings of aid workers in relation to the living conditions of the reception camps in the past few years.106 Since late August 2019, the

Greek government also contributes to a housing “crisis” in the mainland, as it evacuates squats,

usually organized by anarchist collectives, aimed at providing accommodation, food, shelter, and

in some cases education to displaced persons, moving them instead to reception camps with

deplorable living conditions that contribute to a mental health “crisis.”107 A reader can find news

bulletins about this new “crisis” in the Observatory, but the information is not archived in the

Repository, affecting its mission statement to present up-to-date artifacts about the “refugee

crisis.”

Archivists and librarians’ decisions about what artifacts are included, curated, and

presented in archives and libraries determines what survives the course of time and this, in turn,

affects the perceptions that are created about the examined period. Daniel calls this set of choices

106 Helena Smith, “Aid workers;” dw.com, “Lesbos;”; Katy Fallon, “Moria 2.0.” 107 Alex King and Ioanna Manoussaki-Adamopoulou, “Greek police raid squats.” 78 the institutions’ power over “life and death,” as future generations draw their knowledge from that information pool.108 While in the online era the depth and pluralism of information available

would allow anyone interested in the “refugee and migrant crisis” to conduct deeper and more

thorough research on the historical event and the surrounding socio-historical conditions that

contribute to it, the institutional character of the Repository make it an official account and thus its contents acquire an elevated status. As Derrida aptly argues, “there is no political power without control of the archive;”109 in this case, the displaced persons, by having no control over

the archived narratives that represent them, lose part of their political power, and are reduced to a

component of the “crisis” under a Western gaze that “Others” them and reduces them to

observers of their own presence in the West.

Daniel, citing Derrida, discusses how archivization produces history, as it “produces as

much as it records the event.”110 The Repository by extension currently reproduces a narrative of

the “refugee and migrant crisis” as a phenomenon that has withered in urgency after 2015 and

2016, the end of the first phase of the “crisis.” For example, despite the overpopulation of

hotspots during the 2018-2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Repository contains

very few entries describing that “crisis,” and virtually none from the period 2019-2021. With its

underrepresentation of the third phase of the “refugee crisis,” the Repository constructs a

database that promotes a public memory outlook with a limited definition of “crisis.” The

immanence of the need for an immediate intervention and solution in the definition of “crisis” is

precisely what constitutes the problem with the European Union’s policies towards migration:

with cash injections towards the Greek State and the islands for the creation of infrastructure for

108 Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 178. 109 Derrida, Archive Fever, 4. 110 Daniel, “Archival Representations,” 188. 79 more efficient border control to curb migration flows, the EU leaves the issue of integration and living conditions to the Greek authorities, canonizing the casual abuse of human rights in the

Greek borderlands. In its present form, if a researcher studies the Repository to find out more about the “refugee crisis,” they would conclude that the urgency the term denotes has been resolved and appropriate has been resolved by 2018, thus severely underrepresenting the developments in the third phase of the “refugee crisis.”

The “crises” in the Greek borderlands appear every few months, only to be resolved with temporary, “emergency” relief measures. To this day however, the underlying causes of the tense situation in the Greek borders have not been substantially addressed by Greece and the EU: it would be a methodological generalization to talk about a single “refugee and migrant crisis,” as the term changes its form and meaning during each phase. Indicative of the changes is that the debates on a political level have been centered in the past three years (2018-2021) not only on who saves the people stranded at sea, but also on who gets to migrate to Europe and who provides assistance without facing criminal prosecution for following standard maritime procedures.111 The time span of the Repository’s current contents does not adequately represent

the inefficiency of the temporary responses of Greece and the EU in relation to their current

border policies and practices: if one looks the numbers of displaced persons crossing the Aegean

in 2020 and 2021, they would notice for example reduced numbers: the Greek State translates

this as a success of its border policies, attributing reports for human rights violations at the Greek borders as “fake news.”112 However, the Greek State’s view is superficial, as the trend of illegal

111 The Italian government passed in Summer 2019 legislation that criminalized the rescue of refugees and migrants, following similar laws for ships that conducted maritime search and rescue operations. Those legal obstacles to NGOs conducting search and rescue operations started after the agreement Libya, Italy, and the EU reached in 2017, which effectively made Libya, much as Turkey, a ‘buffer’ state that aids in Europe’s border control, resulting in abhorrent living conditions for refugees and migrants stuck at its refugee ‘camps’ that resemble more open prisons. Heller and Pezzani’ report Blaming the Rescuers also deals with the consequences of this policy.. 112 Nikolaj Nielsen “Greek minister,” https://euobserver.com/migration/151392. 80 pushbacks is also followed by other EU countries as well. According to The Guardian’s recent analysis by Lorenzo Tondo, 2.000 refugee deaths are linked to the “brutal tactics” of EU countries, with more than 40.000 asylum seekers stopped at the border, “systematically pushed back.”113

An example of the various continuing problems displaced persons have faced at hotspots

has been the overpopulation of people stuck at the camps of Kos, Leros, Chios, and Lesvos 2019,

and the fire that destroyed the Moria camp in 2020. During the period 2017-2019, based on data

from the Greek Ministry of Internal Affairs114 the ratio of available temporary housing and

accommodated refugees and migrants was 1:2, and despite some sporadic efforts by the Greek

government to transfer “vulnerable” asylum applicants to other camps away from the

borderlands, the ratio remained virtually unchanged until the destruction of Moria camp in

September 2020 and the consequent the creation of a new mega-reception camp at Kara Tepe

(another location in Lesvos), all while the COVID-19 pandemic has been at large. These events, paired with the rampant illegal pushbacks by the Greek Coast Guard have been the primary causes of the notorious 90% drop in incoming populations in 2020 and 2021. The “urgency of the pandemic and locals’ continuous hostilities has led the government to move 50% of the

displaced populations from reception camps of the islands to reception camps and facilities of the

mainland. This data however is absent from the Repository, thus giving an impression of a

“calmer” third phase of the “refugee crisis,” when that has evidently not been the case.

Conclusion

A mediated (in press or news websites) image of the displaced person, no matter if they

are marked as “refugee,” “migrant,” or “illegal” is constructed as an assemblage of outside

113 Tondo, “Revealed.” 114 General Secretariat, “National Situational Picture Regarding the Islands at Eastern Aegean Sea.” 81 opinions, testimonies, sensationalist images, and secondhand accounts of perpetual journeys. The prevailing sense of “crisis” dominates the discourse in the Greek borderlands, as the hotspots are routinely “relieved,” only to be quickly overflown by new arrivals and detention policies. In

September 2019 a 5-year-old child was killed in Moria camp when a truck ran over the carton box the child was hiding in: a few days before the accident it was reported that the only children’s recreational center at Moria was closed due to hygienic violations: this is one of the many stories absent from the Repository. With numbers of new arrivals fluctuating, the

Repository’s role in documenting the continuous cycles of “crises” in the Greek borderlands is crucial and the archive should continue the rigor of documentation, just like its first previous years. The “Living Archive” of Lesvos, as Tamboukou calls it, should be further connected with the institutional role of the Repository, as future academics will need to see the full picture of a phenomenon that tends to become normalized, a “new” reality for people attempting to come to

Europe from the East. The surge in far-right and neo-Nazi parties in national parliaments across

Europe and Donald Trump’s legacy of xenophobic policies show that there is an ever-growing audience around the world that is willing to support political decisions that further marginalize the stateless seeking help. And while the decreasing numbers of newcomers to Europe could be seen as a welcoming result of the gradual de-escalation in the Syrian Civil War and the battle against Daesh, one need only turn their eyes at Libya’s “refugee camps” where slave auctions and violations of human rights are everyday occurrences to challenge that conclusion. If the situation in Libya might seem out of the West’s reach, then any random report from Greece’s

“hotspots” at the Aegean islands will provide ample hard evidence on the failure of Western democracies’ humanitarian policies: unless the purpose of said reports are to create a deterring image for those seeking to escape death and poverty. It is therefore for the Repository to 82 accurately (re)present, save, and document life in the Greek borderscape of Lesvos and Greece, allowing the displaced persons to tell their stories, (re)claiming their sovereignty.

83

CHAPTER 2: FROM LESVOS TO CRETE, SEARCHING FOR HOME(S)

As I left Lesvos in July 2019, the question of how to move forward with the displaced populations trapped at the island’s hotspots was becoming a heated topic, particularly after the conservative New Democracy party came to power in the national elections that month. One of

New Democracy’s central promises was to close down the hotspots and empty the islands of all displaced populations by accelerating returns for those with rejected asylum applications and creating closed facilities for processing asylum applicants: the reality of the New Democracy’s approach so far in 2021 seems to be the expansion of the present border regime, with more security, more control, more hotspots. During the Ouzo festival in Mytilene I attended with my host Antonis, who was working then as an educator for a Greek NGO, I saw families of displaced people having little knowledge of the history of the festival or the culture of the island among the many Greeks sitting around and enjoying the traditional music and delicacies. The families and groups of displaced people were sitting on the periphery of the festival, and you could often see walking police patrols making the rounds, making random checks of groups of men. I politely asked a few locals about the nature of the checks and learned that nearby there were popular drug and human trafficking spots, which in their opinion seemed to justify the police presence. I did not witness myself that night any such activities, but during the following days I had chats with locals, who confirmed that a nearby square and park was often a spot for illicit activities, with locals partaking as well, either as customers or enablers. The profiling by the police had racial characteristics; someone identified by their skin color and/or outfit as

“other” would be subject to a check more often than anyone passing as Greek: as movement to and from Moria at the time was not restricted, the checks had a sense of correction and 84 preemption: a reminder that at the sight of the slightest deviance, there would be a dynamic, often violent, response from the State.

A few months later, the population of displaced people in Lesvos had increased from

5,000 to 20,000. In fact, February 2020 was one of the most intense during the “refugee crisis” that started in 2015 with a rapid increase in border crossings. During the first months of 2020, pogroms occurred against displaced populations and NGO workers, police riot squads clashed for days with locals who protested the establishment of new closed processing facilities overturning New Democracy’s election campaign promises. The current government does not shy away from reminding to all its audiences, domestic and abroad, that things have changed, and the country’s migration policy is that of determent, often by any means possible.

The islands of the Aegean are treated by the Greek media, the Greek government, but also European officials as a borderscape;115 a liminal area where the spatial relations are affected

by discourses of securitization and defined by containment. The prolonged detainment of

displaced people in hotspots at the Aegean islands establishes a temporariness that reinforces a

border regime, where the “proper” process of border control is suspended by the large

populations that live in camps that function, in effect, as non-places. The detainment facilities are

temporary stops for those coming and going, but permanent as an apparatus of control and a

mechanism that produces a notoriety, often present in the public discourse whenever racist discourses are at play about Greece’s, and often the EU’s, safety. The 2017 EU-Turkey

Statement, which effectively trapped displaced populations at the Aegean islands while their applications are processed (so that the rejected applicants could be then sent to Turkey), was

115 Perera describes the borderscape as “currently being reconstituted through technologies and discourses of securitization as well as through forms of new and ongoing spatial relations and practices that defy the categorizations of the border, and unsettle the univocity and stability of the ‘proper’” (Perera 2007, 207). 85 never fully enacted, as the returns from Greece to Turkey were always far lower than the numbers of incoming people. After the tension at the Greek border (both land and sea) during

February and March 2020, the Statement has been effectively put on hold, if not suspended. The

COVID-19 pandemic reduced the numbers of incoming displaced populations, but the discourses of securitization took a different biopolitical form; the quarantine imposed by the Greek State on

March 14, 2020 also affected the ways hotspots functioned, with newcomers left to cater for themselves, as local authorities would not let them get rescued and registered.116

Crete, an island miles away from the closest hotspot, is often treated by the Greek government as part of the “mainland” due to its size and population. With a robust economy that was largely unaffected by the economic crisis of 2010 and geographically positioned in the southern part of Greece, Crete is not part of the hotspot policy, which entails hosting incoming displaced people at semi-closed facilities, often decommissioned army camps, until their asylum applications have been processed, as the island is not a port of entry for displaced persons. Crete also does not have other “accommodation facilities” in the form of refugee camps117 like mainland Greece. Nevertheless, the island has not remained independent from the rest of the country and the ongoing “refugee crisis” management efforts. Crete is part of the ESTIA

116 The Greek government imposed a suspension on the acceptance of asylum applications from March 1st to April 1st, 2020. During that time 2000 people arrived and do not have the right to apply for asylum. After the expiration of the of the measure however, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent quarantine, the people arriving at Lesvos have been left on their own, with authorities restricting their movement. According to tvxs.gr correspondence on April 5 by Iasonas Apostolopoulos, the refugees sought protection from the weather under broken boats and a few tents and sleeping bags provided by the very few NGO members left after the local pogroms in March. “Stage II,” a camp at Lesvos built and signed for the purposes of identification and provision of immediate relief was destroyed by arson on March 1, and local authorities refuse to provide any kind of assistance, asking the Greek government to send ships to transfer the populations to the mainland. 117 A 2018 research by “Refugee Support Aegean” provides ample information on the refugee camps and accommodation facilities in mainland Greece. It should be noted that since July 2019, when the new New Democracy administration rose to power, there are major issues with transparency about refugee relocation decisions and complaints from local communities that have not been consulted or made part of decisions for new facilities. https://rsaegean.org/en/reception-crisis-in-northern-greece-three-years-of-emergency-solutions/ ; A State document that presents some of the camps can be found at: https://infocrisis.gov.gr/images/prosfygiko/Fotografiko_leukoma_prosfyges_gr.pdf 86 program of temporary relocation for recognized refugees, beneficiaries of subsidiary protection, and asylum seekers, to apartments and other types of residences.

In Crete things move at a different pace. The island has not been a stranger to multiculturalism, with a long history of population exchanges, empires, and civilizations that have left a mark on Crete’s geography and culture. Remnants of ancient palaces, Venetian and

Ottoman architecture, and a host of street and village names show the cultural pluralism of the island across the ages: a simple Google Scholar search reveals a rich bibliography on the archaeological excavations conducted in Crete, with American (as well as other Western

European) universities organizing excavations and summer schools annually. A walk in the cities within Crete will reveal neighborhoods where refugees were first staying after the 1922 population exchange and much older ruins with Arabic inscriptions. The architecture in some neighborhoods has not changed much, revealing thus the differences between locals’ and refugees’ houses; the first have a tall wall surrounding the house and its front garden to protect the family’s privacy (particularly women’s), while the second were more modest, often lacking any kind of gardens and yards. Many of the neighborhoods created after the 1923 population exchange in Iraklion for example, like Katsambas, Alikarnassos, and Mastambas, are areas where now many non-Greeks live, particularly migrants, refugees, and other displaced persons; well-off expats usually choose residences by the northern or southern coasts of the island, or the cities’ suburbs.

Crete’s economy is also primarily based on tourism, hosting over three and a half (3,5) million tourists annually.118 In addition to the local tourist economy, much like most of Greece,

Cretans have been migrating for the past 200 years to other continents, forming many

118 A fonien.gr article discussing the reduced numbers of tourists during the 2019 summer season gives a sense of the numbers of tourists visiting Crete annually. https://tinyurl.com/y72novlk 87 associations and diasporic communities; there is a Pancretan Conference for Diasporic

Associations, as well as a Creteology Conference, both organized and serving the purpose of preserving Cretan culture and traditions and exploring themes and topics relevant to the island’s culture and history. Northeast of Crete, very close to its shores, lies Spinalonga, an island that functioned as a notorious colony for Greeks suffering from Hansen’s disease in the late 19th and

20th century. The island has become synonymous with exile and isolation in Greek culture;

Spinalonga inspired the best-seller The Island by Victoria Hislop, which was also adapted for

Greek TV and has been to date the most expensive TV production in the country’s history.

Crete’s administrative capital is its largest city, Iraklion, which is located in the island’s northern central coast and includes a metropolitan population of over 150,000. The Iraklion region, which stretches from the North to the South coasts of the central island, hosts the largest population in Crete, around three hundred thousand inhabitants; the other three regions,

Rethymnon, Chania, and Lasithi have roughly the same number of inhabitants combined.119 The

northern part of the island is where most of the large hotel establishments (from short-term lease

apartments to large consortiums and whole “hotel towns” like Hersonissos and Malia) are

established, while the southern part of the island relies primarily on its agricultural economy and

eco-tourism (small apartments and apartment complexes, camping, naturists).120 With two

valleys positioned in the southern parts of Iraklion (Messara) and Lasithi (Sitia-Ierapetra), the

agricultural production amounts to thousands of tons of products: from oil, wine, and raki to

tomatoes and cucumbers. A third economic sector connected with the is construction, which

involves renovations of hotel establishments, building new ones, glasshouses, and other

agricultural constructs; post-2010, after Greece experienced a severe financial crisis, construction

119 The source of the numbers is the European Statistical Agency (Eurostat.eu) 120 For further research and information on Crete’s eco-tourism policies see Saatsakis, “A Local Perspective.” 88 as a financial sector took a severe blow, but it had been slowly recuperating until the pandemic hit the island.

Construction, agriculture, and tourism in Crete require large numbers of seasonal workers and laborers. As tourism (and tourism-related construction) became a prosperous sector after the

1980s, along with economic developments in the field of agriculture (with the opening of new export markets as the European Union formed), increased labor needs have been covered by the migration of foreign workers to the island, at first from the Eastern Balkans (primarily Albania and Bulgaria), Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia) and later from the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq,

Pakistan, Syria). Male workers from the Balkans arrived first, later bringing their families with them. The Olympic Games of 2004, and the prosperity Greece had from the mid-90s until 2010 worked to the benefit of those Balkan populations’ assimilation, with second generation migrants attending Greek schools, taking the Greek nationality, joining the army, and often adopting

Greek names and customs. For laborers from the Middle East, the situation has been different; most have come alone, leaving their families back in their countries, sending remittances through wire transfers whenever possible. In the agricultural southern Crete, particularly in Iraklion and

Lasithi regions, many laborers rent houses they share with as many people as possible to cut down costs, often in difficult conditions; the laborers face intense scrutiny and racist behaviors from locals, leading them to only rent houses that are old and/or in dire need of renovations. 89

Fig. 5. Iraklion, Timpaki, and Mires.

In the administrative region of Iraklion, there are two major centers of concentration of displaced persons away from the urban grid: Mires and Timpaki, two towns in the south of Crete located in the Messara valley. Timpaki and Mires host a large number of workers, mostly male, who live there, lodging in large numbers in houses, working on seasonal agricultural activities, mainly olive picking and glasshouse maintenance/cultivation. Timpaki and Mires are neighboring towns of similar size and function; they are both administrative centers of the

Messara valley, hosting big supermarkets and shops that essentially serve the whole region. The demographics of non-Greeks in the area has shifted in the past decade. In early 2000s the majority of workers in agricultural activities were Albanians, Bulgarians and Pakistani men. The

Albanians in time moved to construction and other blue-collar labor, away from agriculture; now many Albanians own their own olive gardens or have crews of laborers that can be hired to do agricultural and construction tasks. It is extremely difficult to find available Albanian laborers nowadays in Crete; because they are considered seasoned and diligent workers, they can charge 90 around 5€/ hour minimum for their services, which is almost double what workers of other non-

Greek nationalities are paid. Many of the Albanians that arrived in the 1990s in Crete are now buying property in Timpaki and Mires, looking to establish roots in those communities where they first found a home and occupation in the 1990s. Both towns currently host thousands of

Pakistani and Afghan men; many Albanian families still live in both towns. Timpaki though is a preferential location for laborers, as there are many glasshouses around it, and it is also a town very close to the sea with better climate, despite only being seven to ten (7-10) kilometers away from Mires.

The 2015 “refugee crisis” and the different reactions and attitude changes it has caused in the Greek society have produced visible changes to Crete’s relationship with migration. The tensions between different migration waves have not been systematically studied as of yet, however they slowly have become noticeable. In everyday conversations, beneficiaries of the

A&M Kalokairinos Foundation, where I conducted my classes and volunteered from 2018 to

2020, often complained to the social workers and myself about the asylum seekers’ “benefits” in comparison to the lack of State and private support they received now or in the past. This sentiment often manifests in complaints from some beneficiaries regarding refugees’ and asylum seekers’ “preferential” treatment by the Foundation and its employees, and acts of micro- aggression directed at newer arrivals, such as murmurs, racist language, and complaints about visible cultural markers, such as hijabs or dietary restrictions.

In an era of anxiety about migratory flows to Greece, the intersection of refugee reception, migration and work finds its way on the news in different ways. Following the tension at the Greek borders in early 2020 for example, a group of workers travelling from mainland

Greece to Crete in February 2020 to find work at its numerous olive groves was mistaken for 91 refugees by a local racist group who were part of a relocation program, creating confusion and causing the mobilization of police authorities.121 However problematic, such incidents are not as

many or frequent in Crete as they are on a national scale in the mainland and the border islands.

For example, Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party responsible for organizing racist attacks and

pogroms which had a strong presence in the rest of Greece, did not have a consistent presence in

Crete, and since early 2019 does not have offices in Iraklion anymore. In 2019 and 2020 Golden

Dawn’s power dwindled due to multiple judicial cases against the party’s actions and the

shrinking of its electoral influence (and the associated State sponsorship connected to its

Parliamentarians’ numbers), but the protests against displaced persons increased. The protests

were often instigated and supported by New Democracy’s local political figures, along with

Golden Dawn’s ex members, who tried to depoliticize the protests and blend with local reactionaries. This strategy of “depoliticizing” the protests in Crete, attributing their organization instead to “local sentiment” so far has not yielded many results. The failure of this divisive

strategy might be partially explained by the different ways Crete has approached refugee

relocation, Crete’s economy that heavily relies on the labor of displaced persons, as well as the

island’s antifascist and progressive history.

Crete’s relationship with refugees and the 2015 “refugee crisis” has been informed by the

island’s geography, away from the Turkish coastline where most boats of refugees start their

journey to Europe, and the political decisions that prevented the island from becoming a hotspot

host. In 2017, local authorities proposed to the Greek government to host in all interested Cretan

cities a temporary relocation program for asylum seekers and recognized refugees with the co-

operation of the United Nations High Committee for Refugees (UNHCR). In contrast to

121 Tvxs.gr, “Far-right amok.” 92 mainland Greece where, in tandem with housing programs run by NGOs and UNHCR, several refugee camps operate, often in locations previously used as barracks by the Greek army, in

Crete there are not multiple relocation programs. The ESTIA relocation program, funded by

UNHCR and the EU, is the sole temporary residence program for asylum seekers and recognized refugees in Crete. ESTIA, which currently runs successfully in several municipalities122 across

Greece, became the only relocation program through which refugees and asylum seekers officially made their way to the island, after their stay at the borderlands. As the program provides housing in urban areas, after negotiation with local authorities three Cretan cities took part: Chania, Iraklion (where most asylum applicants live), and Sitia.

The ESTIA relocation program has also ensured the houses occupied by refugees and asylum seekers are not concentrated in the same area or neighborhood, to avoid increased visibility. By placing refugee and asylum-seeking families in the urban grid, in Greek neighborhoods, ESTIA officials aim to integrate the families in Greek society. While this policy and placement might mean that for some a social visit, or an appointment with social and medical services, might require taking a bus to the other side of the city, as one of my students has told me she often does, it also means that the families have blended into the cities with less resistance from the local community as compared to other parts of Greece. The presence of refugees and asylum seekers is spread across the city of Iraklion; displaced persons that have lived in Iraklion for the past thirty years never formed neighborhoods with a prevailing ethnic character, nor were there any significant city council policies contributing to ghettoization. In my neighborhood, for example, two families from Afghanistan lived for over two years in a two- floor house. The families did not speak the same language and did not belong to the same

122 The participating municipalities are Athens, Thessaloniki, Piraeus, Agios Dimitrios Attica, Ioannina, Iraklion, Thessaloniki, Karditsa, Larisa, Nea Filadelfia Attica, Tripoli, and Leivadia. 93 ethnicity. Some of the children came to develop a relationship with my grandmother; she would often buy them candy or other snacks and give to them: they would always express their gratefulness. This gratefulness did bring positive feelings to my grandmother, who was unsure of who the people were and their intentions at first, affected by the spread of racism and xenophobia by Greek media and other conservative members of my family. From gradual interactions and exchanges that took place over time though (one-sided as they often were) my grandmother grew to like the neighbors, and was sad the day they were relocated. The rest of the neighborhood was also rather skeptical towards the families, partly due to distinguishing cultural and socioeconomic characteristics (women wearing hijab, children wearing worn-out clothes and playing around unattended during afternoon and late evening). However, over the course of the families’ stay, until their departure from ESTIA, I also came to observe changes to the neighbors’ attitudes. The neighborhood gradually got used to each other’s presence, with some even helping the two families with clothes and food, as the UN cash assistance was never adequate to meet their needs.

The spread of asylum seekers and refugee families throughout the city of Iraklion is not wholly positive. The distance between the homes makes the forming of a community difficult, though for many that see Iraklion as another stop towards the European North, building a community is not necessarily a priority. There are shops and stores owned by non-Greeks in

Iraklion, however they are usually owned by displaced persons that have been here for a while, often a decade or more: a few convenience stores and kiosks, and hairdressers’ establishments are the most notable mentions. The location of displaced owners’ stores, along with the strategic placement of refugees and asylum seekers affect not only the visibility of the displaced populations in the city, but also the places they choose to hang out and their transportation habits. 94

As a result, displaced persons are quite often required to use public transportation, or walk for a while to reach many of their desired locations.

During most of 2018 and 2019, I was a frequent public transportation passenger. In a particular case, in December 2019, I witnessed and intervened during a racist incident with a bus driver and two refugee women who happened to be my students. The driver did not allow my students to use the services for free, despite them having a valid bus pass which their evening school had provided them. In Greece’s two largest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, urban transportation is managed by the state and passengers can validate their tickets on machines throughout the busses and trains. In contrast, in Iraklion public transportation is managed by a private entity, and passengers give the driver their ticket, and the bus driver validates it by ripping it in half, keeping a part while returning the other; boarding only occurs from the front door, while departing only happens through the middle and back doors. When the driver realized the students were non-Greeks, due to their language and names on the bus passes, he called them thieves and cheats, and shamed them. He threatened to call the police, and while it was obvious they did not understand half of what he was saying, he was aggressive to them, yelling and seeking support from other passengers. I intervened and attempted to mediate the situation, so that my students would remain on the bus, but out of pride, one of them refused to board the bus.

The other young woman paid for a ticket, confronting the driver in English about his behavior and his tone. His tone with me became a lot milder, and he only said something about all of

“them” being the same. The incident was rare in terms of its intensity, but similar to everyday racist acts that occur in Iraklion and are not systematically recorded or reported. While I did file a complaint to his superiors, I am under no illusion that his work was in any way affected. Public bus drivers in Iraklion rarely know English, or any foreign language for that matter; I often must 95 explain to tourists about bus stops and places of interest; there is a system of bus station announcements in Greek (and occasionally English) installed for this purpose by the bus company, but it is rarely functional.

During January 2020, I was present at a different, similarly intense interaction, with different instigators. It involved two women, Greek speakers, one elderly and a younger one with a long black skirt and a t-shirt talking on the phone about a person towards whom she expressed affection (another woman) and a job she took. Her accent, register, and skin tone suggested that she was of Romani descent. We got on the bus at the same stop and got out at the same one as well, so I was able to follow most of her phone interaction, which included some profane language and a loud tone. The ride to the city center was brief, around ten minutes and she talked on the phone during most of it. The demographic of the bus consisted of senior citizens and a few students who had finished school earlier due to a national holiday. One of them, a Greek woman with black attire (usually a sign of a widow), proceeded to chastise the younger Romani about her language. Her criticism focused on the Romani woman being profane, loud, and not speaking Greek. The Romani woman protested, and the widow ended her chastising with the word kataktites (conquerors). The word kataktites is most often present in racist/xenophobic discourses about displaced persons. The word is a popular metaphor that likens refugee boats that cross the Aegean and the people crossing through the river Evros to the north to those of enemies that tried to conquer Greece in the past. To that end, the kataktites racist imagery is connected to ancient Persians, Ottoman Turks, and Saracene Arabs, coding anyone who has a darker skin complexion as a threat to the country’s security, religion, and culture. The use of the word and the environment it occurred in show how the sentiment towards people that would not be immediately recognized as Greeks has gradually worsened since the elections in July 2019, 96 particularly after the February 2020 tension at the Greek border. The word also reflects how the xenophobic narrative appeals to older age groups, which have more conservative beliefs, as well as how the Greek identity is coded to exclude ethnic minorities that are legally considered

Greeks. Romani are indeed Greeks after all, with the same rights and obligations as any other

Greek citizen, however they tend to live in makeshift camps, in accordance to ethnic particularities, away from the urban grid, and they often face racist behavior from authorities and

“mainstream” Greeks when they seek housing and employment outside the camp.

The tensions in late February and March 2020 at the Greek borders, which were mitigated due to the COVID-19 quarantine, strengthened the government’s nationalist discourse, circulated on the Greek media, which described the Greek way of life as under threat by Turkey, through a “hybrid war” at the northern border. The tensions at the Greece-Turkey border provided the Greek government with an excellent opportunity to racialize the matter, giving a face to the kataktites. The “weapon” of this “hybrid war,” were the people Turkey was pushing towards the Greek borders, which were often portrayed as soldiers, Turkish “agents” and

“militia,” “jihadists,” and “undeserving” of a fair asylum process. These axiomatic characterizations were officiated by the Greek government, when it suspended the asylum application process for a month, justifying the decision as a countermeasure to the State- sponsored and media-backed narration of the displaced people outside the Greek border as a threat to national security.

Living in a neighborhood that hosts quite a few families, as well as on route to a public health services provider, I would notice on an everyday basis many displaced people and their families using the bus to and from the city center. I would usually discern them from Greeks due to their clothing (less elaborate and simpler than that worn by Greeks), the language they would 97 speak, and sometimes based on if I had seen them visiting the Foundation or attending the classes I taught. During winter, the buses would be full of Greeks and a few displaced persons. In contrast, during summer, I would often notice very few Greeks on the bus routes: in most cases the buses would be full of Western tourists en route to their hotels, a beach, or the airport, and displaced persons: figuring out who was who was often a matter of observing their gear, luggage, their language, and their clothes. In my observations, tourists were less likely to exhibit racist behaviors towards displaced people than Greeks.

Actors in Iraklion

In Iraklion there are multiple organizations that help refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, even if it is not part of their formal mandate. Many of the organizations were created or

(re)activated after 2015 to deal with the emergency of the “refugee crisis.” However, as several organization employees have admitted, the administrators soon found that the beneficiaries of their services are not limited to people that came to Crete in the previous five years. For example, in the case of the cash assistance program the UN started in Crete in 2019, people living in Crete for a decade appeared regularly during cash assistance sessions and claimed to have a status that qualified them for UN services. All organizations, both State and NGOs, describe the urban placement strategy that was implemented in Crete as a positive development for their beneficiaries and prefer it to the hotspot strategy. The most common media covered images of despair and unrest from hotspots and their surrounding areas at the Aegean islands has much smaller repercussions to the cohabitation of populations here; Crete mainly deals with issues pertaining the next stage of displaced peoples’ reception: integration.

One summer Saturday in 2019, after an interview I had with a social worker, a man entered the Foundation at the end of the interview. He was dressed in worn clothes, and wore 98 worn out shoes. I saw his triptych, which revealed his nationality, and that he was an asylum seeker, outside the ESTIA program. He did not speak Greek, only very broken English. He tried to explain that he wanted food, repeating “me no Ali Baba” trying to say he was not a thief (a reference to a popular Middle East fairy tale). As we attempted to explain to him that he came by after the lunch hours, he persisted, pointing to the social worker’s food, requesting to get that package. The social worker in turn got angry, because he got offended by the notion that he could be dishonest and withhold food from a person in need. In the end, despite being his lunch, the social worker disgruntledly attempted to give the displaced person his food, which was then denied because it was perceived by the displaced man as an act of charity. After a few minutes of non-verbal communication and intense, however unintelligible argumentation, the social worker gave him the food package, ending the whole affair with both of them disgruntled. Similar stories repeated several times each week; due to Crete’s geography, it is most likely that people who ended up in Crete have done so intentionally. The majority of the displaced people that end up in Crete have purposely come to the island for a chance at a better life, often finding little to no support, as they exist outside the official channels of relocation and population movement.

This contrasts with the limited number of asylum seekers and refugees, who are part of the

ESTIA (launched in 2017 by UNHCR and continued since 2021 by the Greek State) and

HELIOS(launched in 2020 by IOM) programs, and brought to Crete by the State: asylum seekers and refugees are monitored and catered for by ESTIA and HELIOS, until the moment they “disappear” through irregular means towards the European North. The majority of displaced persons, on the other hand, are usually pulled by the already-formed communities and rumors of easier employment and quieter life in relation to mainland Greece, and appear, once in Crete, to already have a basic knowledge of where to go and ask for help. While most refugees and 99 asylum seekers leave after a year or two of their arrival in Crete, other unrecognized categories of displaced people come to the island for the chance to make a living, appear to be planning to stay in Crete for longer, and immediately attempt to find connections that will help them navigate the new reality they enter.

According to official statistics, there are a little over thirty thousand (30,000) regular migrants and around a thousand refugees and asylum seekers currently in Crete, and approximately 60% of those live in Iraklion. 123 However, the official numbers are in reality

grossly inaccurate. From empirical research as well as discussions with actors from several parts

of Crete, the actual numbers of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons is at least double. The

people that do not appear in the official State numbers live invisible lives: many do not have

social security numbers, rent homes without official contracts, or share a home with many others

under one name, and rarely visit hospitals if they get injured at work because their labor is also

undocumented and could implicate their employers, usually Greek farmers.

Despite the numbers of foreign nationals in Crete and the position of the island which

often makes it a stop for drug and human trafficking from northern Africa and the west coast of

Asia, as well as the many different communities of non-Greeks that live at the island (including a

Hindu and a Syrian community in Rethymnon, Afghani, Pakistani, Albanian, Russian and

Kurdish communities in Iraklion), Crete only got its own Asylum Service Office in late 2017, in

light of the 2015 refugee crisis. Up until that point, all asylum applications and interviews were

conducted in Athens, which required a six (6)-hour boat trip or a flight for the applicant. Now

applicants can apply in Iraklion, and their interviews are currently conducted via Skype due to

the volume of applications and pandemic measures.

123 https://www.efsyn.gr/efkriti/koinonia/174091_kriti-32535-oi-metanastes-poy-zoyn-sto-nisi 100

Municipal and State agencies in Greece do not have dedicated translators and interpreters, despite the increased numbers of people who do not speak Greek (or English). In many cases said State and municipal services count on the presence of interpreters from the

ESTIA program and other NGOs to provide their services to displaced people. However, the number of beneficiaries in the reception programs is small in comparison to the non-Greek beneficiaries that do not belong in any refugee reception program. There are thus many possible non-Greek beneficiaries of the social, civil, and medical services outside the mandate of ESTIA and HELIOS that cannot receive assistance. It is solidarity initiatives by citizens and private entities that attempt to cover this communication and services gap. The “Community Centre,” a

City of Iraklion service funded mostly by the EU, hosts several services for Roma and migrants, offering legal, psychological, and social work assistance. The “Center for Migrants’ Integration”

(CMI), a component of the Community Centre, works with a system of referrals to relevant services and organizations, which are suggestions; the language gap though often leads beneficiaries to believe the referral is compulsory or connected to State benefits. The Community

Centre has recently hired an Arabic speaking cultural mediator to help with its operations. The

CMI is housed at facilities that are in great need of renovation, and it is understaffed and overworked: the staff does its best to provide social services, but cannot be often effective as the numbers of beneficiaries have been steadily on the rise.

The municipality of Iraklion, through its Lifelong Education initiatives, also organized intensive short-term (8 weeks, 40 hours) Greek language and Culture programs for adult refugees and migrants with very limited capacity, offering only evening classes. The City of Iraklion also has a Council for the Integration of Refugees and Migrants, however its function and activities are not often made public and their presence and activities are difficult to find online. 101

The organization primarily responsible for the needs of refugees and asylum seekers until

2021 has been the United Nations, through its operational branches: UNHCR and the IOM. The

UNHCR (as of May 2021) is represented by a liaison in Crete, who aids local administrators in planning integration polices, while a lawyer conducts appointments with beneficiaries and helps with their cases through a collaboration with the Greek Council for Refugees. From mid-2018 to

August 2019 though the UN had assigned two protection case workers who lived in Iraklion and moved around Crete for the needs of the program, providing invaluable services; however, due to organization cutbacks, the protection workers were either reassigned or laid off. Part of the agreement between the Greek State, the UNHCR, and the local municipalities in 2017 was that the organizations responsible for the realization of relocation and integration programs would be local actors and local chapters of international organizations instead of NGOs, as is often the case in mainland Greece and the borderland islands. As a result of this agreement, an already existing co-operative non-profit organization comprised of municipalities and local organizations undertook the task of organizing the ESTIA program in Crete: Anaptyxiaki Kritis and Ploigos.

The two organizations were originally interconnected, but in 2020 they separated to increase their State funding and operational capacity. Their operations are funded by the Regional

Government of Crete and European Union funds, with each of their programs and projects receiving separate funding; in this case ESTIA is funded by UNHCR and the EU. Anaptyxiaki and Ploigos have ESTIA offices in Iraklion, and local partners in Chania, and Sitia, where social scientists, interpreters, and administrative assistants are employed, tasked with the organization’s mandate.

For the refugees and asylum seekers in ESTIA’s relocation and integration program, the organizations support several aspects of their life and potential integration. As ESTIA partners, 102 the organizations are responsible for paying the rent, utilities, and repairs of any damages at the residences, as well as providing interpretation and translation support for visits to a doctor’s office, the hospital, or city/state services. Social workers are tasked with providing support to the beneficiaries and monitoring their adjustment to their new life, identifying possible needs for intervention. In terms of education, ESTIA officials have a critical role of providing support to the families’ underage members, supporting their school enrollment, and providing information and any kind of mediation. During the COVID-19 pandemic Ploigos and Anaptyxiaki case workers work remotely with the beneficiaries, providing information and support wherever necessary. In theory, the ESTIA program should not accommodate beneficiaries for more than 6 months, however it is often observed that some families remain in the program well after their

‘departure time’ for logistical reasons connected to their asylum application process.

IOM also has had a presence in Iraklion since 2014, with its primary mandate until 2020 being the voluntary return relocation program, which includes two hundred euros, a return ticket, and travel documents for those willing to travel back to their countries of origin. However, in mainland Greece in 2019, and in Crete in 2020, IOM is also tasked with realizing the HELIOS integration program, the plan that is implemented after ESTIA, funded by the General

Directorate of the European Commission for Migration and Internal Affairs. HELIOS is a pilot program that aims to support the recipients of international assistance (refugees and the beneficiaries of subsidiary assistance), so they can integrate into the Greek society. The program, according to a leaflet shared with stakeholders during its inaugural presentation, offers services aimed at the promotion of independent living, including rent allowance, language, and culture classes (capacity is currently twenty people per semester), employment support, and integration supervision. The HELIOS beneficiaries are refugees that are already in ESTIA, or FILOXENIA 103

(an IOM funded program), or live in hotspots, primarily since January 1st, 2018. In Crete, in the

first months 2020, there were 180 beneficiaries of HELIOS, ages 16-64. The classes and the

workshops for HELIOS take place in Gazi, a suburb of Iraklion where access is possible only via

public transportation and/or cars, which presents a problem, as bus tickets are expensive124 for most refugees living in the city center and its neighborhoods. HELIOS also offers preschool activities for children while their parent(s) attend classes and workshops. The exact time that beneficiaries of HELIOS can remain in the program and receive the allowance has not been clarified, with six to twelve (6-12) months being an estimation. In the inaugural meeting I attended along with representatives of local actors and involved organizations, we were presented with a rough schedule of the program and the goal of preparing the beneficiaries of

HELIOS for their life in Crete, but so far, the organization has not provided much information about what happens to those leaving the program.

In Iraklion the private entity with the most vital role in terms of services provided to refugees, migrants, displaced people, but also other people in need, is the A&M Kalokairinos

Foundation. The role of A&M Kalokairinos Foundation is central to the life of its Greek and non-Greek beneficiaries, especially those that fall through the cracks of social services and welfare programs. The social workers of the Foundation often take the role of intermediaries and mediators between State services and the beneficiaries; all speak Greek and a little bit of English.

Based on September 2019 statistics, the Foundation responded to forty-four (44) requests for food assistance (the requests do not represent single people, some of them are a request for a

124 As note previously, Greece does not have a central bus company system, with each region and city having either State/municipally-funded or private companies providing transportation options. Iraklion is one of the most expensive Greek cities in terms of urban transportation with buses. The company here does not have a socially aware policy, as it does not provide any unemployed citizens with a bus pass, or even a discount. Only people with disabilities, military personnel, and students get discounts. However, students do not get discounts outside their school hours, which is often a point of conflict between drivers and students, causing multiple complaints from the latter. 104 family of seven). The building itself and the employees there provide multiple forms of assistance: social workers help refugees and migrants with their tax declarations, job applications, sometimes act as intermediates for employers seeking workers, translate documents from English to Greek, provide guidelines for bureaucratic procedures displaced persons are not familiar with, as well as lessons in Greek.

The food program and the Greek language classes are the two programs most appealing to displaced populations in the Foundation, as they would participate in large numbers. I organized the Greek language lessons at A&M Foundation voluntarily. I started in September

2018, a few months after I returned from the United States, with the help of a good friend and colleague. The program quickly became popular with the various actors in the city and expanded; during 2019-2020 the program had a total of six instructor-volunteers, offering a total

16 hours of classes a week, for more than sixty adult and young adult students. The meal program the Foundation runs relies on European Union funds, and its initial goal was to serve

‘Greek people [citizens] in need,’ however according to the Foundation statistics (which regularly fluctuate), the majority of the meals beneficiaries are non-Greeks (a hundred and eighteen displaced persons from Asian countries, twenty-two Europeans, in contrast to seventy- one Greek citizens in 2020). The Foundation often finds itself under scrutiny from local council members and anti-immigrant groups, who believe the food programs and services should only be available to Greeks. However, contrary to what conservative anti-immigrant politicians and activists argue, this form of food assistance responds to current needs and shifts in the demographics. From discussions with involved parties I have come to understand that the displaced people seeking food assistance are not taking the place of Greeks, as said “spots” were not covered by Greeks in the first place. Nevertheless, the food program itself often presents 105 challenges and causes confusion to the beneficiaries, underlining the precarity of food access for those most in need in Iraklion. The administration of the Foundation’s meal program does not have a consistent policy outlining why families are removed from the daily meal provision. I have witnessed families removed as a penalty for “bad behavior,” miscommunication, religious beliefs, or consecutive absences. For example, a family runs the danger of being replaced by those on the waitlist if they do not show up two days for the meals, do not accept specific meals, or somehow create a “disturbance.” I have intervened in a number of cases to help families get retained in the list, because usually a misunderstanding has occurred that needs some kind of linguistic and cultural mediation.

A characteristic example of misunderstandings stemming from the lack of familiarization of social service organizations is the case of an asylum seekers’ family (a father, a mother, an adult son, and an adult daughter, as well as 3 underage children). They had been beneficiaries of the A&M Kalokairinos Foundation for over a year at the point this incident happened. During summer 2019, a particularly hot time in the year, the son of the family, who has mental health issues and PTSD due to suffering from torture in Afghanistan, told a Foundation social worker that he would not be able to come anymore and pick up the family’s daily food portions, as they live a bit far away from the center of the city where the Foundation is located. The social worker took the family off the food provision list. Two days later an exasperated adult daughter came to me at the Foundation and explained, in broken English and Greek, that her brother is “not well” and that she would be the one to pick up the food for a while. This misunderstanding of intentions led to me having to explain the situation to the social workers and convince them that the family still needed the portions they had been assigned. Speaking with social workers, teachers, medical practitioners and other actors immediately involved in displaced people’s 106 affairs confirms that this type of misunderstanding is a common occurrence across the city. I have observed administrators decide to cut off assistance to beneficiaries because they would not eat the food served on particular days, sometimes due to cultural dietary restrictions and other times because they were not familiar with the recipe. Due to its charity work and the classes it offered pre-pandemic, the Foundation has often been a place that displaced people frequent. This has created tension with neighbors, who feel the daily presence of people with dark complexion negatively affects their business and clientele.

Thalassa-Solidarity is the only privately-owned non-profit in the city, a new organization in Iraklion, created by a couple of Greeks with strong feels to create solidarity initiatives. Both have extensive experience with solidarity organizations and international aid NGOs. Since their small NGO started in Fall 2019, they provide immense help to refugees, migrants, and displaced and generally disenfranchised populations in the city. One of them is a seamstress, and she organizes free workshops for women who want to learn how to sew, as well as remain creative and create a community of support and solidarity. The students’ and the seamstress’s creations are on sale and the proceeds cover the costs of the workshop as well as material support of the students. During the COVID-19 pandemic the NGO suspended its teaching activities, but both founders of Thalassa have remained active, organizing free deliveries of free goods for disenfranchised people in need of support. Both A&M Foundation and Thalassa are often in communication to identify possible students/beneficiaries; Thalassa’s first workshop graduation ceremony took place at the Foundation in January 2020.

Other than displaced people, several Western Europeans have made Crete their home in the past thirty years, usually taking advantage of the privilege of their nationality and socioeconomic standing. While living in a different country is an experience of displacement, 107 and these individuals also seek to create communities, the expats’ relationships to the locals take different forms than that of the displaced persons with precarious legal status (migrants, refugees, asylum seekers). The social capital of an expatriate buys them easier access to the benefits of Cretan culture. Expatriates are often featured in brochures by travel and real-estate agents, suggesting they are welcomed and sought-after long-term guests. Upper- and middle- class Europeans quickly become welcomed members of the Cretan communities; they buy property and build summer houses; some even move here permanently and practice their profession. In southern Crete, which is much less developed in the field of organized mass tourism, many well-off (North) Europeans and (North) Americans choose to live in small coastal villages. In two such communities, Myrtos and Tertsa (in the southeast of the Lasithi region), the non-Greeks, including Albanian and Bulgarian migrants, surpass the number of Greek residents.

During May 2019 and October 2020, while I was freelancing in the area, I experienced the multicultural community of migrants, expats, and Greeks in two small villages that live away from well-off tourists. One of the programs that stems from the multicultural community connections is the presence of a German social circus, which involves youngsters from the local community and German teenagers from Berlin. Even in that rather prosperous community though the disparities are visible; most North-Europeans live in newly built houses with gardens and various amenities, while families of migrants and other displaced persons live in older houses of the village they have bought or rented.

Visibility

In Iraklion, the displaced peoples’ visibility is a major factor in their assimilation and integration attempts. Migrants from Balkans and Caucasus that arrived in the 1990s had great difficulty in finding houses and getting access to social services. Many of the support systems 108 currently in place by the State and civic society have been specifically tasked with serving recognized refugees in recent migration flows, receiving funding and increased mandates in the past decade. Outside the urban grid and especially in the Greek periphery, prior to 2010s there were virtually no services and organizations tasked to help non-Greek displaced persons, and the latter were called to quickly assimilate into Greek society to gain access to the already existing,

Greek-oriented social and civic services. Because persons from the Balkans and Caucasus phenotypically could pass as Greek or Western-European, the process of assimilation, which included learning the Greek language and working as blue-collar workers for many years, was not particularly hindered by phenotypical differences. However, Albanians in Crete, who tend to be phenotypically lighter-skinned, would sometimes stand out as “too white” or “too short” as a local told me, while some Bulgarians would also face discriminatory behavior because they have darker skin complexion (possibly because many here are ethnically Romani). Having to face suspicion and racism, Balkan migrants often lived in apartments in dire need of renovations and repairs, or even abandoned residences in remote villages. Nadia, an Albanian middle-aged woman I met at the Foundation and later had as a student in my Greek lessons, had a similar story to narrate. When she arrived in the 1990s, she and her husband lived in an apartment with very few windows, in terrible conditions, struggling to find support from the community and

State services; for months there was nothing to do but try to find work and return home afterwards. Nadia has been struggling with Greek bureaucracy to get the Greek nationality, which her sons already have. The nationality would mean that she would be exempt from renewing her residence permit every few years, a rather costly process. In Nadia’s opinion the

“refugees” are fortunate: she often would explain that she had to learn the Greek language on her 109 own, as well as navigate the complexities of Greek State services and the xenophobia of Greek society.

Since 2017, when the ESTIA program started, there have been many community engagement activities organized for the refugee families, under the umbrella of UNHCR. Those activities are featured on the website of the Greek UNHCR, accompanied by short videos, descriptions, and images. From discussions with humanitarian workers in the field and State officials I have come to understand that most of the people in the videos do not live in Greece anymore; they have moved to countries of the European North. With the exception of one family in Chania (which are descendants of Muslim Cretans that found themselves in Syria after the population exchange in 1922 and war brought them back to their ancestral homeland), most refugees do not choose to live in Crete (or Greece) after their asylum claim has been accepted.

Although the refugee flows progressively became significantly smaller after the EU-Turkey

Statement in 2016, the asylum application process became stricter, and it therefore became more difficult for asylum applicants to travel to Northern Europe, even via smuggling channels. In accordance to Dublin III regulations the asylum seeker’s application can only be examined at the country where they first entered, and the enforcement of this regulation traps thousands of people for months (and years) in Greece. In this state of perpetual transition it is exceptionally difficult for communities to form and for advocacy (not just on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers, but directly from and by them) to take place. This insecurity can often lead to a reduced visibility and a perpetual sense of insecurity, which also affects activities such as motivation to find employment and education or even leave their house.

The phenotypic and linguistic characteristics of displaced persons in Crete make some of them visible in public spaces; many for example are marked as “Others” when they speak Greek. 110

My father for example, a primary school teacher in Crete for thirty years often says that the pronunciation of /r/ and /s/ is a clear marker of a first-generation Albanian, as he claims they tend to stress them or pronounce them heavily. While on the bus, this information means that I usually am able to recognize someone who has been raised with a Balkan language through the way they pronounce certain Greek letters, not the way they look. Of course, this empirical method is not infallible; I have met many Greek men and women, previously living in Russia or other ex-Soviet Union areas that had migrated to Greece in the ‘80s and ‘90s (especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union) who also have this particular accent when speaking Greek. The

Greeks of Pontos that fled the collapsing Soviet Union have been treated with racism and prejudices by Greek people that have lived in Greece longer [elladites], as Pontian Greeks are considered of low education and prone to criminal activities.

Outside the known regular (ESTIA) and irregular (smuggling) means for a displaced person to reach Crete, there is also the possibility for many to reach the island conventionally through ferry boats and planes, like any traveler, only to realize there is no support system for them here, be that State/municipally-sponsored or ethnocultural (previous generations of displaced people already making a living here). A discussion I had with a convenience store owner, who also happens to be the Sunni religious leader in Iraklion, showed me a side of the city often overlooked. During a brief talk we had he informed me of people arriving in Crete and living at the beach until friends and organizations attempted to help them or collectives offered them a place to stay for a while. He argued that there is a steady influx of people outside the

“official” (or popular) “channels” coming to Crete because life here is better than mainland

Greece. In his view the “refugee crisis” has created people of different classes: those that get 111 monetary help, those that do not, and those waiting for it. He described the situation to me as unfair and predicted that this injustice will eventually result in inter-group conflicts.

Iraklion has many neighborhoods with Turkish/Asia Minor names: Katsambas (my neighborhood), Mastambas, Nea (new) Alikarnassos to name the biggest of them were places that Greeks were relocated to during the aforementioned forced population exchanges. Many of the refugees that live in Iraklion now reside in those same neighborhoods, in anticipation of the next step (or move) of their life. I have a friendly relationship with three asylum seekers: Abdul, his wife Persa, and her sister Sara. We would often talk about how they spend their time, and the emerging motif in our conversations is that of “waiting.” Sara left for Germany in late 2019, leaving behind Abdul and Persa, who had a baby in May 2020. For Sara Germany was the ideal destination; in contrast, for Abdul and Persa Iraklion seems like the best option to raise a family, but the waiting process wears them out. In their attempts to learn more about Cretan culture, Sara and Persa once asked me to tell them about “Alikarnassea,” a local celebration in their neighborhood connected to Greek refugees from the 1922 forced population exchange. They showed significant interest, as they participated in the celebration as attendees, loving the dancing festivities and the songs by local artists (Cretan folk music). Such events, usually taking place over summer, become a good opportunity for community bonding, despite the one-sided

(Greek) character they have.

There are not many shops catering to displaced people in Iraklion or even owned by them. I have come across one Pakistani convenience store that sells many different herbs, some drinks I do not recognize and dried food. I am aware of two other convenience stores in Iraklion owned by displaced people from the East: one in the beginning of Therissou avenue owned by

Pakistani men, and one in Minoos Avenue owned by a Syrian man, who also happens to be the 112

Sunni religious leader in Iraklion. The established presence of displaced owners’ businesses provided a point of reference for the newcomers, and the locations, along with their proprietors, often function as cultural mediators for the slowly increasing displaced population. A few events, with similar goals of cultural mediation and introduction of the refugees and asylum seekers to

Greek and Cretan culture, but also to the local society, are often spread across the city, organized by the organization dedicated to their housing and “integration.” Those efforts, however, mainly focus on the presence of children, whose number is significant: of the six hundred refugees and asylum seekers in the city of Iraklion under the ESTIA program, 40% of them are children. This focus on children, while positive, creates a sense that only children need assistance and only parents should be welcome, and it implies that single adults are not deserving of assistance. This discourse of “deservingness” has also been present in other regions: in Sparta for example, a city in mainland Greece, the vice-mayor said on TV that they would only accept families with children to live there, as they do not “pose a threat” to the locals.125

Displaced persons in Crete do not often go out to eat in restaurants, or at least they do not

go out to places I frequent or pass by. This is due to both monetary issues as well as not finding

their own food here. Money is directly related to public presence of the displaced. One of the

women in my class, Layla, asked me one day whether I knew a pawn shop where she could sell

her earrings for money. Layla would also go for kickboxing at a municipal gym. It was shocking

to me, after a few months, when I saw her coming to the Foundation, crying. She was wearing a

pair of torn jeans and a sports jacket, no hijab or the jewels I was used to seeing her wear. I was

in a hurry to start the class but the social worker who was supposed to be there to help her was

busy with clerical duties, and the worker also did not speak good English. Layla refused to tell

125 News247.gr, “Take them to your own homes.” 113 me at first what was bothering her. Eventually she showed me doctors' paperwork, explaining how her child was sick, and she had no money left to visit the pharmacy. The paperwork did not ask for a large sum for the prescription, something along the lines of four-five euros (six-nine dollars). I tried to find a social service, state, or public worker to help but none would answer my calls. After a number of phone calls I found out that she could go to the hospital, because she already had a social security number, and fulfill her order for free there. The information had not been properly communicated to her, and although the hospital provided a solution to the issue at hand, it came with problems of its own: the hospitals are away from the city center and the bus fare is expensive. Before leaving, Layla confessed she had no money at home. She wanted to ask for the UN monthly cash assistance a month in advance, but not only were there not any representatives from UN that day, but they were also not going to return. The UNHCR ultimately sent in its place an affiliated NGO, an action that enraged the administration of the Foundation who stood to gain nothing from this collaboration and decided to refuse the free use of its space.

There was great uncertainty as to when and where the cash disbursements would take place again, even though the UN would notify beneficiaries of the meeting location with text messages a few days in advance. Notably, the cash assistance and distribution service turned into a bimonthly operation since March 2020, and its operation moved to a location outside the city.

From day to day, the most visible members of non-Greek communities are those working on the streets. On the sidewalks of Iraklion, especially close to streets most frequented by tourists, one can see street vendors selling products. I recognize many of them from my volunteering at the Foundation. Many of the vendors seem to be Pakistani or Afghans, all selling the same products: fruit/vegetable peelers and inflatable tomatoes or other kids’ toys. On one of

Iraklion’s central avenues, men clear car windows at traffic stops. Reflecting a racial divide, 114 these men tend to have dark complexions and speak limited Greek/English. Displaced persons from Pakistan, Iraq and Romani Greeks are the primary window cleaners, occasionally fighting with one another for premier spots on the boulevards; Romani women often sell flowers to passengers, while men from Pakistan and Iraq often have self-made stands that sell gadgets. The displaced persons with lighter skin complexion would be often seen working at construction, or during summer as waiters-kitchen staff. A rather common sight would be light-skinned displaced women working as members of cleaning crews at establishments, as well as private residences.

To my understanding, displaced women with darker skin complexion are not trusted as domestic workers, as they are perceived as potentially dishonest and liable to commit petty thefts.

The Chanioporta location (a gate at the city walls crossing through Iraklion) is a place often frequented by displaced persons. I pass through that location almost daily, at different times of the day. The demographic of the people changes depending on the time: in the morning there are mostly men there who wear casual/work clothes, possibly in search of work, and a few women. The gate functions as a meeting point, as many displaced people use the adjacent municipal stadium to work out, walk and meet; many of them also live in the surrounding area, which also hosts a few barber shops owned and/or employing displaced persons that could explain why Chanioporta is a frequented spot. At Kommeno Bedeni though, another gate, after sunset I have often noticed well-dressed young men, in scarce numbers waiting there; some of the humanitarian workers I have talked with have identified the spot as a cruising meeting point for men, but I have not been able to confirm this so far. Female sex workers that wait for prospective clients frequent another area in Iraklion, a bit further away from the center, conveniently located at the waterfront near large open spaces and parking lots, where they usually have sex with clients (that want to keep their discretion) in the latters’ cars. Those sex 115 workers, almost exclusively non-white cis women, including women from Africa, as well as a small number of queer persons, remain invisible to most of the city’s residents. However, they are known to the police, who rarely make arrests or have a dynamic presence in that area. One night, as I was driving through the Pankrition area, I was identified by a sex worker as a potential client, albeit “too young” to be there, which could be indicative of the clientele that frequents that spot.

The central square of Iraklion, called Eleftheria [freedom] Square is a popular meeting point for young displaced men. I frequented the square over summer 2019 due to a job I had with the municipality, which allowed me to be physically present there for evening hours for more than two months, July-August. I noticed young men speaking Farsi. They were often drinking sodas or occasionally alcohol, talking loudly, sitting at the feet of the statues. Some of the people walking near them would give them side eye, a few would murmur. I witnessed once three young

Greeks making a move against a young man wearing a beige long shirt and pants (a style that could be interpreted as Muslim, without necessarily being so), but they did not actually engage with him after they saw that he had friends there.

Some displaced persons suffer from their encounters with authorities. In July 2019, I happened upon a young Pakistani I had seen hanging around at the Foundation. After greeting me with a very upbeat attitude, I asked him why he had not been to the classes, and to my surprise he said he had been jailed for 4 months for being in the country illegally. Upon his release, he was given a permit for 6 months, by the end of which he was to leave the country.

According to him this was a standard process the Greek police followed, but very rarely enforced. This means that upon inspection, if someone’s papers had expired, they would be sent to jail for said time and then released with a six-month permit. 116

The Eleftheria Square, the Venetian walls that run through the city, and the waterfront are the main sites I have noticed displaced persons and families gathering and socializing during my stay at Iraklion. The city’s waterfront, stretching for 5 km across the northern shore, has ample space for walking, while certain parts of it are close to Kaminia and Therissos, areas where many displaced persons live, and thus a convenient place to hang out. At Koules, the scenic Venetian-

Ottoman fort that decorates the old city’s harbor, I often see many of them fishing. The Greek

UNHCR website featured stories of refugees that enjoy this hobby: while it is true that many enjoy the sea, other displaced persons though do not want to go near it, as it reminds them of traumatic events during their journey from the Turkish to the Greek shores.

As I walk around sometimes in the center of Iraklion, passing through various neighborhoods, I notice men, audibly speaking a language other than Greek, hanging out in old residences (usually ground floor apartments, or even under the street level). Studying my city as a researcher requires a fresh set of eyes I am daily struggling to maintain. Observing displaced people’s public performance of habits and discovering places they like to hang out, requires a degree of reflexivity to see what is missing, or what is actually there. For example, in the three aforementioned locations in Iraklion I see mostly men during the day, with displaced families appearing during the afternoon and evening. The displaced women I observe have varied cultural identities: not all wear headscarves or dress in traditional or Western fashion. Some, that live in my neighborhood, sometimes walk around without a headscarf, preferring hoodies and jeans, and seem to only wear it when a male member of the family is escorting them. While I do see women with hijabs or women I recognize as displaced due to previous encounters at the Foundation where I work, I do not often see them hanging out in public anywhere. Most often women with headscarves and strollers, or escorted by male members of the family, will walk at the waterfront 117

(either near the Iraklion port or in Alikarnassos). My Greek language classrooms, especially in the morning, were mostly comprised of women, which shows that there was a degree of independence from their families, especially for mothers whose children are at school during those hours. Quite often some women would bring their infants and small children (not of school age) to class, exhibiting a strong motivation to learn but also socialize with the other students.

Speaking with Erofili, a local non-profit worker that runs sewing and language classes, I notice the language classes and sewing workshops are a good opportunity for women to leave the domestic space, become slowly independent, and develop support systems outside their family, with intercultural ties, while feeling useful and acquiring soft and hard skills. For most displaced women from the Middle East, Crete is a place that offers very few options for them to find support outside the family. The Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani communities already in place have been until recently comprised predominantly by men. Hence organizations like Thalassa, and language classes, often provide spaces where contact with Greek and Western culture can be somehow unmediated by some cultural and gender expectations, where women can feel safety in the presence of other women from adjacent cultures and learn in their own pace relying on each other for help and support.

Conclusion

The humanitarian management of the 2015 refugee crisis has been decisively shaped by

European and Greek authorities. The management strategy of the Greek State and most organizations involved in the process begin with the assumption that displaced persons in Greece have a temporary presence in the local societies. This approach, while successful in the first years of the people passing through Greece en masse, now proves to be inefficient due to the strict border controls and the delays in the asylum application process. The humanitarian 118 management falls on the shoulders of municipal services and NGOs, which follow the same trope of temporary relief and perpetuate the sense of “waiting” for their beneficiaries, effectively excluding displaced people that arrived with previous migration waves. In Athens, for example, the Middle Eastern displaced communities are larger and older than most other places in Greece and they have found ways to establish mechanisms of integration through community projects, often managed by the communities themselves, such as the “Farzad Kamangar” school. In cities like Iraklion and regions like Crete though, with newly forming displaced communities and the strategic spreading out of displaced persons, there are far fewer opportunities for displaced individuals to organize themselves and little support from locals.

Greece remains a country that completely lacks an integration program for its non-Greek communities. HELIOS is the first program that specifically talks about displaced people’s integration to Greek society, however it is not a fundamentally Greek State initiative, as it is organized by IOM, hence it lacks long term planning and commitment from the State. ESTIA, despite being a program primarily concerned with short-term accommodation of asylum seekers and recognized refugees, often becomes the primary agent of integration, through initiatives organized by its employees and administrators, operating outside the program’s mandate. This gap in social policy is sometimes covered by locals’ initiatives, such as Thalassa or existing anarchist collectives, as it has been the case for a while in Iraklion with the “Initiative for

Integration of Refugees and Migrants.”

Greece’s ethnocentric culture means that for displaced populations the easiest path for acceptance is through assimilation to Greek language and customs. For migrants from the

Balkans, this often translates to marriages with Greeks, conversion to Orthodox Christianity, learning Greek, and elimination of any “threatening” cultural characteristics, be those 119 controversial versions of historical events or large public displays of alien cultures and religions.

The process of assimilation to the Greek ideal becomes easier if the phenotype of the non-Greek resembles a stereotypical, Western-European whiteness, encouraging instances of “passing.”

This means that for many unable to pass, integration becomes an impossible goal, as their phenotype and/or culture limits them to certain occupations and social positions, making them subjects to systemic racism, and limiting their access to social services, health, and education.

Those restrictions become laxer if the non-Greek is Western-European, as their identity allows them for leniency and understanding of the time it takes to absorb a new culture, or even possibly refuse to fully immerse into it.

Crete remains an exception as a region in the Greek, as well as the Southern European, borderscape. The island lacks hotspots and refugee camps, provides ample blue-collar jobs for displaced people interested in them (whether legal work or under the table), while it has local politicians that recognize that the best management of displaced populations does not include isolation or the creation of “ghettos,” but the support of programs that provide housing in Greek neighborhoods and opportunities for socializing with locals. To that end, and recognizing the pressing needs for more accommodations, the Cretan ESTIA-involved organizations have repeatedly requested to increase the number of beneficiaries that can be served by the organization on the island, but their request has been denied by the conservative New

Democracy administration, as it would be perceived as contrary to the deterrent policy it enacts.

The limited number of openly racist protests and attacks (in relation to the rest of Greece) shows that the Cretan culture is hostile to open and systemic acts of racism. However, on a smaller scale, with several documented incidents of everyday acts of discrimination and based on accounts by people living in Crete for a number of years, it looks like the island has slowly 120 begun to catch up with the rest of the tumultuous situation in continental Greece and its Aegean

Sea borderlands. In April and May 2020 there was a number of racist, anti-refugee protests, fueled by rumors that the Greek State decided to nominate Crete as a safe harbor for intercepted displaced populations sailing from Northern Africa.126 On the other hand, the antifascist

sentiment remains strong; on June 4th, more than two and a half thousand people marched in the

city center against fascism and racism, while also showing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter

movement in the USA in light of George Floyd’s murder by police authorities.

Although the region of Crete has implemented a different plan for displaced people that

has demonstrated some advantages for individuals and has led to fewer explicit racist attacks,

Crete still struggles with racism and discrimination. For example, the Greek government planned to evict the recognized refugees from housing programs that started in June 2020, arguing that the latter would eventually become “independent” of State assistance. In situations like these, the role of humanitarian workers and their views becomes crucial to the integration of displaced people. The humanitarian actors across Greece, with the experience of the past five years, become important mediators in the process, but often must deal with a Greek and European mechanism that is not prepared and generally unwilling to provide a complete plan for the “next steps” of the prosfygiko.127

126 More information for operation “Irini” can be found at the operation’s website, while the rumors for Crete’s involvement made it to national and local press through a Guardian article; Wintour, “Libya fighting.” 127 Prosfygiko is the denomination often used in the Greek discourse about the refugee and migration “crisis.” The term in Greek is an adjective, but the noun that signifies is often omitted from public discourse: it is sometimes a “crisis,” other times an “issue.” This inconclusiveness often leaves the adjective on its own, open for interpretation. 121

CHAPTER 3: THE MOVING GOALPOSTS OF HUMANITARIAN WORK: LIQUID

FIELDWORK AND PERCEPTIONS OF ASSISTANCE IN CRETE AND BEYOND

I physically remained in the field of the Greek space since the summer of 2018, working and volunteering on refugee issues, until the pandemic hit in early 2020. The interviews I discuss in this chapter occurred over a two-year period, during which Greece drastically changed its policies on humanitarian governance, adopting a securitarian and xenophobic approach: the aim of Greek policies, in coordination to FRONTEX, has been to reduce the numbers of asylum seekers, deter their entrance into Greek space, and create a perception of inhospitality for incoming displaced populations, all under the guise of respect to fundamental human rights and

“national security.” The policy changes and media campaigns are often countered by abused displaced persons’ testimonies and multiple reports from NGOs that it also endorsed systematic illegal pushbacks towards the Turkish shores. The New Democracy administration, an amalgam of neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies with strong ties to the Orthodox Christian Church and a powerful player in Greek politics, is often mentioned in the datasets and discussions with interviewees as a catalyst for policy changes which made life for displaced people more difficult, both institutionally and in everyday life. The interviews cover a period between 2019 and 2020, with a great number of them occurring via Skype during the two lockdowns in Greece when it was easier to find the interviewees at home, with time to spare and in a controlled environment.

The interviewees are social workers, cultural mediators, interpreters, high-ranking administrative officials, educators, and volunteers from the public and private sector working directly with, or related to refugee and migrant affairs.

The interviews with humanitarian workers and officials cover a broad range of topics, providing integral information on the inner workings of the network of humanitarian assistance 122 provided by the Greek State. The discussions, in the form of semi-structured interviews, also uncover the categorization of displaced persons into tiers of beneficiaries and others invisible to the law unless they break it, what Agamben calls homines sacri. The interviewees discuss challenges they face in their work, how they navigate through the issues in the field daily, and their own viewpoint on the present and future of refugee assistance and displaced people’s integration. In the course of the interviews the respondents primarily talk about “refugees,” but also recognize the limitation of the term; many acknowledge that using the term is dictated by the nature of their work and not their own beliefs concerning who should be labelled a “refugee.”

My own positionality regarding the interviews should be mentioned in advance of the analysis: through my fieldwork and volunteering activities I have gotten to know, be friends with, or keep in contact with many of the interviewees. I have excluded parts of the interviews that would contain sensitive and identifying information about specific organizations and individuals, as the legal framework in Greece is becoming increasingly stringent and Crete is small enough, that some situations are context- or place-specific and would identify the interviewee. In this chapter,

I am primarily concerned with the humanitarian workers and administrators’ viewpoints on the refugee crisis in Crete, Greece. Drawing from the interviews I seek to construct an ethnography of Crete as a place that receives, hosts, and integrates displaced populations, through the lens of a critical examination of the systems in place and their representatives.

In recent years, since the emergency of the “crisis” has shifted from the daily search and rescue operations to the everyday management of the asylum seekers, the workers of civil society organizations and State services have mobilized to meet the needs of displaced persons.

Through a process that trains both the beneficiaries of services and themselves, the humanitarian workers have had to deal with a population with changing demographics and needs, a 123 bureaucratic system that is often purposely complicated to discourage beneficiaries from receiving help, and social prejudices from other employees in State services and Greek recipients. From doctors to administrative assistants, many field workers sometimes go out of their way to express solidarity to beneficiaries; other times, agents of Greek bureaucracy will encourage or exhibit racist behaviors themselves. The multitude of behaviors and attitudes towards the displaced in the Greek space reflects the fractured European response the people crossing the European borders seeking a better life: in the absence of a coherent—and fair— reception and aid system, community support, chance, and random encounters largely determine the fate of a person crossing to Europe.

Reception

In Lesvos, since the refugee crisis started in 2015, the role of search and rescue (SAR)

NGOs has been central in rescuing those crossing form Turkey. The Greek State has often condemned those NGOs as being part of smugglers’ networks, echoing similar practices in Italy.

However, to this date no such accusations have been proven in the court of law, and a common conclusion is that the accusations and the probes launched are because the NGOs’ records detail the crossings and the people in the boats, which makes illegal pushbacks by Greece and

FRONTEX significantly more difficult to cover up. Similar charges, including espionage and smuggling, have been part of intimidation tactics against volunteers and non-profits that work on displaced people’s reception and relief. While the UNHCR has had a strong presence in the borderlands, it started withdrawing resources from mainland locations in 2020, allocating funds in other countries and transferring responsibilities to the Greek State. The service vacuum, covered by solidarity initiatives, the Greek State, and select non-profits has been a contentious 124 field, as a central decision from the Greek government is to create an image of Greece as inhospitable and precarious to displaced persons thinking of crossing the Aegean Sea.

An emerging topic during the interviews was the reception services offered and the behavior of workers towards the beneficiaries, particularly in terms of providing information about what would follow when the displaced people would enter the Greek system. The notoriety of refugee camps at border islands presents the workers with a moral dilemma, as Angela describes, to either inform the newcomers of where they would be heading or not, in fear of the latter protesting and obstructing the established, streamlined process of reception. The living conditions at Moria, as well as at Samos (Vathy) and Chios are often described as “concentration camps.” Angela feels the term is charged, but its use by political figures such as Alexandra

Ocasio-Cortez, specifically mentioned during the interview, highlights the relevance of the term when testimonies and reports from detention centers and camps surface, both in the US South borders and Greece. The term, while politically charged, aptly contextualizes how living conditions in detention facilities and camps have detrimental effects on the mental and physical state of the beneficiaries, even long after they move on to mainland programs. The refugee camp becomes the primary field of policymaking, creating different tiers of beneficiaries, and the

‘brochure’ of a deterrence policy aimed at transforming Greek borders into a notoriously difficult passage for the displaced. Their geographical location allows for an aggressive foreign policy and policing; Michalis, a State official, with years of experience at the reception facilities deliberates his future,

Now I feel I am in a role of [making] the camps ugly, the conditions bad, so it will deter

for people to come over here and I have to explain this and support it and justify it to all

those that complain every day and ask for the bare minimum and we can’t provide that. 125

The ethical complications created by the government’s directives to provide inadequate reception services (in comparison to its capabilities) aims at gradually reverting Greece’s pull factor as a doorstep to Europe and communicate this image of precarity towards the displaced heading to

Greece. The strategy of making reception sites less attractive includes budget cuts to humanitarian organizations, relocation of camps to inhospitable locations, and pressure on workers to take up more work in refugee camps with fewer resources and increased demand given the reduction of reception facilities in mainland locations.

Refugee camp capacity, camp services, and even camp locations are only some of the factors that deteriorate the quality of reception, hindering any steps a displaced person might take as they move on to the European North, or even continue living in Greece. In comparison to

2015, when for many displaced persons the journey would bring them to a place they had no idea about, Kallirroi describes that, in her experience, most beneficiaries now know both where they are and the time-consuming process they will have to go through. For example, displaced persons unlucky enough to be detained after crossing from Evros, if they avoid the regular illegal pushbacks by the Greek army and police, will be held at a facility that currently hosts 350 people at most, but after a while they will be let go, and most of the displaced people seem to be aware of this process.

Strategic Choices and “Biopolitics of Hospitality”128

The deterioration of reception services not only materializes at the border, but also in

mainland locations, such as Crete, my primary research site. Paperwork has become more

difficult to obtain, and the transfer of people from border islands to mainland has been slowed

down, even though the threshold of ~1000 has been kept steady. Nasia discusses how missing

128 Rozakou, “The Biopolitics of Hospitality.” 126 paperwork on newcomers has become progressively more frequent, and missing even “one piece of paper can make a refugee’s life very difficult.” For the workers, the same process of familiarizing themselves with the paperwork required by their beneficiaries, is described by an interviewee as “interesting,” as working with refugees was not part of the mandate for most civil society organizations before 2010. Particularly in the case of State organizations, many of their current mandates were organized post-2015, and thus the learning curve took a few years. The role of UNHCR in this process has been critical; Melpo describes how in the international organization has provided the first few years personnel and consultancy, as well as cash assistance and information to refugees/migrants/asylum seekers, personnel training, and coordination with child protection services.

The protection of children, especially of displaced origin, has been one of the central policy debates in the press on a national and international level, with civil society organizations lobbying European governments to adopt comprehensive plans to improve the current conditions. The Greek services have not had, to this day, much experience when it comes to alien children, either with family or as unaccompanied minors.129 Crete used to have two housing

facilities for unaccompanied minors, one in the village of Anogia (focused only on displaced

minors) and another in Neapoli: the first closed in 2019, with discussions to reopen in the future.

Miltos considers children’s protection the most urgent priority, as it receives little attention, or

when it does, they are sensationalist in their presentation, of little substance. “I understood that

the biggest mess has been with unaccompanied minors. If you ask me, the biggest issue in the

129 The issue of unaccompanied minors has received a lot of attention both in Europe and the US. According to Europol, in early 2017, there were more than 10,000 refugee children unaccounted for. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS-AaG-599292-Disappearance-migrant-children-in-Europe-FINAL.pdf A research project by the Lost in Europe consortium reports that further 18,292 displaced unaccompanied minors have “vanished” in Europe during the period 2018-2020. More at https://lostineurope.eu/ 127 refugee [crisis] is the unaccompanied minors. The unaccompanied [minors] have to do with topics no one touches, not even UNHCR, such as providing sexual services for survival, mainly in Pedion tou Areos [in Athens].” After Moria burned down in 2020, many European countries, prominently Germany, offered to receive a number of unaccompanied minors living in the destroyed refugee camp, a process that still continues in 2021.

Unaccompanied minors is a public debate topic that often reinforces the idea of helplessness and reproduces a view of humanitarian assistance as charity and framing humanitarianism as a constant process of labelling130 and exclusion. One of the first initiatives of

the New Democracy administration after the 2019 election has been to organize a special

Secretariat for Unaccompanied Minors: The Secretariat has made good use of experienced

personnel from other social services and the civil society, but is treated with suspicion by field

workers, as the Secretary has had a charged political past. Another related issue is that of age

determination through controversial biometric measurements, a practice that has been under

intense criticism;131 in the case of Denmark, Nanna Dahler calls the process “humanitarian

violence,” in line with “racist histories of the mapping of the bodies of colonized populations for

purposes of control and commodification.”132 The New Democracy administration in November

2020 changed the legislation concerning “International Protection,” excluding minors between

16-18 from the “vulnerable” status. This law effectively excludes 93% of unaccompanied minors

(in 2019) from the legal provisions associated with children’s protection under Greek law; this change could severely affect their safety, living conditions,133 and asylum applications,134

130 Sajjad, “What’s in a Name?” 131 Cameron, “The European refugee crisis and biological age;” 132 Dahler, Nanna. “Biometrics as Imperialism,” 32. 133 EASO, “Practical Guide on Age Assessment.” 134 Angeli, “Unaccompanied Minors.” 128 effectively excluding them from many of the reception provisions in place for vulnerable populations.

The ESTIA program has had a prominent role in the mediation between UNHCR and the local communities that receive refugees and asylum seekers. Initially supervised by UNHCR, partnerships were established with local organizations in several locations on Greek islands and in mainland cities and provinces under the ESTIA program. The role of ESTIA has not been clearly defined on the website of the program, as it mentions urban accommodation and cash assistance as two provisions, but there are families that only receive one of the two. The website elaborates on the definition of accommodation by mentioning facilitation of beneficiaries’ access to services and eventual integration. The program description also outlines the benefits to the host population by “embracing diversity through peaceful coexistence as well as renting of their

[host population] apartments.” 135 One of the first things I realized from researching the different rules and regulations of the Greek refugee sector is that ESTIA does not run in the same way in all regions, despite being under the same umbrella administration of the UNHCR and the Greek

State. There are distinct differences even in the same region, as is the case of Crete, usually connected with the particularities of local communities and employed strategies by program administrators and field workers.

Crete is described by interviewees as one of the best examples of ESTIA programs in

Greece. Despite differences among the three Cretan cities where ESTIA operates (Iraklion,

Chania, Sitia), Crete is often associated with a special kind of welcoming culture that benefits displaced newcomers. Workers paint Crete as a place that is hospitable, with a past that is connected to refugee flows: the island has housed displaced persons from different places

135 http://estia.unhcr.gr/en/home/ 129 throughout its history as mentioned previously. The reputation of Crete is a topic that is often discussed in the interviews. For example, Marinos describes Crete as a place that has received unusually high numbers of internal flows (refugees that moved here from another place in

Greece) in search of a better life; Nasia in turn explains that, through her close ties with displaced communities, she has heard stories of displaced people attracted to Crete because of the island’s quality of life and familial ties to those that have migrated here in past decades.

While many choose to continue their journey after a while, Nasia notes that “those that come here in Crete and stay…happen to be relatives of those that have been here for years, so they have some basic support.” The awareness of the island’s history, its service-based economy

(tourism), and strong familial ties are some of the factors that make the work of humanitarian workers in Crete different than the rest of Greece. Humanitarian workers most often discuss local community structure to underline the particularities of the Cretan case; the closely-knit neighborhoods are of great importance to the reception and day-to-day interaction. In contrast to

Athens where a third of ESTIA beneficiaries reside, Crete’s smaller communities cannot sustain a program that has anonymous—to the community— beneficiaries. In other words, displaced persons in Crete are significantly more visible to the local community when they find themselves in public spaces than in the Greek metropoles, Athens and Thessaloniki. Thus, a great part of the first stages of successful reception for refugees and asylum seekers lies in building relationships at the neighborhood level. Organizations must not only show a welcoming face to newcomers, but also present a receptive image to locals. The perceived success of building relationships is also attributed to the agencies that organize the accommodation plan. The UNHCR has partnered with local cooperative organizations under the supervision of municipalities and the regional 130 governor, an elected official with administrative/economic/cultural mandate that is superseded only by the Greek government.

Despite calls from ESTIA partners in Crete to the Greek government to increase the capacity of the program, the New Democracy administration insists on the deterrence policy it has enacted since July 2019. The steady numbers of the accommodation program in Crete can also explain the positive feedback it receives; in November 2020 the program had 973 beneficiaries in 196 apartments, with minors comprising 55% of the beneficiaries, and the total number of them representing only 4% of the total amount of the program’s beneficiaries in

Greece.136 Even though there are significant numbers of invisible displaced persons who have

been working for years in Crete, there are often calls against the implementation of urban

housing programs from racist cells in Crete. The protests rarely find significant sympathy from

the local officials or the wider Cretan community, although the anti-refugee discourse gradually

leaves its mark on local media and public opinion. Ioanna is cynical about the significance and

meaning of Cretan hospitality; a local herself, she portrays Iraklion as a place that “cannot live

and feel what is happening around it,” contrasting it with big cities like Athens and Thessaloniki,

where the current social issues are hard to ignore. The Iraklion community is “detached and

sometimes indifferent to the phenomenon, a possibility allowed by their financial status and

occupation. Most [Greeks] work with car rentals, car sales, which do not bring them in contact with social realities.” The island profits immensely from advertising its tolerance and multiculturalism, as Crete’s tourism industry is a focal point of the island’s economy. In the context of the service industry and the performativity of hospitality towards the well-off tourists that visit the island annually, Ioanna believes that the Iraklion community often “pretends that a

136 ESTIA weekly update, 9 November 2020. http://estia.unhcr.gr/en/estia-accommodation-capacity-weekly-update- 9-november-2020/ 131 series of social phenomena happening around the world don’t exist; this tends to be a national phenomenon itself.” In my experience dealing with public authorities, as well as attending a number of the City of Iraklion’s committee meetings in 2020, this observation holds an empirical truth. For example, the “Refugees and Migrants Integration Council,” a municipal committee with a mandate to help networking among humanitarian organizations and promote sustainable integration strategies rarely met in 2020, with several elected council people choosing to abstain or never attend. Its deliberations had very few produced outcomes, and several public officials did not know the agenda or consult the documents to be discussed; there was a constant urgency to incorporate matters loosely related to the committee’s mandate, while more than often there was no representation from organizations or initiatives representing displaced communities.

The issues with reception, especially away from the borderlands, in smaller communities like Crete’s, come from a combination of media agitation and disinformation, the alliance of far- right cells with religious leaders-agitators, and the public discourse of the harmful “other.”

Although Crete has avoided violent incidents of locals against displaced relocation efforts that have been seen in other parts of Greece, it is far from a fully welcoming context. Humanitarian workers often describe Greeks as “very welcoming” and only “confused or misinformed” when they appear to insult newcomers; nevertheless, there are multiple incidents that show the contrary. From the occupation of highways and roads to stop buses of unaccompanied minors from reaching their allocated housing,137 to preventing refugee children from attending school,

workers that have to deal with the first stages of reception in mainland programs have been

137 Three different incidents from November 2019, as well one from 2020 include the following: - Lifo, “Local Stopped Refugees,” November 3rd, 2019. - tvxs.gr, “Makedonomaxoi said “No” to tourists,” November 5, 2019. - in.gr, “New Roadlock Against Refugee Children,” November 7, 2019. - Kosmodromio. “Residents Block Unaccompanied Minors,” September 23, 2020.. 132 noticing shifts in solidarity discourses. Local communities progressively appear to be more afraid and less welcoming, particularly as the European Union seems complacent with the current humanitarian governance of displaced populations. Julie, for example, underlines the discriminatory reactions of Greek beneficiaries of social services towards displaced beneficiaries, two groups that often share similar needs: “I would call racist examples those of

Greeks that are also in dire condition, below the poverty threshold…that refugees get preferential treatment than Greeks…I have heard racist comments from the media, from people out in the street. In general, I think that in the region of Iraklion … there is racism.” Thanos corroborates the previous statement, and offers a specific example of racist reactions, explaining how “some of our beneficiaries had problems with hijabs, creating problems in the line…because some were wearing hijabs. We also had sexist behavior, anti-refugee sentiments, and aggression.” But the anti-refugee sentiment was not limited to the most dispossessed Greek locals, as Thanos cites an example of a racist incident by elected officials. Prior to the local elections of 2019, “[a council- person] said that there would be a written complaint against our organization for misallocating funds,” all because the A&M Kalokairinos Foundation was accused of helping refugees and migrants to the detriment of Greek beneficiaries. For the humanitarian workers and officials in the refugee services sector, thus, the development of strategies to deal with the local community,

State and social services, and other beneficiaries has been at the center of their (field) work since the early days of 2015.

Deciding to Stay—Continuing the Journey

The displaced persons I met in Crete did not come exclusively from a specific borderlands island, although the majority would always mention dreadfully the name of Moria.

The cultural implications of the name might be familiar to the fans of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of The 133

Rings saga, but the book/on-screen terror is no match for the horrors of the largest European refugee camp, which, like its cinematic counterpart, was also engulfed in flames, albeit with no reported victims. Angela describes Moria as a place that would retraumatize its inhabitants through perpetual waiting. Between waiting for food, cash assistance, and education/social services, and trying to stay safe at night, Moria was what Marc Auge would call a “non-place:” a location that does not allow any meaningful connections to identity, history, or relations, a waiting room for those attempting to build a life in Europe, creating solitude. The non-place condition is partially suspended when an asylum applicant is moved to a mainland facility, although the state of limbo is a reality for thousands that live in Greece as stateless invisible individuals. The ESTIA apartments, which only house a small minority of displaced people are often referred to as “suites” in relation to the services the organization offers and in comparison to the nonexistent support for the rest of forcibly displaced populations. Nevertheless, the ESTIA and other State facilities for refugees and migrants are temporary accommodations by design. By the time the decision from Asylum Service arrives—the speed of which is dependent on a variety of factors, such as nationality, international agreements, systemic discrimination, workload of officials, and bureaucracy, sometimes reaching two years— many applicants have either moved on, or have waited in precarious conditions for years. There are three categories of people waiting, according to the informants’ descriptions: the applicants who hope to move on towards their desired destination (and sometimes have already done so), those who have started a process of integration at a place in Greece, and those willing to simply wait out the process passively wherever the services have allocated them.

In Crete I have met examples of all three categories, and informants also discuss these possibilities when they describe their beneficiaries. Melpo, with almost a decade of experience in 134 the domestic and international humanitarian sector is scathing when they describe the waiting process in Greece, “When you [the government] have no long-term plan… They try to deter entrance anyway they can. It is impossible to control the borders, the seas, Evros? They think this is the only way, it’s a mistake.” In the case of a beneficiary, they referred to the local

ESTIA program, after a year the person received a rejection of their asylum application.

However, the person decided to stay and work without paperwork as an “invisible” laborer, as they had already started integrating into the local community and did not wish to move on to another European country. In contrast to 2015-2017 when Greece was a transit location for displaced populations and very few would think of settling to Greece, now many file asylum applications in Greece with the hope of staying here. This is in part because they all know that without this application they are in danger of immediate deportation to Turkey, but it is also mainly due to the Dublin regulations that require an asylum application to be filed in the first EU country where the applicant arrives; nevertheless, it is common for asylum applicants to file another asylum application later in another European country, especially if their first application in Greece had been unsuccessful. During their stay in mainland locations like Crete, beneficiaries of international assistance find themselves in a safer environment compared to hotspots and larger cities: “the situation is different…the problems continue but are of different nature, it is when they start worrying about the future. When they know there is no way to travel any further, some [mental health] issues start coming up, previously latent.” Some of the issues take the form of family abuse, which Melpo attributes to how dead-end beneficiaries feel and the inactivity they experience while waiting for their application to be processed.

It comes as no surprise then when my informants report that the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries of private/State programs they work with express a desire to continue the journey 135 any way they can, not only beyond Crete, but also beyond Greece. Germany and Netherlands are the most often cited desired destinations, as relatives and communities of displaced persons there comprise strong pull factors for newcomers to Greece, especially from Syria and Afghanistan.

This desire to leave translates to low motivation to participate in therapy, engage in social activities, or learn the Greek language. Informants notice that lack of motivation to learn Greek is not only limited to adults, which I have also observed in my two years of fieldwork, but also extends to children at school. The latter, according to Miltos, are often affected by their parents, who see themselves as a “moving population,” thus disinterested in education and learning Greek because “they are not interested in staying here.” The overwhelming number of requests during the two years my language program that took place in Crete were for English classes, while other organizations like Thalassa, which offered small English classes would always have dozens of prospective students on waiting lists. The reason behind it was rather simple, as English was seen as the language that would ensure they would be able to continue their journey with some control over their final destination and better access to international channels of information, to avoid any processes that would further delay them.

Leaving Greece for other parts of Europe is considerably less precarious than arriving to

Greece, but still dangerous. There is still the option of boats that leave from Peloponnese or other western coasts of mainland Greece, as seen at the end of the film Amerika Square.138 The

frequency of maritime control between Italy and Greece is considerably less than at the

borderlands of Greece-Turkey. From the northern side, the perilous path through the mountains

of Albania and North Macedonia has become even more difficult after the closing down of

Eidomeni and the tightening of Greek-North Macedonian border control, as Teresa Thornhill

138 Yannis Sakaridis, Amerika Square (2016). 136 describes in Hara Hotel.139 From Crete the options for a direct journey to Central-Northern

Europe are limited, especially if the interested party wants to avoid Athens, where the border

regime has expanded and the police routinely and frequently conduct checks asking for

immigration documents.140 The most popular option for recognized refugees to travel legally is

with the travel documents they have received after their application was processed, although

Julie disgustingly talks about how those documents will be withheld by the Greek police for

months without any explanation before finally being delivered to the recipients. Travelling as

tourists takes advantage of a system that allows asylum recipients to travel on a form of tourist

visa and live in a country for up to three (3) months before having to return. An alternative used

by families in housing programs such as ESTIA is to use the monetary one-time allowance

offered by the organization as compensation to exit the program when the time comes (either

when they receive asylum or have an asylum application rejected) to purchase plane tickets or

pay smugglers’ fees to leave Greece.

If the forcibly displaced do not have legal travel documents, their only option is to obtain

forged ones from professional forgers in Athens, or even procure stolen original documents, in two prominent meeting points being the Victoria and Acharnon Squares. The process there

139 Thornhill, Hara Hotel. 140 A police operation notorious for its hostility towards the displaced in Greece took place from 2012 to 2015, under the New Democracy administration. The operation resulted in tens of thousands of arrests in urban centers and borders and several deportations. An international journalisitc report on the consequences of the “Xenios Zeus” can be read below by BBC: - The BBC report; https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20958353 - The operation was concluded in 2015; Kathimerini, “Greece to ditch Xenios Zeus.” https://www.ekathimerini.com/166923/article/ekathimerini/news/greece-to-ditch-xenios-zeus-operations- governments-immigration-chief-says - A study on the impact and the numbers, Pillant Laurence, can be found: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/operation-xenios-zeus/ - A more recent operation, of smaller proportion occurred in Thessaloniki on February 17th, 2021; ERT, “Police Checks.” https://www.ert.gr/eidiseis/ellada/kinonia/astynomikoi-elegchoi-gia-allodapoys-sto-kentro-tis-thessalonikis/ 137 shows the importance of local networks and how previous generations of displaced people and displaced communities partake in an underground economy that profits from the newcomers’ desperation. As soon as the interested party approaches said squares, an “agent” will identify them based on ethnicity and approach them, as there are multiple “agents” representing the ethnicities that primarily move through Greece. The tariff is 6.000€ for two people’s passage to the country of their choice. Once agreed, a complex process will ensue that is more or less the following: In the case of an Afghan client, the money will be deposited at an Afghan owned exchange marketplace in Athens for safekeeping. The money does not include the tickets, only the provision of travel documents, which are original, often stolen from Greek citizens. My informant describes how the smuggling ring tries to find people that look like the person they are trying to smuggle, and either steal their real documents or create falsified documents based on their identities. The clients would travel by plane, and only when they have cleared passport control and have arrived to their desired destination would they make a call to the exchange market and give a password to be used by the traffickers, who then obtain the smuggling fee. The fee will not be lost in case the people travelling are caught. The clients-prospective travelers would get three attempts and the smugglers promise them that one of the attempts will work.

Reputation is mentioned by informants as paramount to the process of obtaining travel documents, both on a local level in Crete and in Athens; the displaced count on the opinion of leaders of their community, who are more influential than Greek and international social services. Humanitarian workers and displaced people have expressed their opinion that Greek people are behind these kinds of schemes, with the implication that there are contacts within the

State mechanisms in local services that enable the effectiveness of trafficking activities. When newcomers arrive in other European locations, local communities of displaced people, usually of 138 the same or adjacent ethnicities, will sometimes help them apply again for asylum in the country of their choice; the argument for the asylum seeker’s cases is that that they do not receive adequate humanitarian support in Greece. While usually this second asylum application is a breach of the Dublin agreement, there are quite a few cases that manage to convince lower courts in Northern Europe to award asylum status to applicants; at least two of my former students have successfully gone through that process and now live in Netherlands and Germany under international protection.

A very small percentage of individuals that decide to live in Greece are also deeply dependent upon those that have come before and have created communities. With Crete’s economy based on the agricultural sector, tourism, and construction, some communities are male-dominated (Pakistani), while others are more gender-balanced because over time they have brought their families with them and have gradually started assimilating, such as Albanian and

Armenian communities. The Arab-speaking communities in Chania, Rethymnon, and Iraklion have been a pull factor for Arab speakers, with Nasia, who has ties to the community, describing how Arab men got married to refugee women in the past few years. In Crete there are thousands of displaced people (particularly from the Middle East) living in areas where very limited research has been conducted. The September 2020 pogroms in Timpaki141 and the periodical

disputes reveal a system that exploits workers, which is not that different from other areas of

Greece, such as Manolada,142 where even members of the migrant community partake in the

exploitation of newcomers, especially unaccompanied minors. Corroborating the findings of

141 Efimerida ton Sintakton, “Racist Attack.” 142 Indicative of the migrant precarity in Manolada and the problems local alien laborers face is research conducted by Papadopoulos, Fratsea, and Mavrommatis, “Governing Migrant Labour.” 139

Cimino and Manu,143 humanitarian workers also describe a system of exploitation in Crete for

newly arrived displaced laborers, calling it a “dark zone” and describing the dire economic and

living conditions of the workforce in rural areas. The path towards legalization and visibility

both to the Greek community and the Greek Law, either through residence/work permits or

naturalization, is often obscure and unclear, as access to public services for alien workers that do

not speak Greek or live near an urban center, is severely limited. It is very easy for a displaced

person to become disenfranchised because of their lack of paperwork and its expiration. It is not

uncommon for many non-Greeks to fall victims to abuse, smuggling, trafficking, and labor

cartels; the norm in Crete is for workers to provide undocumented labor, something that

authorities know and rarely intervene to change it.

Navigating Services

The nature of services provided to displaced people by a particular organization entirely

depends on the goals and purposes of the funding sources and the political allegiances of each

organization. The formal mandate of ESTIA limited itself at first to asylum seekers and

sometimes recognized refugees: the latter are now part of IOM’s mandate. When the ESTIA program was first established in Crete, there was a conscious choice from the administrators to follow certain strategies that would ensure its acceptance and make the program’s rollout as quiet and uneventful as possible; the administration of SYRIZA-ANELL at the time was promoting and actively supporting the program on a national scale. Eva, underlines that the selection of possible locations for the ESTIA program in Crete was based on researching which urban

locations on the island would be more friendly to the accommodation plan. In that context, along

143 Cimino and Mannu, “Smuggling, Trafficking, and Exploitation.” In their research, the officials interviewed describe horrific living conditions for the workers in Messara and Tympaki. Unaccompanied minors suffered the worst fate, working more than 10 hours a day and receiving little payments, while they were not allowed to go out and socialize, exploited by other workers who functioned as mediators between Greek employers and the workforce. 140 with housing availability and willing local partners, the cities of Chania and Iraklion quickly emerged as the most suitable options. The third one was Sitia, a small city located at the north- east of Crete, which is rather cumbersome to reach because of the subpar road network of the island.

However, choosing three northern cities as bases of the respective ESTIA programs in

Crete creates a severe accessibility issue for those possible beneficiaries of ESTIA that would only depend on the cash assistance module, and not the accommodation part. A significant portion of the displaced (undocumented and invisible) populations of the island live in the southern parts of Crete, where there is ample employment for (undocumented) farmworkers. The predominantly male workers live in areas such as Ierapetra and Messara, valleys that rely on agricultural/tourist activities. The distance of the valleys to the administrative capital of Crete,

Iraklion, is more than a one hour drive, which is particularly problematic for displaced workers that generally do not own cars or other means of transport for long distances other than bikes.

Through my observation and informal discussions with beneficiaries of the cash assistance distribution program, which was taking place at an adjacent location to my language classes, I learned that displaced workers would often get notified less than a week in advance of the assigned day; they also had to be physically present at the location to renew their cash assistance debit cards. In addition to the challenges of making this trip from anywhere they were in Crete, which could mean several hours away, displaced workers also face the difficulties of requesting the necessary leave from work, putting themselves in a precarious situation: by the time the worker comes back the employer might have replaced them. This situation led to several cases of workers traveling for hundreds of kilometers each time, only to find that the cash verification was either postponed that day, or that it was over. There has not been up to this point any 141 information campaign on possible benefits the workers could apply for, human rights violations they could file complaints for, or any other kind of monitoring by UNHCR or any humanitarian organization in Southern Crete. Through informal conversations with police officers and local politicians, it seems that there is no State Service that has a clear picture of the exact number of displaced laborers that dwell in Ierapetra and Messara valleys.

Humanitarian workers and officials often discussed the needs of minors beyond the reception stage. Accommodation and education of minors are two of the emerging needs that must be covered as soon as possible after moving asylum seekers and recognized refugees out of the refugee camps in the borderlands. When it comes to education, the SYRIZA-ANELL administration quickly assigned that responsibility to regional education directors and administrators that oversaw the process of creating reception classes at schools that would help acclimate the students so they could later fully integrate into the general classrooms and follow

Greek curricula. The process has not been without challenges, with Maria providing an insight into the diverse strategies that humanitarian workers employ to meet the needs of children and families:

throughout the year issues come up, we try to create reception classes at the schools we

have, hire adjunct teachers, transfer children to schools that have reception classes, solve

problems between schools and families, create special educational programs with

museums, etc.… and seminars for educators that have refugee children at their schools.

The assigned Regional refugees’ education administrator at first, in 2017, did not have direct contact with parents and children. However, in the second year of the reception class program implementation (2018), social workers and education administrators organized house visits at 142 refugees’ residences to conduct mediations and explain the benefits of school enrollment in the

Greek system to parents and children.

Displacing the uprooted persons within the space they are accommodated is also paired with housing the refugees and asylum seekers strategically whenever possible. Kallirroi explains that urban housing in Iraklion has been designed to avoid the concentration of a great number of refugee families in one single area, “we did not want that at all… there were two building blocks, one is still used by the program, and there was great concern from the beginning to avoid ghettoization there.” Concentration of displaced persons and families in one area would increase visibility, and there was “fear” against that. Instead, according to Kallirroi, “[the organization] wanted to distribute [the displaced] as widely as possible, put them among us, simple as that. As a matter of fact, in the first two years our supervisor would say that these people are here for the past two years and locals still ask that ask where are the refugees and if they are coming.” The reduced visibility of refugees, outside the control of the organizations’ sensitization campaigns, was one of the goals of the ESTIA partner in Iraklion and the organization considered this approach successful.

However, reducing the displaced people’s visibility is often also used as an argument and motive by public administrators and community members who exhibit hostility towards displaced populations, especially if the schools requested to create reception classes are in well- off areas. Cases in point are three schools that came up in interviews with humanitarian workers: a primary school and a high school in the center of Iraklion and a junior high school in a well-off area of the city. The primary school received media attention in the past, described as the

“Rejects’ School,”144 due to the ethnic make-up of its students, primarily Roma and displaced,

144 Dionellis, “The School of…Undesirables.” 143 and the systematic declining numbers of middle- and upper-class students. Erofili, whose children attend said primary school, describes it as “intercultural,” and underlines how they have come to understand the problems of migrant communities and minorities through everyday contact with parents and children that attend the school: “we exchange visits, there is trust.” In the case of the high schools, school principals have used excuses about “limited space” to reject new displaced students. According to Eva, Maria, and Miltos, who work on students’ integration in the Greek school system, the principals believe the refugee children are “low quality” students that could “spoil the school’s quality.” The quality of the schools in Greece rarely has to do with the students’ grades, but with the support the latter receive from tutors at home. In other words, neighborhoods with families with more socio-economic resources who can afford the best tutors have highly rated schools. These schools are also most likely to have success in student competitions and higher participation in international exchange programs. I myself am a graduate of the high school that is considered the best in Iraklion and can confirm that both the school’s location and its demographics have attracted the most well-off students. To diffuse tense situations and curb racist reactions by educational administrators, the workers tend move refugee students to schools that would make them feel more welcome, often in working class neighborhoods of Iraklion.

Mobility of beneficiaries is not limited to moving students to friendlier schools; humanitarian workers also move adults and families around to make more effective use of Greek services and avoid tensions. The inconsistency of the implementation of Greek laws and regulations regarding social and health services has led to a strategy of identifying cooperative

State employees within different branches of the same services and directing displaced individuals to those more helpful workers, even if that means going to a different city to 144 complete a bureaucratic process such as getting a social security number (AMKA). Even in cases when a certain service becomes unattainable because of a racist employee or systemic exclusion of beneficiaries, workers report that solidarity movements and employees themselves, often outside their mandate and against their service policies, find a way, off the books, to provide the most needed services, mainly concerning health; in one case an ESTIA official paid out of their own pocket for a beneficiary’s utility bill, because bureaucracy would take too long. Yiorgos, a field worker with years of experience in Crete, explains how the need to cultivate and sustain personal relationships is one of the main drawbacks they need to work around in smaller communities: “In a small community, it is difficult to file a complaint because you will meet the person you complained against in some other [social or professional] activity. You make things difficult for you in the future.” To circumvent conflict, what workers and administrators do instead is work around the racist tendencies of the local communities, trying to avoid those that exhibit racist and discriminatory behaviors, all to help their beneficiaries with their needs.

In the Cretan context, the cultivation of personal relationships among humanitarian workers and the service community is routinely utilized to help beneficiaries. These relationships are determined by the nature of the work (field, office, state service) and the person requesting it.

Workers that speak Greek, but themselves are not Greek but from a country often identified with migratory and refugee flows or from the European north, have little issues mediating on behalf of their beneficiaries; on the other hand, it is the beneficiaries that are often the primary recipients of discriminatory behavior and racist comments. A phone call by a European worker to the right person will diffuse a tense situation or will help get an application quickly processed that would otherwise remain in limbo for an unknown amount of time. Several respondents identify access to services and coordination among some of the most urgent needs for displaced people; 145 according to Melpo one of the goals of UNHCR, while it still had a legal presence in Crete, was to facilitate the cooperation and create channels of communication among all services that deal with refugees, a goal that generally seems to have been achieved. On a number of occasions, I had to communicate with UNHCR and ask for their help with some of my students’ issues or to request the phone number of a person that could be of assistance. This network of collaboration among services is useful and does solve a lot of problems, but it is rarely accessible directly to beneficiaries. In most cases, a person that needs something other than the core mandate of an organization or service will have to be lucky enough to find the right person that can (and is willing to) take advantage of the local network of allies and solidarity movements, or even elected officials with experience, to receive directions and guidance. I have often been the person to call legal assistance, health services, the UNHCR, the City of Iraklion, the ESTIA partner, or even mediate between social workers and beneficiaries: in the absence of an interpreter, workers and beneficiaries would often fail to understand each other. As a high-ranking informant in

Crete, Melpo speculates that the lack of a comprehensive guidebook for the displaced has not been created yet because it would put immense pressure on social/medical services, “a small chaos.” The solution she offers is “networking of organizations,” which means better communication, keeping in mind that the State gradually takes up this role, particularly in 2021.

However, to this day there is no plan to hire interpreters or translators in State services, and the vast majority of the services websites are in Greek, with basic English versions, leaving the full extent of the network inaccessible to those that cannot speak Greek.

The development of strategies to deal with State Services is often connected with a lack of a comprehensive framework that dictates the rules of conduct for displaced people in Greece.

The respondents note that occasionally, in their interaction with State employees, there is a lack 146 of communication with their supervisors and the ministries responsible, the legal framework is unclear, or in the cases when information is available, it has not trickled down through the chain of command. The example of child protection is characteristic of the systemic dysfunction. Eva frustratingly explains how her service must contact the district attorney in the case of abuse, but after the child is removed from its family environment there would be no service that would take responsibility for the child’s safety. The lack of child protection services in Iraklion, in combination with the lack of interpreters, often means that the child would end up in a hospital in accordance to the district attorney’s guidelines. However, the hospital does not usually have the means to take care of said child, and any private entities that deal with child protection refuse to take responsibility for its caring, creating a legal vacuum that only further traumatizes the victim of abuse. The situation is even more complex with unaccompanied minors; in one case a couple of humanitarian workers adopted a young refugee to ensure he could have the supportive environment he needed.

“Mia Malakia kai Misi” [A Bunch of Bullshit]: Insufficient and Shifting State Support

Miltos is candid when asked about the support refugees and migrants receive from State services. “I don’t think it helps. We have a crisis that we have labelled as such ourselves, and we have no prevention or integration policies.” The inconsistency of services and the liquid rules that change every few months are some of the prevalent issues in the refugee service sector. In addition, there can be no consistent guide for refugees, migrants, and displaced persons that have been in Greece for years, as there are no channels to communicate and disseminate the information. Miltos illustrates the lack of long-term planning in the Greek system, as well as the unrealistic expectations put on displaced people in reception classes (ZEP/ΖΕΠ). The classes accept displaced children for only one year, during which they are expected to improve their 147

Greek language skills to the level that, by the end of said school year, they will be able to be integrated into the Greek formal school classroom that corresponds to their age and become fully functional members of it. The problem this policy creates is twofold: first, the teachers for many of those reception classes are substitute teachers assigned for one school year at each school unit.

Once the school year is over, the teachers’ contracts are fulfilled, and based on the policy, the same children that received the reception class service cannot enroll again. Furthermore, there can be no other reception class unless a certain number of new beneficiaries-students enroll at that school. Therefore, students who do not yet have the linguistic skills or other academic skills appropriate to their grade level are supposed to be placed into a class where they are almost guaranteed not to succeed. Some workers have developed a workaround: when a reception class is created, as Miltos explains, humanitarian services and workers encourage the enrollment of as many students as possible. This strategy includes moving students around from other schools to the school they want the class created, all to fulfill the necessary quota. Once the reception class has the necessary number of new students, then usually, off-the-record, displaced students enrolled in the previous year continue attending. However, despite these combined efforts, in many cases, the reception classes are discontinued, thus making the support of displaced students a “struggle.”

Most humanitarian workers work well beyond their shifts to accommodate the beneficiaries; Marika reports that they are given between 60-70 cases to work on simultaneously.

With a constant focus on immediate needs and the backlog of the workload, the case workers are left with very little room for substantial help or activities beyond the essential psychosocial sessions. Thanos calls the social work services provided as an absolutely “basic relief” that aims at “transferring the problem for later,” classifying it as part of a “shortsighted” policy that will 148 backfire in the immediate future. The temporary character of the provided humanitarian relief is corroborated by most interviewees, who cite constant rules and regulation changes, hostile behavior by the police and New Democracy politicians, and a change of behavior that accompanied the new administration. These changes have been visible from the borderlands to mainland, and have to do with corruption, bureaucratic dysfunctions, and sabotage of any efforts made by field workers for successful mediation between refugees and the local community.

There is a sense of a “looming threat” over the field workers says Kallirroi, coming from

“above.” She cites the example of the “Ministry of Migration Affairs,” which had been an independent portfolio during the period of 2015-2019, but after the 2019 elections for a few months it was demoted to part of the “Ministry of Citizen’s Protection” portfolio, the same

Ministry that also manages policework and homeland security. The logistical work of the displaced persons’ mandate and the bureaucratic mechanisms involved in the refugees’ management soon forced the New Democracy government to reinstate and rename the previously named “Migrations Affairs” ministry into the “Ministry of Migration and Asylum.”

However, the reopened Ministry kept the strong ties it had developed with personnel from

“Citizens’ Protection.” The message was clear: migration and refugee affairs were to be understood as matters of domestic security, with a militarized logic behind every decision.

The sense of urgency and perpetual crisis that looms over the Greek management of displaced people affects the approach social workers and administrators have in their methodology and the tools they use to help their beneficiaries. The lack of personnel, for example, means that the weight of refugee work falls on sensitization of the public and immediate relief of the beneficiaries and less on integration efforts, as these are considered the urgent priorities of civil services. Kallirroi explains that humanitarian workers go above and 149 beyond their mandate to account for the increasing needs and difficulties of fieldwork, knowing that they have a limited amount of time to work with their assigned cases, until those individuals or families move on with their journey. The urgency and lack of forward planning reflect how humanitarian workers and the Greek State implicitly recognize that Greece is a middle stop in the journey of the displaced. The focus on immediate assistance and the lack of in-depth social research about the community workings that develop in the Greek space due to the presence of the displaced is usually detrimental for those choosing to make Greece their new home.

The orientation of humanitarian work on a national and local level towards the immediate needs of asylum seekers and recognized refugees overlooks those living for years in precarious conditions away from urban centers, perpetuating their “invisible” status. The invisible zones of agricultural areas and the border communities to the north of Greece have become home to thousands of displaced people, who live their life on the fringe of the law, or under constant fear of expressing their ethnic identity. A prime example of the invisibility of previous generations of migrants is Marica Rombou-Levidi’s ethnography that has revealed many of the State-imposed policies of surveillance in the Greek North; the author and academic was targeted by far-right and neo-Nazi politicians for her research with ethnic minorities living in the Greek space. 145

Levidi’s second book, continuing the research on border communities and the hybrid identities formed there, sheds light on mixed marriages between Albanian women and Greek men in

Northern Greece and the impact of racism in the social structure of rural communities of Greek

Macedonia. 146

145 Rombou-Levidi, “Life under Surveillance.” 146 Rombou-Levidi, “Here Kaput.” 150

Decision Making

The workers are often the face of the Greek State and the only familiar mediator between displaced people and the assistance they require. That is particularly the case for workers that are

Greek, hold academic degrees, and are often locals with strong ties to the local community and knowledge of socioeconomic structures. In the borderlands, the demographics of humanitarian workers are more diverse, with non-Greeks comprising often the majority of personnel. In Crete and other parts of the mainland, however, forcibly displaced people often deal with organizations and employees that are Greek and have had limited experience working with displaced populations. In the case of Crete, non-Greek humanitarian employees are usually interpreters who have lived on the island for years; there is no degree required for this work, only a demonstration of very good knowledge of the language. For social workers, administrative personnel, and sociologists, academic degrees and an excellent knowledge of Greek and English are basic requirements, along with a strong commitment to their organization’s ethics code, which often they find they must break to be less impersonal and build relationships of trust with their beneficiaries. Since displaced population mobility towards Crete is less frequent than islands on the borderline (Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos, Leros) and large mainland urban centers, there is an absence of non-profits that deal with refugee/migrant protection. In Crete, humanitarian workers are often the only advocates of their beneficiaries.

The roles, responsibilities, and ethics of humanitarian workers is a topic that is discussed by all informants implicitly or explicitly. For Thanos, an experienced fieldworker, he and his colleagues in State/private organizations are “nerveless.” He elaborates, “We occupy a place of privilege in the field of policy making, because we come to contact with people, no lawmaker ever bothers, we can negotiate much better for some things in relation to beneficiaries. But we 151 don’t do it because we choose to be complacent, follow our clock, whatever the supervisor says, we’re not to blame.” The tension between their mandate and the desire to help is also discussed by a number of informants, irrespective of their position in their organizations: even high-ranked administrators find themselves policed and commented on for their fieldwork activities. Taking initiative can sometimes backfire, as the bureaucratic system in place produces impossible situations that require risk for the humanitarian workers, but even more so for the beneficiaries.

Decision making for workers means often traversing a field of services and limitations that is impossible to decipher. The case of a forcibly displaced person, as narrated by a humanitarian worker that worked with them is indicative of the precarity of people that are invisible to the law, except when they break it. Arriving to Greece before 2015, Mehdi was identified and released from a hotspot, where he was also given a document from the Greek police prohibiting his movement to any other place and ordering him to leave the country, covering the cost himself. As often happens with these cases, this paperwork expired and the person lived as another “invisible” among his peers in the migrant community he belonged to.

However, to follow the law and apply for a refugee/asylum seeker status, Mehdi would have to go to Athens from Crete, where he had been living for a while and receive a triptych there; the triptych is a form of paperwork that verifies the applicant’s identity and status until their case has been examined by authorities. This trip, suggested by Thanos as the only viable solution towards a legal path of life in Greece, in the end was the reason Mehdi was arrested and presumably sent back to Turkey. His arrest would have been avoided if the asylum service in Athens would have scheduled a skype interview, allowing him to complete the interview without the police discovering that he had violated the restraining order that did not allow him to leave the borderlands. Thanos was not able to schedule a Skype interview for any earlier than two weeks 152 though, during which time Mehdi was living in the streets, as no social service would help him in

Iraklion, for lack of paperwork or a protected individual status.

Navigating the maze of Greek humanitarian Services requires not only expert knowledge, but also interactions with people with focal positions in local networks: workers and community members with connections that could expedite any bureaucratic process, either by providing phone numbers or with knowledge about procedural matters. Connecting to the people of the local networks is essential for the navigation of newcomers among different aspects of Greek bureaucracy, but does not always equal familiarization with the services and the procedures themselves. For Nikos, continuous dependency of beneficiaries on social/humanitarian services for all their needs and the consequent infantilization is “manipulation” and a form of “modern slavery.” He further explains that independence to complete tasks and the ability to handle them however the beneficiaries see fit is a form of respect, “I respect him [the beneficiary] as a human being.” On the other hand, the consequence of dependence is that, upon the inevitable exit from the aid program, displaced persons will not be prepared to take up those responsibilities on their own, as the Greek State services have not been adequately trained to deal with non-Greek populations without the aid of humanitarian workers, and they sometimes refuse to provide services at all. Nasia is an example of a focal person: their relationship to the local refugee community allows them to assist displaced people that contact them through their family.

…[S]ome have been through our program, some not… Because my family knows that I

have flexibility in my job due to hospital appointments they bring me in contact with

them and they ask for help. I incorporate this in my work, it’s not part of my mandate. It

does affect my work, and my work shouldn’t find out about this, but I don’t care that

much. 153

The worker combines the mandated work at the hospital with those individual cases (which they do completely voluntarily), thus providing access to services that a single person would have little access to on their own. Several informants break with their service’s guidelines and develop personal relationships outside the working hours of the programs where they work. This strategy sometimes is used to provide further assistance, or to bypass bureaucratic procedures whenever possible. This help also depends on networks of solidarity initiatives, which are complementing the work of State services, or even replacing them. The dependence thus on the humanitarian workers to complete tasks positions humanitarian workers in a critical position between the

Greek State and displaced populations, creating tiers among the latter: most displaced that are not recognized refugees or international protection beneficiaries do not have access to either social workers or interpreters, and are thus effectively excluded from receiving any assistance.

Under the mounting pressure of caseloads, the ever-changing guidelines, and the long working hours, the humanitarian workers discuss their motivation and position in relation to refugees with varied attitudes, from an impersonal “robot-like” work ethic to a conscious bypassing of rules and regulations to assist beneficiaries. The absolute dependence of recent refugees/asylum seekers on the agency that assists them makes Nikoletta describe her work as akin to that of a

“guardian angel.” Positioned between administration and State services, field workers express the dilemma of their work ethic, which often requires them to keep a balance between satisfying their superiors and meeting the needs of beneficiaries, challenging their “professionalism” at the expense of a becoming a friendly face for the people they help.

The sense of ethical obligation to help reported by humanitarian workers appears to be compromised by disappointment about the bureaucratic mechanisms that exclude displaced people from receiving services, fatigue, and what is generally perceived as a lack or breach of 154 trust between the worker and the beneficiary. Two high-ranking administrators, Eva and Yiorgos cite “insincerity” on behalf of the refugees as a primary reason for the breach of trust affecting their motivation. For Yiorgos the tense situations at the office with beneficiaries make him feel occasionally unsafe, however several other informants interpret the tensions as an outlet of the beneficiaries who need to feel their needs are heard. Visiting the organizations’ offices becomes a form of socialization and a strategy to both meet their goals and get away from the apartment where they spend most of their time on a daily basis. The strategies beneficiaries develop to become independent of the services, including leaving the program on their own volition, often secretly, in order to move to a Northern European country are described from Eva’s point of view as a situation that leaves organizations vulnerable to criticism, and should thus be reported.

Yet the refugees, migrants and asylum seekers that leave through regular or irregular means towards Northern Europe en masse seem to be the worst kept secret in the refugee sector. Most informants report that the overwhelming majority of refugees leave the program once they have received their travel documents, or even before that happens because they are tired of waiting; in

2020 there were 32,574 unaccounted-for asylum seekers in Greece, with the Greek authorities assuming that they have moved towards their desired destination through irregular means.147 A displaced informant I met during my fieldwork was arrested in 2019 while attempting to leave

Greece at the airport with forged documents, and Eva confirms this has been a common occurrence at Iraklion’s airport, with similar news reports often making their way into local press.

The interactions between beneficiaries and organizations and authorities often suffer from sensationalist media coverage though. For example, in July 2020 a beneficiary of a humanitarian

147 Kathmerini, “32.000 Migrants Missing;” Euronews.com, “Hundreds of Refugees Leave Lesvos.” 155 organization resorted to self-harm with a sharp object he obtained from a desk, when his request could not be met by the employees from whom he sought assistance. The local news media described the incident as a case of an armed hostage situation. When I was able to contact one of the administrators involved that same day, they bitterly complained to me that journalists covering the event created the misinformed bulletin (which was later used by local racist cells to underline the dangers refugees pose for local society), never called to corroborate the facts of the incident, and went on to publish the sensationalized scenario. Although the truth came out a few days later, it did not occupy the same space in media as the original misinformed article. The incident was used as propaganda material at a racist rally at a later date and contributed to displaced people being associated with violence and fear.

Emotions and Fatigue

Dealing with media misinformation, the needs of beneficiaries, and the pressures from a daily routine that allows little time for personal interests outside of work leaves humanitarian workers with a sense of fatigue and emotional drain. Several of the informants have reported that they have changed their occupation since the interviews took place, and a few more struggle with health issues, which they attribute to stress. Thanos is blunt,

everyone is at us. The refugees for inhumane conditions when they are not rescued…and

they are right, [their boats] sink and they die, but then they come and they find the tents,

and trafficking of people and body parts. Then they come to a hospitable Crete, but they

can’t find anything [to] eat here, so they blame me. Politicians blame me, Greeks blame

me, poor Greeks blame me, rich Greeks because someone told them that the money

refugees receive are from taxes imposed on rich Greeks, but this is not the case. 156

I have been engaged in many similar discussions myself, routinely accused of profiting from the voluntary work I provide in Iraklion. The fatigue reported by workers has been something I deal with myself. During my tenure as a Greek language teacher, I felt the fatigue and disappointment of having to teach the same language phenomenon several times in the same semester. It was not because the students were necessarily unmotivated or had learning disabilities. The continuous movement of populations and the bureaucratic situation required them to be constantly either in the middle of some bureaucratic application or continuing the journey across Europe.

Humanitarian work becomes repetitive, and offers little intellectual reward in the current framework in which it is organized. The satisfaction informants report getting from the nature of the work is equaled or surpassed by stories of beneficiaries that receive little individualized assistance and by pressure from the supervisors to workers avoid any contact with the people they assist outside of mandated work.

In the context of smaller communities like Crete, the mandated impersonal modus operandi is problematic because it runs contrary to the very nature of the local communities; personal contact in communities like Crete is what makes displaced people feel more welcome than large urban centers. The antinomies are present among workers themselves; workers that deal with mediation often see themselves doing their work in an objective manner: Vaggelis, an interpreter, calls her role the “voice of the refugee and the social worker.” Nasia in turn describes the professional relationship with beneficiaries as “a thin line…I should see it, but I don’t see it, it is not something I can personally support…my daily interactions can go beyond something formal, to help a person, be with them for issues that I maybe shouldn’t be there.” The approach

Nasia describes is appreciated by their beneficiaries: when one of them was in labor, Nasia rushed to the hospital even though they were off-duty and another colleague was escorting the 157 mother, only to find out once they entered the room that the mother had chosen Nasia’s name for their newborn. “I won’t forget it. It moves me to this day.”

When it comes to mediation and interpreting in particular, several informants make conscious choices of words and interpretations to diffuse tense situations and avoid conflict.

Nikos, also an interpreter in a small program in another part of Greece, discusses their work as performative, “…it is important to build a relationship with them. It is my goal. So I play performances with trust, the trusting relationship between them [the social worker and the beneficiary] giving the one the words and back to the other.” Nasia often employs this tactic to clarify misunderstandings between social workers and beneficiaries; Nikoletta, with extensive experience in the field, makes a distinction between medical issues where “I will transfer the same tone” and cultural particularities as is the case with the word “lie.” The word that constitutes a “great offense” for an Arabic speaker, so Nikos explains that he will rephrase in order to avoid a cultural misunderstanding that could result in the beneficiary becoming uncooperative.

The fatigue reported by workers leads them to cynicism, self-reflection on the nature and definition of humanitarian assistance, and to even further dissociate themselves from their beneficiaries in order to protect their own mental health, although emotional connections tend to be unavoidable. In cases of health emergencies, Flora expresses her determination to be there for people recovering at the hospital,

When you have a population for a while, you build some kind of relationship. When I

send them to Iraklion and can’t be there myself, a helping hand, a person to help, I can’t

just send them to ICU and leave. For me this is the worst part, how do you deal with that?

After a surgery to see a person they don’t know and nowhere to…Displacement. 158

The experiences of humanitarian workers and officials in Crete shows the limited capacity of the programs to accommodate the longer needs of the refugees. Workers and administrators usually need some of their own time, after their working hours to meet the mandates they are required from their organization, as the programs have begun shrinking. The malfunction of disciplinary procedures at the various services humanitarian workers navigate leave their beneficiaries vulnerable to racist behaviors, which leads workers to act as the sole advocates and often clash with other services on a micro-level in the field during their workday, with few long-term results.

“Integration” and “Learning the Ways of the World and Other People”148

Two of the most often discussed topics about their organizations’ mandates among

humanitarian workers are those of “integration” and “teaching” beneficiaries whatever they

deem necessary so the latter can adapt to the new way of life they have in Greece and Europe.

The lack of a comprehensive integration plan reflects a resilient narrative that the refugee crisis

will end soon; both Greek administrations and ruling parties in the 2015-2020 period described

the “refugee crisis”, often called “migrant crisis”, or denominated “refugee” [προσφυγικό] (adj) /

“migrant” [μεταναστευτικό] (adj) as a temporary situation that will diffuse in the near future.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the illegal practices of the Greek State the numbers of

asylum applications and incoming displaced persons has indeed been reduced, but the situation

feels temporary. Field workers with years of experience with displaced populations describe how

in the past, especially for ethnicities coming from Eastern countries, very few would “integrate,”

less than one (1) out of a thousand (1000). They have been working in the fields, in the kitchens

of restaurants, and construction, but unlike their Balkan counterparts they have not “socialized,”

with very few cultural organizations formed, reduced visibility, and many stuck at the bottom of

148 Agier, Borderlands, 9. 159 the social ladder of the local communities, working as laborers for a very low wages, often living in precarious conditions, as they face intense racism from homeowners when they search for a place to live.

The “need” and “absence” of integration are among the primary responses with humanitarian workers when the discussion reaches the topic of future steps to be taken. The constant population movement until very recently made the formation of displaced communities difficult. As years pass, gradually the newcomers and previous waves of displaced people form diverse communities, make their way into economic activities and form ties with locals, especially among families living in the same neighborhoods. Religion plays an important role, as the local (illegal) mosque for example has created a Muslim community centered around the prevailing creed, similar to evangelical and Catholic Christian creeds that do not have official representation in Crete, but are popular among the displaced.

The location of housing within the urban grid also becomes part of said integration efforts. Homes for displaced individuals are strategically chosen so that locals will mingle with their displaced neighbors; on multiple occasions field workers and administrators have encountered Greek neighbors that have been searching for displaced families that exited the housing programs, as they had started developing social relationships. My grandmother has been one of these neighbors, as she had taken particular interest in a refugee family that lived near our house, and was visibly upset and disappointed when they left. For those living outside the housing programs, comprising the overwhelming majority of displaced communities, finding housing and accessing services is one of the major factors inhibiting their integration process and their language learning. Municipal services in Crete have in the past few years organized Centers for Migrant Ιntegration, however those services do not have interpreters or provide language 160 classes. Public services, including hospitals, counselling, internal revenue services, social security, and the police, also do not provide interpreters. For Nikos, who has been working in the field for many years, long before the 2015 refugee flows surge, integration equals cultural familiarization, independent navigation through health and social services, transportation options and freedom of movement, all to the point that there is minimal interaction with the current

NGOs that deal with refugees. The International Organization for Migration, which runs the only

State-supported program in Greece that clearly includes in its mandate housing, education, and acculturation, only concerns itself with recognized refugees who arrived to Greece between 2018 and 2019. The integration program is located a few kilometers outside the city center, and has limited capacity for beneficiaries, as well as limited housing opportunities, and educational supervisors with limited knowledge of the refugee demographics and their educational needs.

“Integration” has often been the topic in political fora and local authorities briefings, but a look at the participants in those proceedings reveals that there is little interest to consult the displaced themselves and their needs. In deliberations on formal committees in Crete there is limited participation of the people directly affected by integration policies. Similar to most organizations in Greece that take initiatives to integrate people to local societies, the initiatives usually proceed without any consultation or coordination with other actors in the field. The lack of coordination and the omission of the beneficiaries in the design and implementation of integration policies results in low participation of beneficiaries. UNHCR, as the most recognizable actor in the field of refugee and migrant sector, often shares videos of refugees and migrants who have successfully integrated, or are in the process of integrating. Several details though of their integration process, including systemic obstacles the refugees had to overcome, or the solidarity networks in place that were more helpful than the services provided, are silenced 161 in the name of the systemic humanitarian work of the UN chapter. One of my students was featured in a promotional UNHCR video, in which the UNHCR implied it was aiding him and his family with his integration and work search, along with his Greek language classes. After the video upload in the UN social media, I found out that the setting he was filmed in was staged, as his job at the factory was related to menial tasks. Even though he was a professional carpenter, his colleagues there would not trust him with carpentry assignments because he did not speak

Greek. Even the job itself and the serious problems he faced with Greek bureaucracy were mediated by a solidarity network in Iraklion, with minimum involvement on behalf of public officials.

Depictions of integration in Greece become performative, generally perceived as a set of behaviors that show engagement with public affairs, the economy, and the workforce of the local communities failing to account for the creation of bonds and creation of community interdependence, and most of all the language acquisition as a means of getting sovereignty from systemic mediators. To be integrated is perceived as a willingness to belong, and an externalization of this desire is expected through participation in social activities, westernized behaviors, and patience in the waiting process. The irony of these connotations of integration is that Greeks themselves are perceived to be stereotypically loud and expressive, juxtaposing the

Mediterranean lifestyle to that of the European and American North which is considered more reserved, which Greeks find restrictive.

The expected performativity of refugee and migrant integration is present in the discourse of humanitarian workers when they talk about teaching their beneficiaries about how Greece, and to an extent Europe, have certain sets of rules requiring from them to adapt their habits and lifestyle accordingly. The discourses of ‘learning’ and ‘realization’ concern not only the 162 displaced people’s lifestyle, but also the legal prerequisites and expectations, echoing an

Orientalist approach to the “Other” who must change their way of life and behaviors to match the performative standards of the host community. Two striking examples from the interviews that outline living in Greece as a learning experience for refugees concern childcare. On the one hand, Nikoletta describes the problem refugee families have with observing quiet hours “because in their countries they don’t have it…they should learn that children should go to bed at that time or you have to sleep or they are forced to get them to the part to play, the young ones. Most have a lot of children. It’s an uncontrollable situation because they have not learned, it takes some time to learn but then ok.” On the other hand, Eva voices concerns regarding the beneficiaries’ need to understand the consequences of child negligence and abuse, citing how “in their

[countries’] frame this does not exist, or it is sometimes acceptable,” with a few cases of children that had to be taken away from their families. In my experience, this kind of “training” can also quickly take on racist and Orientalist connotations, implying that displaced persons are incapable of taking care of their own children in ways that are “civil” by Western standards. One of my adult students for example had two teenage daughters, rather slim, who would often come to class and would help their mother with Greek, while also improving their own knowledge. One day one of the social workers in the Foundation I was teaching furiously told me that one of the parents at the high school filed a complaint to the school and the relevant social services that the daughters were being malnourished and would need State intervention. The social worker, having interviewed the family as they were beneficiaries of two different aid programs, was certain of the racist intent behind the complaint, and I tend to agree with them. The family was definitely poor, but there was no evidence of parental negligence. If anything, it was the State that was denying them any humanitarian assistance, as the bureaucratic labyrinth and the 163 conflicting prerequisites for benefits excluded them from any welfare programs, while their asylum application was bounced back and forth for two years.

Conclusion

Agier’s definition of borderlands as a “prolonged time and a border space, in which people learn the ways of the world and of other people…the place where a new cosmopolitan subject is emerging”149 aptly applies in the case of Crete and how humanitarian workers teach

their beneficiaries the rules to function in Europe. Informants that talk to displaced people that

have moved to Northern Europe cite how the transition was easier after the work that has been

done in Greece, which focuses on practical everyday activities, as well as familiarizing displaced

persons with a culture of Western-like, European, formal interpersonal relationships. From

teaching beneficiaries to stop cooking bread on the stove top burners or disposing of cooking oil

in the streets, to encouraging them to be formal and calm in their encounters with services and

learn the limitations of each service and the limits of the law. Vaggelis, who has a refugee

background, draws from family experience to explain the educational role of Greece in the displaced people’s journey:

seeing some refugees that have made it deep in Europe, they understood here first what

Europe really is, Greece struggled to teach them the European laws, the European rules,

all about that. And I think they arrive at other countries ready. The refugee arriving to

Germany has understood what Europe is. Anyone working with refugees in Germany

sees the refugee ready. I have discussed it with my relatives. My parents who came to

Greece as refugees, and are now in Germany, I know it through my siblings. During their

stay they deal with the most difficult thing, the sense of safety. Here they feel they are

149 Agier, Borderlands, 9. 164

safe. And after a while, a year, the fear for their life has passed. I have seen the mental

health issues they had until he [refugee] made it here. So he [refugee] is ready for a new

beginning.

Greece, often considered by the global North as not-so-European, an exotic place for vacation inhabited by financially irresponsible, boisterous, and promiscuous natives, now becomes the place where the displaced get a humanitarian “education” in the ways of the West. The displaced, trapped for an extended amount of time in Greece, will experience what Agier calls

“ordinary cosmopolitism,” the labyrinth of dealing with other languages, ways of acting, thinking, and governing” to the point where they eventually “adapt and transform themselves by this obligatory exercise.”150 The duration of stay in Greece and the “improvement” of

beneficiaries is often measured by the changes in their behavior when they move from the camp

to the housing facilities organizations offer. Do they remain “calm”? Do they show a kinder attitude, as opposed to their initial bewildered state? Greece becomes not only the legal but the cultural “doorstep of Europe,”151 the crossroads between the East and the West, where temporary

relief assistance will be provided to the most vulnerable of asylum seekers, while many more

will remain invisible, continuing their journey to their desired north European destination. There

is sense of continuous crisis looming over the workers that are on the field every day, anxiety

over the new rules and regulations that will make their intervention more complicated.

Accordingly, a perpetual sense of waiting surrounds the displaced, waiting for the right time to

move on, leaving their place to the next family that awaits at the hellish refugee camps. For those

150 Agier, Borderlands, viii. 151 Heath Cabot’s On the Doorstep of Europe, from the title of which I borrow the phrase, is a comprehensive analysis of the pre-2015 asylum process and dilemmas service providers, humanitarian workers, and asylum seekers had to deal with in Athens, and the transformative power of the cultural exchanges taking place in the Greek space. To a great extent Cabot’s ethnographic work and Agier’s conceptualization of borderland were the theoretical starting points of this research. 165 that decide to stay, there is no clear path to integration. The example of Giannis Antetokounmpo, a second generation Nigerian-Greek NBA superstar is like an integration dream of American origins; Greek governments use the image of the two-time NBA MVP for several promotional spots, embracing his Greek identity, even if for the most part while the Antetokounmpo family lived in Greece, their everyday struggles were similar to any other displaced family that has made Greece their home. Few remember that his Greek passport and Greek nationality were issued through an expedited process, a preferential treatment only accessible to celebrities. For the displaced people of color, passing is not an option like their Balkan counterparts, and they can only hope their children will one day manage to partake in the legal and cultural naturalization, to at least avoid the systemic racism of the Greek bureaucratic system, the Ellis island for the European continent.

166

CHAPTER 4: FINDING HOME: LIVING IN (THE MARGINS OF) CRETAN

COMMUNITIES

Even though Crete has the reputation of a welcoming and open community, there are — not so few— parts of the island where non-Cretans are gazed upon with disbelief and suspicion when they enter a public space like a kafeneio [coffee shop]. The waves of internal migration towards the urban centers of the island have left many Cretan villages scarcely populated; in some, the abandoned houses are bought by Balkan migrant families that renovate them and make them their new homes. In the 1990s, when the first waves of Balkan displaced populations arrived in Crete, many found refuge in similar abandoned houses, as there were no reception programs for them or organized State Services to support the influx. Nowadays, the different generations of displaced persons co-exist in the cities, the primary melting pot of multicultural

Crete; working from agriculture to tourism, the displaced persons in Crete largely comprise the multicultural character of the island; their lives and experiences in Crete have been largely underrepresented in public discourse. There is a selective aspect as to which minority gets the spotlight periodically: a simple Google search reveals ample information online for example about the Sikh community in Rethymnon, which numbers around 1000 members. The Sikh community members all live in rural areas around the city, having migrated to Greece through an international agreement with the State of India to work for a local meat processing factory.

Around the time when there is an annual festival organized by the community, they are usually featured in the local press where they are described as a “model minority” that has quickly adapted to Cretan ways. Other cultural organizations representing significantly larger demographics though, including Albanians (68% of the island’s migrant population) have little to no public presence online or the press. In contrast, Western expats that have bought property 167 in Crete or are engaged in entrepreneurial activities are regularly featured talking about Cretan hospitality and making a new home in the island; often they are at the center of tourism/information campaigns organized by Crete’s prefecture. The choice of (re)presenting who lives in Crete has cultural and socioeconomic motivations, leaving out experiences crucial in understanding the unique case of the island as a reception topos in Greece.

In this chapter I discuss the experiences of six (6) displaced persons that have lived from one to nine years in Crete; four men and two women. I have changed some of the details regarding their personal information, a necessary precaution to protect them. I focus on their motivation to live in Crete, their dreams and aspirations, their fears, challenges, but also the journey that brought them here. The four men and two women have different experiences of

Crete; some have come as refugees, others as migrants, with their stay a result of government relocation policies or personal motivation. Most of them spend/have spent a large part of the year in urban hubs in the Cretan north, moving during certain periods to tourist and agricultural locations in other parts of the islands for seasonal work. I have not included specific information on some of the interviewees’ ethnicities, as this information could identify them due to the places they live and their activities. I complement their experiences with information from humanitarian workers’ interviews that corroborate their experiences or even add important background information and ethnographic data from fieldwork in Crete, Lesvos, and Athens.

Searching for Home

Abdul is from Afghanistan. He came to Crete with his family through the UNCHR

ESTIA program in late 2017. Incidentally, they crossed to Greece on my birthday, the 25th of

October. We met at a café that towers the Renaissance-era square of Iraklion, the Lions. In a perpetual state of waiting, asylum seekers must sometimes withstand months of uncertainty until 168 their application is processed. The asylum seekers that have completed their paperwork can work for an employer, but cannot be self-employed. For some, especially if they are Syrian, a positive outcome can happen in a single meeting; asylum seekers with other nationalities, however, can be in a state of temporary employment(s) for months, even years. “We must think, why we left our country, no one wants to leave our homeland, the territory. Home is the best. I grew up there, that’s my homeland, I didn’t have any financial problems there, I was good. But I was not safe.”

Creating a home in Crete becomes an attainable goal for those that end up on the island. Be it through relocation programs or through their own volition, the displaced in Crete find housing that resembles stability, away from refugee camps and the violence of the border and the homeland. Abdul’s words, and the stress in his voice as I transcribe his interview remind me of

Warshan Shire’s “Home”:

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well152

The Kenyan-born, Somali poet, is a migrant herself living in London and Los Angeles for years.

Her poem speaks to the human experience of displacement. The “mouth of the shark” manifests

in war, famine, terrorist organizations, or a family tragedy and financial disparity. For Abdul, the

home he was running from was one where he was economically well-off, but unsafe. “Violence”

and “safety” are of paramount importance, the words come up often when he speaks. “My

grandfather was killed in Iraq… [b]y a man. My father many times endured my uncle endured

bullets, I endured, they beat me many times, many times they broke my head, [he shows scars]

152 Shire, “Home.” 169 it’s another problem. Many problems.” Abdul’s father-in-law was also tortured, to the point that he can barely walk today. I met him one day at the school. He would not leave his house often, but Abdul tells me that he has been very-well respected in the neighborhood where they live.

Nowadays Abdul’s in-laws live in Belgium, taking advantage of the blue passport153 they got

after obtaining asylum. Abdul and his wife try to make their home here, even though they also

got their asylum application accepted, albeit after more than two years of waiting.

The sense of safety in Iraklion has been the primary reason for Helen and Mary choose to

live here, especially in comparison to other places in Greece, particularly its capital Athens.

Raised in a sub-Saharan African country torn by terrorist organizations, they immediately mention safety and security as the primary motives for choosing to live here. For them, Crete has been the place they ended up after trying different cities in Greece. Maria had tried living in

Patra before, as well as in Athens:

I go freely, and this is what I like about Crete. It’s very…not too much noise, not too

much people. You don’t commit crime so police don’t harass you. So if I go freely I’m

fine. I was before in Athens. Nearly a year. Before I was in Patra. A few months. Athens

was ok, too many people, I found Black people, from my place, and from my tribe I met

some. We still talk, they send me things.

Maria’s ties to her community in Athens and the larger numbers she found at the Greek capital did not stop her from moving to Crete eventually, but for thousands of displaced people leaving the capital is not a viable option. Athens has been the primary place that pulls displaced people of various backgrounds. With the approximately 5 million residents of the Attica administrative

153 The “blue passport” refers to the 1951 Convention Travel Document for Refugees or “Geneva passport.” It is usually a “model document in booklet form, with a stiff blue cover, resembling a national passport,” accepted by “all countries to which refugees wish to travel” (UNHCR “Note on Travel Documents for Refugees EC/SCP/10.” https://www.unhcr.org/excom/scip/3ae68cce14/note-travel-documents-refugees.html) 170 region (that includes Athens), the chances of a displaced person finding their own kin are much higher than on a Mediterranean island. Athens has been namedropped by all four interviewees that lived for years in Greece. It is a city that resembles a crossroads for displaced populations that want to continue their journey to the North: for Abdul it was the site of his attempts, after more than a year of waiting for his asylum application, to irregularly move his family out of

Greece towards Belgium or Germany. With certain squares functioning as travel agencies of sorts, where the displaced could find the smuggler-agent that represented their ethnicity and procure paperwork and a plan to move North, the city has a certain reputation, as a transit hub and a site of perpetual, often unsafe, waiting.

For Tariq, Athens was the first stop in his life journey, as he had connections with the city long before he arrived to Greece, pulled by familial relations. “My cousin lived there, he has been there since 1992, we still had drachmas154 then. I remember him sending us gifts, and

money in dollars. That’s how I remember him. I had in my mind to go find him in Athens.” His

cousin was not the sole factor though, as financial problems and the death of his mother led to a

strong need to make changes in his life. “I didn’t feel well at home. I couldn’t grasp that my

mother was gone. I could not sleep. My brothers and friends suggested I should travel, get away

from home, calm down until things get better. I was not well. I was sitting for hours, depression.”

The push factor of financial insecurity and mental strain and the pull factor of Greece, with

previous generations setting a secure welcome for a newcomer helped Tariq adjust quickly to his

new life, as he ended up living with 5 people from his village at the same house, 4 of which went

to school with him! However, the financial troubles in the Greek industrial sector meant that

soon another displacement was inevitable, this time internal: “while I was in Athens I worked at

154 Th national currency in Greece, prior to euro. 171

Scaramanga shipyards. It was good for a while. But then due to the crisis I left, they let a lot of people go.” Forced to leave his newfound community and friends, Tariq moved to one of the primary destinations for Pakistani workers, Crete.

Tariq speaks warmly of Crete in comparison to Athens, which has seen the rise of extremist groups since the 1990s. The Greek metropolis has been one of the preferable sites for the violent activities of Golden Dawn, the Nazi party that was also present in the Greek parliament from 2012 to 2020. With more visible criminal activities and trafficking rings, more intense police presence, and a Nazi presence, Athens is both the land of opportunity for the uprooted and a place where life is precarious. Discussing Golden Dawn, Helen remembers that

“sometimes we would not go out at night and stay inside, because they would fight with them.

We don’t pass certain places, because there was Chrissi Avgi [Golden Dawn].” The danger of urban life though also comes from what could be considered as familiar in terms of kinship.

Many of the criminal activities in large cities are run by organizations that utilize and exploit uprooted and displaced populations. Nikos, an interpreter with a displaced background who has worked in large Greek urban centers, describes the displaced as “easy to manipulate” due to the living status they have and the lack of viable living options and employment opportunities.

Recruitment can often occur early, even “from the camp,” with criminal rings extending beyond the “Greek mafia:” “…there is Arab mafia, people that lived here as lathrometanastes [illegal migrants] for long. The Balkan, Bulgarian, for trafficking, sex trafficking, child abuse. Not for high levels for these, but drugs, weapons, etc. Go to Omonoia one day and you will see.” The different criminal rings exploit the state of limbo to provide easy ways of making money, often using ethnicity and kinship as a means to approach victims. A dire consequence is the 172 perpetuation of the stereotype of the displaced in certain parts of Greece as criminals, and the association of their ethnicity with crime.

Nevertheless, the precarity of life in Athens is a calculated risk, as it is mitigated by the support systems displaced people find there. Previous generations of displaced persons have made their home in the neighborhoods of Athens, some opening shops and others occupying jobs, or even opening small businesses; Athens also houses most of the big displaced cultures’ cultural organizations, and most NGOs oriented towards helping said communities.155 Faazel,

who has been in Greece for four years, spent a year and a half in Athens as a minor under the

care of an NGO. He met people there, and often engaged in community activities: “[When] I

came to Athens they would often call me to help (with interpreting)…When I stayed at the city center, I would go Fridays at a homeless shelter and help serve food.” Faazel was pulled to Crete from a short-lived relocation program for refugee minors, motivated by a friend that would also join him and the promised independence and monetary assistance provided. Ultimately, Athens

may be the service and mobility center of the country, but it could not provide the intimacy and

safety he wanted. “There were days in Athens that we were all together, and they wouldn’t let us

(go out), they said this day you shouldn’t go out. Every year once, some friends we had from

school had been beaten. Had their noses broken.” Miltos, a second generation Greek

humanitarian worker with a migrant background, corroborates how dangerous it can be to live in

some parts of Athens if someone does not pass for Greek:

In Athens there was a time when I was afraid to go on Patision Avenue, I was on the

verge of leaving abroad. I was seriously considering it until someone told me that abroad

155 A comprehensive list of NGOS and displaced communities organizations can be found at “Migrants in Greece” website, https://www.migrants.gr/category/%CF%80%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%BA%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF %CF%83-%CE%BF%CE%B4%CE%B7%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%83/enwseismetanastwn/ 173

it’s malakia [crappy], not very well. But I was not interested in making money. I didn’t

want to feel fear in my city, in my country, inside my home.

Home meant safety for different generations of migrants, but Athens also turned out to be a place that forced displacement and uprooting. The waves of Nazi pogroms made the Greek capital unsafe to live in, even if for some it was the only home they knew. Miltos narrates multiple instances of serious injuries and precarity, a situation that led him ultimately to leave Athens and move to Iraklion.

It was like I lived in my own house with a boogeyman. Fuck this shit. In my motorbike I

had knives, axes, I was going around with these, it was a tense situation. They had beaten

a close friend of my father at a bus stop, he was in hospital for 7 months…There were a

lot of attacks to friends and acquaintances. [They beat] another one from Bangladesh who

was a cook where I was working, the day of the World Cup game Greece vs Cote

d’Ivoire in 2012, after which those macho Greeks went out hunting for Black people.

This Bangladeshi they chased him…dragged him out of a trolley bus and 16 people were

kicking him. It was a dark period. Middle Ages.

This was not the first pogrom that took place after a soccer game. Dimitris Psarras, author of The

Dark Bible of Golden Dawn, positions the pogrom that occurred on September 5, 2004, after

Greece lost to Albania for the 2006 World Cup qualifying game, as the first widespread massive pogrom against non-Greeks, a turning point in the public activities of Nazi groups.156 When

Albanian migrants that day took to the streets to celebrate the team’s victory, they soon found

themselves attacked by Greeks: some of the assailants were unorganized, others were members

156 Psarras, Golden Dawn. 174 of Golden Dawn. In Crete, it took Miltos a few years to adapt, but here he feels more welcomed,

“I’d stay forever in Crete” he says, citing the climate and the atmosphere of Iraklion.

Tariq describes Crete as “paradise,” and from his perspective there is a multitude of reasons for his choice of his new home. While not a paradise for all uprooted, the island can boast that it is, as Maria calls it, “…very quiet…a quiet place,” especially compared to the metropolis, with higher-paid employment opportunities than Athens and much milder weather.

Crime rates are significantly lower, there is work all year long due to the tourism and agricultural sectors, and the intimacy of a smaller place allows for building close relationships and effective development of solidarity networks. Those networks in Iraklion have been mobilized effectively during times of need. For example, in the first COVID-19-related lockdown in Greece in March

2020, Helen and Maria both mentioned Erofili and the help they received through her small organization: food and basic necessities they would not have access to otherwise. Anarchist collectives in Iraklion often share calls for products and furniture for families in need, be those

Greek or uprooted. Most often help initiatives are coordinated by WhatsApp groups and other social media chat applications.

While not a paradise for Maria, Greece and Crete are starkly different to her place of origin in Africa. “For everybody in Africa it’s very difficult. If it’s a good place no one would leave. Because of the suffering. Very difficult.” Discussing homeland is also a painful experience for Helen, who did not wish to elaborate on why she had to leave: “Africa is not so good now, too many problems, we want better life.” Having found each other, Mary and Helen spend time together, when they are not attending the workshop classes of Erofili. In their effort to make a home in Iraklion though, the memory of the place they left can be painful. Asking about whether she follows the news about her homeland, Maria’s voice sounds stressed and breaks: 175

Sometimes I watch, but I don’t care. I don’t want to feel bad, the news that come from

there are not good. They kill so many people, and it makes me cry. I don’t want to always

feel bad. The news that come from there are not always good. The people, [names

organization]. If you read the news from my country maybe you see sad news. Accidents,

people die, [names organization]. They have taken a lot of parts, and they have made a lot

of impact and destruction. Sad news. I used to watch news but it made me so sad.

The displacement Mary experiences is not only geographical, but also emotional. The ties to her home are painful, experiencing a lack of belonging that extends beyond the geographical separation, to the association of the birthplace to pain. Maria’s pain when she talks about home and how she left echoes Shire’s lines,

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying —

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here

Both the poet and Mary describe leaving and staying away mentally and physically to ensure their safety. Forgetting home, or avoiding talking about it, could be a strategy to deal with the trauma of both leaving and travelling their new homes. Both Helen and Maria do not want to talk much about their journey. Describing it as “traumatic” and “difficult” in short. In their interviews, I notice silences that are quite possibly purposeful, and do not further push them to 176 elaborate on the difficulties they faced. They talk about crossing the Sahara desert and how they were lucky to have encountered police that was “kind.”

Helen deals with her memory and ties to home differently. She follows her country’s news avidly and wants to visit home at some point. Faazel, an Afghan born and raised in

Pakistan until the age of ten who left home when he was 10 to work at construction in Iran, and then fled to Greece, misses “everything and everyone.” During his first months in Greece, he was stranded at a refugee camp in Northern Greece, and the uncertainty, along with the perpetual waiting he was subjected to with the promise of eventual permission to continue his journey, made staying disappointing. “I lived there for six months, with the lie that borders would open. I wanted to go back to my homeland. I was under a lot of stress, had no money. As for where I was staying, just let it be. It was also winter and it was cold, we were staying at a tent in… It was not good.” Kumar is dismissive about the displaced wanting to return home, underlining courage as the driving force behind the desire to make a new life in a new place:

…If you don’t have a strong heart you cannot have that. So I see people coming and after

that back to their country. I don’t know what they are doing… You are coming from your

country without anything, so you go back? When you decide to have a good life, you will

have much danger, fear, you must work hard, hard. Hard. It’s dangerous like that for

everyone to decide to make a good life.

His perspective echoes the stereotype that worthy refugees and migrants lift themselves by their bootstraps and are solely responsible for creating their own success and happiness.157 Although

the language of bootstraps emerges from the US, the stereotype exists in Europe and Greece:

157 A famous example of deconstruction of the bootstrap theory comes from a 1968 sermon delivered by Martin Luther King. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons- reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-10 177 while this serves to celebrate a small minority of marginalized people, it blames the large majority for not having the ability to raise themselves and erases the structural factors that obstruct their progress. Kumar himself does not lead an easy life, working temporary jobs here and there, but sees it all as a necessary first step until he can find a path to the life he desires.

Living in a camp with continuous issues of water/electricity shortage and the local camp managers covering all problems has shaped Kumar’s perspective into finding issue with “the rules, not the people’s treatment.”

After five years in Greece, Faazel’s perspective of life in Greece has improved, mainly because he lives in Crete. Returning home however (even temporarily) still remains something he desires: “…I had no hobbies there, or going to school, I don’t talk much to my friends from there…I had friends there, for 10 years I have not seen anyone. I miss my parents for 9 years. I want to go there when I get Greek nationality. (laughs) One day.” Faazel and Maria have both distanced themselves from home ties, but while Maria does not wish to return, Faazel sets it as a goal to go back and pick up the thread of family and friend relations. Tariq, having paperwork and working all year long, occasionally visits Pakistan, “I go there sometimes…I have a very good time.” Having worked and collaborated with Tariq, I can attest that he lives much better than most Pakistanis in Crete. His work is not physically exhausting: he admits in another conversation that he tries to avoid greenhouses, as work there is under difficult conditions (long hours, high temperatures, awkward body posture that includes laborers dragging themselves on the ground for extended periods of time), and he has not been able to withstand it for long. His work in the tourism sector and caretaking services afford him a comfortable lifestyle, which includes occasional trips to his homeland: that is not the case with the other interviewees.

178

Living in Crete

Racism and Standing Out

Crete’s welcoming culture is directly connected with the island’s thriving tourist industry.

One of the major selling points in international campaigns is that the island can offer any kind of vacation a tourist might desire, from quiet camping facilities and traditional establishments to cosmopolitan hotels and fashionable nightclubs. When the tourist season is over and winter comes, the population of the island is less diverse, comprising mostly of permanent residents:

Cretan-Greeks are the majority, but there is also a significant and rising number of Balkan migrants who have chosen Crete as a place to work and raise families. The workers from the

Middle East, primarily Pakistan and Afghanistan, are mostly single men.

Maria disappointedly remarks this discrepancy in her search for familiar faces, “there is no Black people to communicate with, maybe to be with your own world. When I ask the lawyers they say no people yet.” Indeed in my years in Crete, I have seen very few Black people.

It is often during summer that you see more Black people in Crete, mostly tourists from Western countries. This particularity about the population make-up of the island translates into several difficulties for Maria. She has great difficulties finding work and is often treated differently because of the color of her skin. “Maybe because I am Black people don’t ask me (to work).” A prevalent stereotype affecting Black women in Iraklion is connected to sex work; the reality is that there is a certain area in Iraklion where there is a small number Black sex workers.

However, their overall number is small and disproportionate to sex workers of other ethnicities.

Neither Maria nor Helen report issues with the police in Iraklion, but both have something to say about how locals treat them. Maria has a stoic attitude toward the casual racism she falls victim to: 179

sometimes we go for souvlaki/cafe and they say some things that are bad but we don’t

understand, but we know they say bad things and it’s bad for us. But I cannot say and I

cannot understand I feel it, this person speaks bad to me. Maybe because I speak other

language people speak weird to me, but I cannot get everything, I don’t understand

everything.

Understanding the language has been a big impediment for Maria. Even though she has been in

Greece for 8 years, her Greek language skills are limited. But words are of little importance to her when she is treated poorly, as the meaning becomes clear. When I ask her what is racism, I can see that her definition does not include language, but it has to do with body language and attitude:

When you pass someone at the kafeneio [coffe shop], or you want to go somewhere and a

person there looks at you, I call that racism, Is it not? I think when I get it, I feel bad but

when I think about it, I say entakse [ok], wherever I go I will see people like this, but it’s

ok.

Racism has been an issue Maria deals with, but is not one of her primary concerns. “I don’t worry about racism, I can take it, it’s like that everywhere” she says, focusing instead on finding a job and the difficulties that arise from unemployment. Her friend, Helen, is in turn pleased with her life here but also aware of how her phenotype makes her stand out.

People outside may push…sometimes, people see us as colored slaves. They drive by and

they spit on you, they wear black and live in villages. They speak bullshit and other bad

words, other people are not like that. Not from the city.

The people dressed in black Helen mentions are primarily residents of rural areas around

Iraklion. They often cause trouble with Greeks and foreigners alike, projecting a masculine 180 identity based on Cretan culture that is often misogynistic, transphobic and racist. The cultural trait of wearing black is considered part of a traditional Cretan identity; when she describes them to me, I immediately understand and shrug. At nights police often target the pick-up trucks with the drivers with black shirts, as they are often suspected of drug and gun possession. Although

Helen does mention extreme and explicit acts of racism, what makes her most distraught is the causal racism she faces during her everyday activities.

Sometimes people here don’t accept me, when you go to super market, or café, they don’t

receive you well, they are not happy to see you. Sometimes I go to buy a kotogyro

[chicken schwarma/gyros] and he [waiter/employee] starts talking and makes fun of me,

awful. I wanted to buy from them and they were still bullshit. Arapina ti kaneis edw

[Nigger girl what are you doing here] they were speaking and my friend said we should

go. But no, I want to buy. Sometimes I feel like when I go to restaurant when you feed

them, they don’t tell you to go. Not all but some. Sometimes when I want to buy

something, they make fun of me.

The racist behavior described is rarely directed to Greeks or tourists; it is reserved only for those coded as migrants, outsiders, and “Others.” Helen will note in another talk we had later, that when she is coded as a tourist, she gets treated better. It is when someone recognizes her as a resident of Iraklion that Helen will receive racist and sexist remarks. The discriminatory behavior against “Others” occurs casually in Iraklion: I have heard and witnessed several instances of

Romani people treated as thieves, and migrant workers, especially with a darker skin tone, side- eyed at supermarkets and stores. Uprooted people that work in the service sector are also often employed in the kitchens and posts that are not visible to customers, especially if they do not 181 speak a desired language (usually English/German/Russian) fluently, or they are coded as non-

Greeks.

The distrust and aggressive behavior from Greek employers and landowners is the reason

Kumar left his job at Malia, a tourist resort outside Iraklion. Determined to work as soon as he had the ability to, Kumar sets himself apart from the people he met here, “The day I arrived to

Crete I saw my friends in the room, they have no work, so I ask them what the problem. All of them don’t have language, one of them is learning, he can speak a little bit Greek, English, mix.

So I decide to go everywhere.” I remember meeting him on his second day in Iraklion, as he approached me and asked for information about the local UN office and where to seek employment. His main issue has also been language, “First (I tried at) Iraklion, unfortunately I couldn’t find anything, they wanted Greek. When I decided to (go to) Malia, then the problems started.” Kumar found work at a beach bar soon after he came to Iraklion, but the problems at his workplace were tri-fold: insurance, exploitation, and racism.

Work with insurance might be a given in many countries, but in Greece it is often a given that certain professions will have invisible workers. At his work there was even a system in place to avoid any implication or Revenue Service raids,

It was a big beach bar, 12 persons. 4 of them have IKA [insurance and social security].

They were Greek. Even the others some of them were Greek and some Albanian. No IKA

for anyone. The owner gave me a walkie talkie: “if you go far, they won’t take your

name. If the people [Revenue Service] come to control [check] you, I will call you to go

away from the beach.”

Insuring only Greek workers is one of the racist policies Greek employers enact. Most employers, especially in the construction and service industry, habitually exploit their workers, 182 to the point that this practice is considered a norm. Kumar frustratingly explains that he even brought up the issue with a lawyer, only to receive the answer, “it’s not a problem for you.”

However, Kumar wants to work legally, just like other employees: “with my thinking, it’s also a problem for me, because you ask me why you work for him if he doesn’t have IKA.” The inequality Kumar experiences is also reflected in his daily wages, which were starkly different from his co-workers. Being an accountant, he proceeded during the interview to give me a rundown of the injustice he had suffered:

He gave me 15 euros. But after two days and three days, I see no one would do that. They

would take 40, the other people, the least, a day. I told him. He made it 20. Imagine, I

was the most mover, the one who worked more, cleaned the beds, 200 beds, served

people, fix umbrellas, clean the floor, sometimes work on orders, all times if I see empty

glass or serve…

He starts a meticulous rundown of his former employer’s business activities and his annual income: based on his observations he would need multiple lifetimes to make the amount of money his boss did working on the salary he was paid at the beach bar.

Faazel, in turn, describes his boss at the car machine shop where he does his practicum as a “fascist.” Recounting how his colleagues do not allow him to do much at the shop, Faazel describes that the aggressive behavior from his boss was exacerbated around the 2019 elections:

He yells but he’s a good person. He’s angry and a fascist. Ok, as a person I need to talk to

him, be respectful, if he is not, I cannot force him to, these days he’s fine. Before the

elections, they were saying a lot of things. ‘You refugees come and they give you 500-

1000 euros monthly.’ I kept thinking where is that [money], I have never seen it, he 183

would give us 75 euros every two weeks. And then [from the cash assistance program] I

could not draw money, only [pay with] card.

The working experiences and systemic treatment of Faazel and Kumar are strikingly similar.

Kumar recounts angrily how his boss and some of his colleagues would often “do bad things and name-calling,” often reproducing discriminatory tropes such as misidentification. For example,

Kumar complains that,

10 times I told them I am from Kurdistan, he always told me Pakistan, I don’t know why.

We are all humans, there’s no difference…I have African friends, and I respect them, like

I respect my father and mother, because all of us are humans. No-one accepts if you call

them another name or from another country. It’s bad…anytime he called me like that I tell

him. Even after that, I was disrespected, he was laughing.

The misidentification might seem like a meaningless accident: foreign workers in Crete, especially if they have darker skin complexity, are often Pakistanis, but once contextualized, it reveals its derogatory meaning. Calling a person “Pakistani” has clearly racist connotation, as laborers of that ethnicity are ill-treated, considered inferior workers, and paid significantly less than their Balkan counterparts. I discuss the issue of name-calling with Tariq, and his personal insight reveals his own strategy of dealing with racism:

I used to mind, now I do not. A long time ago, I used to be a narrow-minded person, I

would take it negatively and tell myself…since he knows my name, why doesn’t he call

my name, why does he say the Pakistano. You know my name, it is Tariq, why don’t you

call me with that and say Pakistano. Now when they tell me, I answer ‘A proud

Pakistanos! Anything else friend?’ I worked on it, and concluded he speaks the truth. I 184

was born there, I was raised there, you took it in a negative manner. Don’t take it any

further.

In Tariq’s case, his education and his way of thinking make him take the intended insult and reclaim it as a point of ethnic pride. His described soul-searching though took time, and it cannot and should not be expected of every displaced person to adopt the same attitude against the racist behaviors they endure. Identification is recognition of a person’s dignity and acknowledgement of their existence, and denying a person’s identity can contribute to their belittlement and attack their dignity. Tariq’s reaction and reclaiming of his ethnicity is possible because he also speaks good Greek, which is unusual for a coded “Other” in Greece.

The power shift of a person that can use Greek to react to an offense becomes prominent in marking a person’s boundaries. A ksenos [non-Greek] that responds in Greek to racist- discriminatory language produces a startling effect the offender, who usually does not expect a strong, audible callback. Language allows a person to respond and challenge an, anticipated from offenders, state of passivity, which often also results into a sense of relative safety and belonging. Tariq for example describes having a friendly relationship with authorities, and I have seen him jest and interact in a lively manner with Greeks while at work, receiving and delivering jabs effortlessly. Tariq prioritized learning Greek when he came to Crete, paying for a tutor for two years. One of the goals of the Greek classes I was offering was to recognize everyday phrases Greeks use, so that my adult students could effectively interact and anticipate clarification questions, or even ask on their own; part of that lesson was to recognize offensive language, to which the students showed lively interest.

Kumar’s struggle with offensive speech acts is reflected by a discussion we have in the middle of the interview about the meaning of the word malakas. The word finds its equivalence 185 in English in the form of “asshole,” being both an insult in certain settings, but also friendly banter in other contexts. After I explain to him how the word works in the Greek context, using

English as a language of reference to draw the parallel, Kumar remains frustrated about how he has been treated, “I fought with them because of that kind of speaking, I am ok with malakas, but another kind of slip…” The other kind of slip comes through homophobic comments, that elicit a homophobic reaction from Kumar, a straight cis man: “the manager comes ask me where you live, I told him that now I live with my friend at a room. First thing he asked me if I slept with him in one bed. So you are joking, not in that way.” The homophobic comments are the one of many examples highlighting the pressure Kumar is under at work and the belittlement he receives. This behavior against him is part of the racialization of migrant men from certain regions, in this case the Middle East: migrant men, often living in groups in small apartments to cut costs, are stereotyped as being homosexual or partaking in other ‘abnormal’ sexual practices.

Kumar had to leave the room once the person renting was pressured by the owner of the apartment, who implied the two men were homosexuals. His frustration is visible and audible,

“I’m without family…I come to work 10 am until 9 pm so really I don’t sit.” Lacking the recognition both in terms of smaller paychecks and a refusal to call him by his name or even his ethnicity, Kumar is also discriminated against Greek workers in the way his boss speaks to him in front of them, with “…no respect. Even one time I was fighting with one person working there, he came and told me with a high voice, ‘go back to your place,’ and the other guy was

Greek he went and spoke with him in quiet. I see the difference.” Racist behavior in Kumar’s case takes a cultural, financial, and sexual form, but his philosophy remains the same, “without a strong heart you cannot live.” Later in that tourist season Kumar started working at the kitchen of 186 a restaurant in rural Rethymnon. Last time we talked he was happy with his wages and the atmosphere, but once more, the hours he worked were long.

Life Outside Work

An important part of recreational and cultural activities outside work for displaced people in Iraklion includes congregating for spiritual purposes. I have been aware of a mosque that operates irregularly in Iraklion, and I happened to meet the imam, after introductions were made through a colleague.158 We had a brief sit-down and he spoke to me about his activities and

community work. I also knew about two Catholic churches in Iraklion, the Holy Cross (which

only host sermons twice a year), and the parish of Saint John the Baptist, officially recognized by the Vatican in Iraklion. Helen unexpectedly provides me with more information about the small

Black community in Iraklion, and the social life of the few people that comprise it.

We Blacks we have a church close to Limani. Just a room we rent it for Blacks we make

a church there. One big room with things. Not many Blacks in Iraklion, but now since

this pandemic, many people stay at home. Sometimes we are up to 10. There is a man

from Athens who pays the rent. We have a Greek priest, sometimes he pays.

The description of the church might sound unusual, but the mosque in Iraklion works under a similar premise, on the fringe of law. The church provides a place for the small Black

community to meet, socialize, and create a community of support and solidarity in the city. I

have discussed with Helen the Catholic church that exists in town, and while she was aware of it,

she seemed disinterested to find out more about it. The communal aspect of the church she

attended comprised of people similar to her is stronger. Helen informs me that

158 Mosques in Greece operate under a strict set of rules; to receive a permit for one, the person responsible must go through a complex bureaucratic process that includes submitting a CV, building/hygienic permits, and a “declaration of beliefs.” The mosque in Iraklion does not have a permit. Even though there are temporary permits in other mosques in Greece, Athens for example, a city with over 300.000 Muslims, only got its first legal mosque in 2020. 187

…the ones I know are 10-12. Because they are from different countries. You can’t see

them like Athens, here you don’t know them that much. The church sometimes we make

dinner at the church, sometimes we go to a restaurant, they are mostly from one country,

but other countries. Those from the same country we can understand them better.

Athens once more becomes the site of comparison, the measure by which life in Iraklion is assessed. Standing out in Iraklion due to smaller numbers and incidents of racism makes research into the Black population in Crete a great challenge. The church is the opportunity for the Black displaced to see each other and communicate safely, away from the inquisitive and sometimes offensive gaze of Greeks. The Greek “priest” and the person who pays for the rent are outsiders to the community, yet their contribution to the cohesion of the parish is vital: it provides space, spiritual support, and the opportunity for a dignified public presence at places they would otherwise be side-eyed.

The importance of communicating and communing with people they feel comfortable with is of great importance to Maria, who avoids going out on a regular basis. “I love to sleep.

After I watch a movie, sometimes I go for volta (a walk), with friends, otherwise alone. Super market. I always want to be indoors. Always in my bed. Sometimes by the sea, not always.”

Maria’s habit is not very unusual, considering that as a Black woman in Iraklion she stands out, and there is no public space that she can feel accepted. Helen likes going out, but connects the issue of work and racism directly to her mood,

sometimes I am home because there is not too much work, we don’t have activities to

go/do. I like to go outside to meet people, but here there not much… I would like to walk

every day. I love it. I wish I could walk every day, I love it. Not two times a week. Now

with COVID it’s difficult. There’s a place I go and work, clean. Sometimes two-three 188

days I don’t go out. When I go out to buy out I speak to people, Greek are good, some

not, but they are good people…At the super market they sometimes make racist

comments.

Helen does not think that racism is a big impediment to her everyday life, she finds after all that

“people that are good are more than those that are not nice.” Nevertheless, the lack of activities

Helen discusses does not mean that there are not things to do in Iraklion, which for the past decade has seen a booming of artistic spaces, art groups, and volunteering projects. But those spaces are rarely accessible to the displaced persons, either due to language difficulties or because some hobbies, such as photography or hiking, require costs and time they are not able to cover. During the non-profit’s Thalassa solidarity events, Maria and Helen led hairdressing workshops, braiding hair for other displaced women and children, but those events had only occurred pre-pandemic a couple of times. The local anarchist collective that has organized similar events since its conception in 2015 has not been interested with outreach outside those they see as ideologically friendly. I had attended some events that were part of the festival in

2017, but by the time I started the research in Iraklion the festivals from the Anarchist initiative had become scarce. Two events, however, organized by anarchist collectives, took place in neighborhoods outside the city center, in squares and parks frequented by displaced families that live nearby. These events, which did not require the use of transportation from participants, as is often the case for ESTIA or HELIOS events, had a significant number of attendees, underlining the importance of neighborhood relations and the neighborhood structure in the integration opportunities for displaced persons.

Faazel, despite finding Iraklion small at first in comparison to Athens and Thessaloniki, gradually adapted to the city and grew to like it. The initial boredom he felt in Iraklion was 189 replaced with activities that involved both work and leisure. Central to the shift was his socializing at school:

In my first days I was bored because I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t know any Greek

either…A schoolmate was next to me, and I asked for his notes, to get to know him too. I

said excuse me friend can I borrow your notes because they speak fast, and I can’t

understand. He gave me his notebook and we got to know each other, we would talk for

three-four days and became friends then with other students that saw me and him. Six

months passed and I made four more friends, the rest were friendly but I was ashamed,

when you don’t know and are a stranger, I thought what would they say about me. And

then five months passed and everything was fine.

School is a major factor for the socialization of the displaced, and their integration into the Greek communities and societies. Immersed in an environment that focuses on language learning and socialization, and despite its shortcomings in infrastructure, the Greek school system has welcomed thousands of displaced children since 2015 for shorter or longer amounts of time. In some parts of Greece there are protests fueled by racism and discrimination; in Crete this has not been the case. The relocation programs here encourage and support children’s and young adults’ enrollment in various kinds of state schools, from the compulsory primary and junior high schools, to high schools and vocational schools; not all options are always open though. Faazel initially wanted to take a hairdresser/barber vocational training, however the bureaucratic difficulties and the lack of options resulted in him choosing a car mechanic vocation instead.

Another factor contributing to Faazel’s socialization has been his volunteering activities.

At first, like school, he was “shy…they asked I understood them and I would say yes either way,” he has come to perceive his volunteering colleagues “like parents, a family. When I go to 190 the office I forget any problems I have, I leave them outside.” Between his two jobs, as a car mechanic and a waiter, Faazel has very little time for leisure, but he wants to continue volunteering and take up theatre. He expresses a desire to create a volunteering organization of his own in the future, “…to help with financial problems…that is a dream and I wish to realize it.” My introduction to Faazel came through a mutual acquaintance from the volunteering group he is part of, and he was described to me as an integral part of their activities and a valuable member of the group; the appreciation is mutual.

Walking around the city, alone or with friends, is both a hobby and necessity for Faazel, as public transportation is expensive in Iraklion and can be dangerous. While Helen described experiences with racist locals, Faazel had several encounters with the authorities, “…three-four times. I had my residence permit and refugee card with me.” His experience with authorities is typical of the prejudices and racial profiling the displaced face, particularly if they are coded as coming from the Balkans or the East. His first encounter was intense,

It was 9 p.m.…they tell me surrender what you have there, not paperwork, it was about

weed, because I was in hurry, I was a bit stressed. He tells me give it up, you know what I

am talking about. I said ok, this is my bag, and he said he didn’t want to search me…He

asked where I was coming from and I said OAED (the vocation school), and he wondered

how I go there, I had arrived recently to Greece. I made the sign of the cross and respond

that I speak with you right now, I speak Greek right now. They had me there for 20-25

minutes, I gave them my paperwork, my wallet they frisked me, I said if you want I can

take off my clothes, I go to my school…They wrote something and after 25 minutes I

was back home. 191

Faazel, in his encounter with the Greek police used the Orthodox sign of the cross. His Greek language skills, and his willingness to co-operate were gestures, both symbolic and tangible, to create a perception to law enforcement that would positively affect his treatment and his experience. There are multiple reports, almost on a daily basis in social media and news bulletins, concerning the practices of the Greek police. Pretending he is Christian, and with his good knowledge of Greek, Faazel plays with Islamophobia and appeals to his “Greekness.”

Language here plays a pivotal role in his treatment, and to a degree protects him from an unpleasant experience at a precinct: the Greek police do not employ interpreters on a local level and often count on other displaced persons that are bilingual for their services, often for free.

Tariq will routinely help local officers, “the local director asks for me for translations/interpreting, everyone at the precinct knows me.” His friendly relationship to authorities and excellent command of seven languages make him an important figure in the local displaced community; he is often invited to assist with strifes among Pakistani workers that end up arrested. Consciously, Tariq sets himself apart from “noisy” Pakistanis, describing himself as a pacifist. Tariq’s translating services and the relationship he has with the local police force allow him a very different experience from most displaced in cities; he is less likely to be stopped and treated like a suspect in a crime and his eloquent use of Greek make him necessary to the Greek police: a quid pro quo relationship.

Tariq’s work, recreational activities, and social life are different than most of the interviewees’ experiences, as he spends a lot of his time in rural communities: “I like the sea, the top of the mountains, the bees, the birds when I wake up in the morning and go for walks.” Other than occasionally helping with authorities and the UNHCR in interpreting, he enjoys hanging out at home with friends: “in the winter when I don’t have work, I lit the brazier, and invite friends 192 for a barbecue and enjoy life.” When the weather is good, Tariq likes visiting monasteries and other cultural sites, “I like everything, to go and see something I have not seen before.”

Abdul and his family, before most of them moved to Belgium, had developed a strong relationship with their neighbors. When he tells me that his house is in Alikarnassos, I am quick to point out that this is a name that Greek refugees gave to the area more than a century ago, as the original location is on the Turkish shores: it is now called Bodrum. Abdul smiles and tells me that he knows, his neighbors have told him.

At nights we are sitting with the people. They respect us, especially in our neighborhood.

Most of the guests in our wedding were from my neighborhood. Every night now [when]

it’s good weather, when sun down, we sit around the garden and speak. They didn’t drink

tea but now they drink tea. They would drink coffee. It’s a habit, but for us it’s a habit

[them drinking coffee and the displaced drinking tea]. But now they drink tea.

Participating in communal activities is a strong part of Cretan and Greek culture; my grandmother often does with her friends veggera,159 which includes food and company,

exchanging news and socializing. It is often considered old-fashioned, the people sitting outside

their homes and talking, although it is still prominent in rural communities. In neighborhoods that are populated by descendants of Greek refugees (uprooted from Asian Minor), Romani, or other displaced families, veggera happens quite often, and visibly when the weather is good.

During the veggeras, Abdul’s family and the descendants of refugees from Asia Minor found common ground; both traumatically left Turkey under dire circumstances, creating new homes in

the same place, facing the locals’ suspicion.

159 Veggera comes from the Italian word “vegherra” and means to hang out for an extended amount of time inside houses (or outside) 193

We talk about this, and they say…our grandfather was from Bodrum, they forced us to

leave, and we faced in Greece exactly what you are facing. And one lady is 75, by the

name of Eirini. Her mother also left Turkey by force, and exactly they said is our

homeland, the old Bodrum, and now we live in Alikarnassos. We share an idea together,

we know about the past we treat (each other) well together, it’s nice. It’s one of the most

important reasons I am going to stay in Greece.

Nea (New) Alikarnassos, where Abdul lives, is a suburb that has many underprivileged families, descendants of 1922 Greek refugees, but also other working-class families and minorities that have been attracted by the low rent prices. Close to the waterfront one can see to this day the small houses, built to house the 1922 Greek refugees, with their characteristic high yard walls, blasted by the sea winds, just a few meters from the sea. Many displaced of different generations that live in Alikarnassos peacefully co-exist. The local soccer team is called Herodotus, named after the ancient Greek historian and philosopher that lived in Asia Minor. All of Nea [New]

Alikarnassos is full of names that remind people of the Greek refugees and the homes they left behind during the population forced exchange in 1922: the local soccer team is also named after

Herodotus, and many addresses are named after Asia Minor mountains, saints, and neighborhoods from the original Alikarnassos, now called Bordum in Turkish. Attempting to keep the memory of Asia Minor Greek culture alive beyond names, there is an annual celebration in the streets of Nea Alikarnassos, where cultural festivities (singing, dancing, poems recital, cooking competitions) are performed, honored and introduced to the next generations and visitors alike. Abdul’s family attended the 2019 festivities, but were surprised by the cost: fifteen (15) euros per person is no small price for the refugees living in the area. Nea

Alikarnassos however is also an area that has stark socioeconomic divides among its residents: 194 the well-off Greeks co-exist with other residents that were attracted to the area in the past due to low rents. The economic divide is visible not only in the houses’ architecture, but also in the infrastructure in the area. The north side of the area, visibly less developed than the south side, houses Crete’s largest prison, and nearby the local chapter of the NeoNazi party Golden Dawn; the offices were forced to close in 2018, when public support for the party dwindled and the premises were destroyed for a second time by militant antifascists, never to be repaired.160

Poverty has been a fruitful ground for the Nazi rhetoric, although in the past few years the

antifascist movement, with the support of militant antifascists, has made openly supporting Nazis socially reprehensible: the NeoNazi rhetoric survives under the guise of citizens’ “initiatives.”

Kumar, who lives on the other side of Iraklion, has a different lifestyle and priorities as a

single man. “I go to the gym, in Stadion (stadium), I am looking for work,” all while trying to

learn Greek, “it is important…but I don’t have a good space to study.” Greek language has been

of fundamental importance to Kumar, as he sees it as a means of orienting himself around

Iraklion and Greece. Echoing Maria and Helen’s loneliness, especially when it comes to finding

a partner and making family, Kumar also experiences frustration with the lack of opportunities to

socialize and date.

Even all that pressure that we have here, where you are going, what you’re doing, we

don’t have a nice club. Meet girls, relationship, it’s important. Let’s be more fact, all of

Asian, Muslim countries, they have problems with doing sex. Even if they are married

they got problem, because they don’t have information, they are not free like European

men to do that after 18 years old.

160 https://www.efsyn.gr/efkriti/koinonia/148869_horis-grafeia-i-hrysi-aygi-sto-irakleio 195

The cultural differences Kumar describes, with difficulties men from Eastern-Muslim countries have are exacerbated by racism, white supremacy, and discrimination: for Greek families it would be a point of familial strife for a Greek girl to even date a man from an Eastern country.

Social position also plays to this discrimination: a socially accepted mixed marriage in Greece would usually involve a partner from Western Europe, not from Albania, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Migrant women, especially from Balkans, who marry Greek men are often seen as motivated by the possible upwards social mobility rather than mutual attraction, threatening the stability of the traditional “Greek family.” For displaced men marrying Greek women the stereotype can be both social and racial. The prospective husband’s economic status might curb or sharpen the Greek family’s reaction to the wedding.161 Kumar observes people of his age in Greece and desires similar intimacy with women, recognizing the cultural barriers,

So you see boys that are 18 or under, they have a girlfriend, they are free, we don’t have

that. So we can say they cannot with girls well. They are afraid, we can say that they

don’t have that kind of thing to go to ask. I have so many friends that I meet them, we

also don’t have that kind of dress.

Attire, cultural differences, and discrimination are detrimental to the dating life of single

displaced men. To meet their needs, responding to the performative aspect of their heterosexual

male identity, as Kumar explains that many male laborers employ the services of sex workers:

161 On the issues of mixed marriages and stereotypes in the Greek society, Petronoti and Papagaroufali (2006) discuss in “Marrying a Foe” the difficulties mixed couples, Greek and Turkish, face in Athens, ethnic and historical boundaries, and the flexibility the couples show in terms of their identity and the ethnic and historical boundaries they face. Articles from newspapers periodically also examine the phenomenon of mixed marriages, sometimes under the stereotype of “disappearing Greek family,” or to highlight racist stereotypes and countering strategies. See for example: 1) Karaiskaki, “The Changing Greek Family.” 2) Against Racism, “Mixed Marriages.” 3) Onisenko, “Hearts Without Borders.”

196

My point here is that is they cannot connect, so they pay girls money to do that, but they

cannot connect as well. So there is a problem with that. All of that we can say it is kind

social meeting with people. It’s also a social problem.

Sexual relations for single men pose an issue. The topic the has come up in informal talks with humanitarian workers that corroborate Kumar’s observation about Iraklion. The lack of spaces that are welcoming for the displaced to socialize and mingle with Greeks and the racist perceptions against displaced men make it difficult for them to develop intimate relationships with women.

The pressure Kumar sees in men goes beyond their ethnic and national identity. In his everyday interactions with locals, he describes a difference as to how he is treated based on gender:

Women are kinder. When I go to somewhere for work, when I see the owner is woman I

am happy. Even if she doesn’t accept, she will be kinder… The men always are angry,

75% of them are angry. Even at hotspots, if I want something, I go to women to do that,

not men. Asylum or UN don’t know [why he gets treated like that].

Kumar is not physically imposing: his physique is lean, he has a beard. His phenotype, paired with his modern attire and haircut would not code him immediately as an “other.” However, when Kumar would talk he would be recognized as an “other” by Greeks: as a male refugee

Kumar would often be perceived as threatening, irrespective of his intentions or education. The toxic traditional masculine culture in Crete, fully embodied by many local men, can fuel particularly discriminating behaviors. In contrast, in Kumar’s experience women are more open to talk to him, even if they cannot help him. He is quick to justify men’s behavior though, 197

maybe with old men because they have a background, they have seen the wars, people, I

see that with old men, not women as much. I see the women are so much kinder. We

have old women, they are not as much, but I see most of them kind. Women have more

emotion than men. We need that… Maybe men have more pressure.

Tariq also describes racism and aggressiveness as a product of fear: “when a person sees something new and they are afraid, they don’t have the strength to go talk to them, ask things, who are you, what are you and what you do…People are scared to meet others and that is bad.

We shouldn’t be afraid of the person next to us, they might be better than us.” Nevertheless, even if the “other” is an educated individual, with a family and a background that they think would make them “respectable” in the eyes of the local community, and thus accepted, they are not immune to casually racist behaviors by locals. These racist behaviors can cause hindrances in everyday tasks and dishearten self-motivated efforts for social integration, especially when employment and housing opportunities (or lack thereof) are involved.

Finding a house has proved to be a great challenge for Faazel, to the point that it was only through the encouragement and help of his colleagues at the garage that he found a home after exiting the relocation program support.

I was searching for a house from three to six months. I made several phone calls and they

always said no, we will not rent to a refugee, I told them I am from the OAED vocational

school, they kept saying no. After three months I got sick of it, I didn’t want to search

anymore, I wanted to stay in the streets. It was all about where you are from, I got sick of

hearing a voice saying ‘I can hear your voice, you are ksenos [foreigner].’ Yes, I am

ksenos. I even went to a few houses and they found a way to show they didn’t want 198

me…. We finally found a person… I said I was a student, he realized I was a refugee…he

said you must pay monthly… The first day I moved I paid two months’ rent.

Faazel needs to work two jobs to pay the rent of the house and often does not spend more than a few hours in it. It is important to him that he is financially independent, and he has been one of the fortunate ones to find a house by himself. Often single displaced men live in groups in apartments, as the cost of rent and the difficulty of finding house due to openly discriminatory advertisements by homeowners makes it impossible for a single displaced man to rent even a small apartment. Language and education of a non-Greek tenant matter little for homeowners in

Greece compared to ethnicity and race. If the tenant is from the Balkans or an Eastern country, a

Greek homeowner knows that the rent they are due will be low, although overpriced in relation to the apartment; the apartment itself is bound to be in questionable condition. It is an unspoken rule that the best properties available are rented predominantly by Greeks to Greeks or well-off migrants from the European North.

Ioulia, a humanitarian worker with displaced background complains during our conversation about her treatment by homeowners of the Cretan city where she lives, a behavior that in her case usually comes from women. Their behavior always has to do with stereotypes about migrants and refugees. “We would change houses often… the daughter of an owner thought we were ksenoi [aliens), gypsies, she was so mean without even getting to know me. She regretted it afterwards, or so it seemed. She would complain about things that I saw other Greeks renters doing, but she would never say a word to them, ever.” Hostile behavior was not overt, but usually took the form of complaints against herself and her children for menial reasons:

For example the building had a central entrance, and one day the kids come in, they open

the door all the way, the floor screeched. And she came out and said “don’t open the door 199

like that.” I felt bad for a whole day. I later saw all those people doing it all the time, I

didn’t hear her say anything. And many more that happened, until she found out we were

not…You see? You won’t teach me how to open a door, it’s broken, fix it.

Ioulia’s experience with Greeks is repeated every time she changes residence. Contrary to

Greeks, who usually do not suffer grievances from homeowners that rent their houses, for

Ioulia’s family it is a constant process of proving herself. She argues that she needs to set herself apart from “migrants from other countries...They have created a lot of issues and problems, thefts.” Ioulia, coming from an Asian country that has been portrayed favorably in Western media in the past decade, considers herself different from other refugees and migrants of different ethnicities: her family is more well-off, educated and cultured. She sets herself apart from other displaced, but the continuous process of proving herself a good tenant every time she moves,

…makes me tired. It gets me very tired to prove it, I am who I am, natural, that’s who I

am. Until they get it you cannot (rest)… Perhaps they have been through a lot. I am kseni

(alien) here, and I understand it. We don’t have it as much, many people know us and we

know them. When you go somewhere and they don’t know you, you understand it will be

different until they learn about you. I don’t know if someone has influenced them, or

harmed them and they are more careful, I don’t actually care because I cannot explain to

everyone who and what I am. It’s more about the personal part.

Ioulia’s fatigue of constantly having to prove herself “different” to other migrants is a survival strategy, even if it plays into the narratives of the model minority, which she considers her ethnicity to be. Like a Palestinian refugee during my work in the Foundation who argued for his 200 lunch claiming he was no thief, no “Ali Babba,” Ioulia’s struggle echoes the constant stress she has, feeling obliged to prove she is not a troublemaker, not a thief.

Talking back is not an option if a displaced person wants to convince those around them that they are peaceful and non-threatening. Shire’s bitter truth about the displaced restraining themselves when insulted, meets Ioulia’s fatigue and Maria’s lack of comprehension of what she is called sometimes. or the insults are easier to swallow than rubble than bone

…. forget pride your survival is more important.

Eleni often cannot hold back, “sometimes they speak to me in a way I don’t like, sometimes when I see people talk bullshit to me, I would say maybe you want to beat me I will call police on you. Sometimes when they fight me, I fight back.” She will keep going for that kotogyro

[popular Greek fast-food], no matter what they tell her at the fast-food place.

Conclusion

All interviewees stress that “good” people are more than the “bad.” In their experience of

Greece and Crete though, discrimination has been integrally present, even if the topic of Cretan

Greeks showing racist tendencies rarely comes up in discussions about its relation to the Cretan culture. Racism and discrimination in Crete are present, right along the island’s perceived welcoming atmosphere, two co-existing and seemingly contrasting cultural behaviors; one that is 201 performed often ritualistically towards well-off visitors, and the other omnipresent against those perceived as culturally inferior, even if the latter have lived in Crete for years. Looking behind the tourist gaze and the myth of hospitality, Crete has a complicated relationship with the displaced populations it hosts. The socioeconomic stratification of Cretan society and the strategies followed by the organizations tasked with refugees have provided an excellent opportunity to local governance to organize in ways that will benefit all those that have come before and face tremendous difficulties in their everyday activities.

Although all respondents described Crete and Iraklion as safe, they all also described incidents that depict the opposite of safety. The small numbers of displaced on the island and the lack of systematically organized protests and pogroms against them, paired with a generally positive consensus from the local civil society towards new services may significantly affect not only the beneficiaries of international assistance, but also those that have lived in a status of invisibility for years. However, stable work with decent pay and humane working hours is something most uprooted residents of Crete have failed to find to this day. Faced with casual discrimination on a daily basis, Crete is a home safer than the countries the uprooted come from, or even Athens. The island though is also affected by the European waves of xenophobia, distanced as it may be from the Greece-Turkey borderline. The similarities between those that consider themselves locals after living in Crete for years and those that came as refugees, migrants, or otherwise temporary residents becomes blurred in neighborhoods that have been recipients in the past of previous waves of uprooted populations. It is on the neighborhood level in Crete that we see integration occur, often by chance and with the help of benevolent neighbors. The 2015 refugee crisis and subsequent attention to visibility it brought, increased the 202 incentives for State support to integration activities and mechanisms, most likely benefiting those here long ago.

203

CONCLUSION: A GREEK STATE OF IMPERMANENCE

Greece, in a perpetual state of financial recession in the past decade, does not have the resources to support its social services for Greeks and non-Greeks alike. European services, in turn, have been shifting gears towards aiding Greece in its new role as a border warden. In turn, the country seems to adjust its economy accordingly, with certain places, like Lesvos, heavily relying nowadays on the provision of services to the international personnel and asylum seekers at the island, instead of working in the agricultural sector. Pre-2015 the latter was one of the dominant sectors of the island’s economy, but the shift towards tourism coincided with the 2015 refugee crisis, thus irreparably transforming the economy of Lesvos. The European Asylum

Support Office gradually increased its presence in Greece, and the same applies to the European

Border and Coast Guard (FRONTEX) at Greece’s borderlines. The continuous pushbacks at the

Greek borderline and the discussions about building new refugee camps, with a renewed focus on deportations, guides all discussions of integration towards reactionary policies. In central and northern Greece news of building refugee camps spark protests, often fueled by racism. Thus, writing about integration strategies and the life of the displaced in Crete and Greece in the current context can sometimes feel like a discussion out of place. Crete has remained far away from the camp policies, serving small populations of refugees spread across the three cities participating in reception and integration programs. Nevertheless, the present research shows that the main problem of the Greek State, directly affecting Crete, is a lack of plan for what comes after rescuing and receiving people.

The systemic obstacles to the future of displaced people happens across the country, connecting the threads of systemic bureaucracy and creating a sense of a filtering system that only allows “deserving,” “vulnerable” cases to proceed to Western Europe. In Kara Tepe, what is 204 commonly and currently known as Moria 2.0 in Lesvos, a pregnant woman set herself on fire in early March 2021, when the Greek State did not allow her to board a plane that would take her to

Germany as part of a small relocation program between the two countries.162 The incident would

be one more link in the chain of despair in the Greek islands on the borderline. It finds its way

into this dissertation through the systemic treatment of the incident: the local district attorney

filed charges against her for arson. Very few things about it, if anything, have been written in the

local press, confirming my belief, corroborated by most informants, that Crete operates mostly

outside the tensions of the Greek society, struggling with its own issues with a protective silence

and a sense of normalcy. Incidents that take place in the Greek borderlands rarely reach the local

press, and when they do, they are in the form of small hits on front pages. Crete’s day-to-day life

seems very distant, and the displaced people appear in the press either through positive

campaigns by the ESTIA program and solidarity initiatives like Thalassa, or through police

crime reports. The violence of the Greek border reaches Crete in a similar fashion to how the

violence of the US-Mexico border reaches Greece; it all appears to happen far away, to someone

else.

From Greek Scums to the Greek Wardens

The transformation of Greece from a country that historically exports migrants (Greek

nationals) that suffer from associated stereotypes, to the European borderland that receives and

filters displaced populations and contributes to stereotypes burdening them, is still at its early

stages. Throughout the 20th century, and for a big part of the 19th century, millions of Greeks

migrated to the United States, Australia, and Northern Europe, primarily Germany. The Greek

migrants suffered from the same stereotypes they impose on the displaced populations arriving in

162 Malihudis and Fallon, “A fire in tent 959.” 205

Greece, as Greeks also did not always reach their desired destination through regular means: they were often “illegals.” The difficulties faced by the displaced Greeks have been documented amply in Greek popular culture, with songs and narratives about the hardships of Greek migrants. There is also a significant effort by academics of Greek diaspora, who comment on the socioeconomic transformations of Greeks and the process of ethnic belonging they go through as they assimilate to dominant ethno-social groups.163 For example, Dan Georgakas, recounting the

history of Greek Americans, stresses that the first Greek immigrants were “among America’s

despised minorities, considered to be unruly and unpatriotic quasi-Europeans who frequently

resorted to violent means to settle personal—and political—disputes.”164 Though eventually

Greeks assimilated to the host communities, partaking in white identities and thus solving the

question of the assimilation of Greek migrants, the debate of the possible integration of displaced

people in the Greek space echoes similar concerns and prejudices the Greeks came up against.

When researchers investigate prosfygiko [the refugee crisis], we come face-to-face with

stereotypes and perceptions that are often shaped at the border, and then are spread to the

second-level sites of relief and relocation in the Greek mainland. The time the displaced spend

on the borders results in their re-traumatization, as humanitarian workers often attest and is well-

documented in projects such as the Aegean Repository. The Repository, which is primarily

concerned with Lesvos, offers a perspective of the refugee crisis through Greek eyes. The island

of Lesvos does not have a museum that would contain elements of material culture for the

hundreds of thousands of displaced people that stopped for a while on its shores on the way to

Europe, or the thousands that died when their boats capsized while they were trying to cross the

163 Yiorgos Anagnostou in Contours of White Ethnicity discusses the complicated history of Greek migrants to American whites and the process through which Greeks became part of the dominant white identity, all while trying to keep its cultural ties to Greek heritage. 164 Georgakas, “The Greeks in America.” 206

Aegean Sea. The focus of the Repository and the choices of the material offer a limited view of

Greek culture’s relationship with the refugee waves through the lens of crisis and the responses to it. There is little evidence of the cultural exchanges taking place in Lesvos and how everyday life in Greece’s borderlands have changed. As the Repository stopped updating its content in

2018, it offers a limited perspective to the ongoing situation and the transformations at the border.

American Studies and the Greek Border

The international interest towards the transformation of the Greek space into a EU- sanctioned border space, has led to Greece becoming a topos for the mass production of research and art related to the European borders, border cultures, and memory making. One of the projects that connects the threads between American Studies and the Greek space is the digital curation

Transient Matter from Brown University’s Yannis Hamilakis and graduate students in 2020.165

The curation focuses on material culture166 remnants, including “trash,” which function as

sources of knowledge for the life at the Greek border, underlining their “affective power,” the

importance they had for their former owners. The curation has five main sections: “An Island

Transformed,” “Border Crossings,” “Moria Camp,” “Art-Making as World Making,” “Some

Passports do not pass many ports;” there is also an “About” page, a “How Can I Help?” and a

“Learn More” that provides academic and activist resources.

The exhibit is not meant to be a repository of information, but it nevertheless focuses

heavily on contextualizing for the digital visitors the location of Lesvos in relation to Greece and

Europe. There is a conscious effort by Hamilakis and his team to present Lesvos as more than a

165 Transient Matter: Assemblages of Migration in the Mediterranean. https://blogs.brown.edu/transientmatter/. 166 The curation includes “material remnants of border crossing, things often designated as ‘environmental pollution’… new materials and edifices erected by authorities or produced by migrants themselves, be they artworks, crafts, or mundane and functional items…materials and belongings.” 207 site of crisis, even though material evidence of border crossing dominates it: from life vests to inflatable tubes and boats to loop videos of the sea and the island shores, the precarity of the journey and the means of survival for those that cross are highlighted. There are sections of the exhibit though that focus on life in Lesvos, showcasing the produced cultures and interactions between the displaced and locals; displayed artworks by asylum seekers, who often volunteer in local organizations or attend informal art classes, are set side-by-side with upcycled material, repurposed from trash for utilitarian purposes. Painted T-shirts and pizza boxes that function as canvases appear next to baby bottles made in Iran, picked up from the remains of the —now burned— refugee camp. The “Moria” section challenges the voyeuristic view of the refugee camp, bringing together not only the (expected) anthropological outlook of the living experience of the displaced stuck in the camp, but also a photographic project that was undertaken by

Afghan teenagers living inside Moria. Attention to the material memories created by the project is admirable: even the envelope in which the photographs reached Hamilakis is part of the exhibit. Transient Matter offers an alternative approach to what the Repository could be in the future: a digital topos that is formed with the displaced and not about them, with evidence from material culture and traces of all that have been and all that are here now. Transient Matter was originally a physical exhibit, hosted at in the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, but due to

COVID-19 restrictions a digital version of it can be found online.167

Moving away from the borderscape of Lesvos, already a transnational site well on the

radar of American Studies, in this dissertation I have attempted to examine the island of Crete as

a different type of border that produces hybrid identities, a site of (re)settlement. Following the

focus of American Studies on border communities, with paradigms that examine erased identities

167 https://blogs.brown.edu/transientmatter/2020/02/20/about-the-exhibit/ 208 and homogenizing practices of the past, I seek to underline the complicated processes of integrating different populations in the Greek space. Through the discussions with humanitarian workers and displaced people in Crete, I find a key difference to the perception of migration and the promise of integration between the United States and Greece. On the one hand, even if in

America the promise of the Dream is often unreachable to the vast majority of migrants, the promise of prosperity comes through partial assimilation to the dominant culture that allows keeping only the segments of the migrants’ culture that are “acceptable” and do not threaten the core of white America. In contrast, in Greece, the country’s lack of integration policies means that assimilation to Greekness comes through a complete abandonment of distinct cultural traits, a practice similar to what all minorities in Greece living for years already know: a practice unavailable to those that are phenotypically different from the perceived Greek. One of the far- right’s notorious, hate-speech inducing, slogans is “De tha gineis Ellinas pote, Alvane” [You’ll never be Greek, Albanian]; the slogan, aimed at the largest migrant population in the Greek space summarizes a culture present in Greek society, also traced in Greek political decisions regarding national identities. It gives a definitive, racist answer to the question of who has the right to live in the Greek space and what type of culture they are allowed to produce. This slogan, while not adopted by the Greek State, often emerges from the difficulties in expanding the Greek national identity and the extension of the concept of reception (found in State policies) and hospitality (as a cultural trait) beyond a performative, temporary action.

Through my engagement with scholarship on race and racism in the US, I have been able to examine Greece as a space that produces racialized perceptions of supremacy of Greek culture in relation to the displaced persons living here. For many uprooted, a segmented version of assimilation comes through enrolment and participation in Greek school system and a 209 performativity of Greekness, which allows a status that both helps socialization and creates a sense of security against discriminatory behavior. In other words, a person that speaks good

Greek can defend themselves, jest, and separate themselves from “Others,” living in society’s margins. The invisibilities of minority cultures existing in tandem with the “American Culture,” and the image of the Mexico-US border as a frontier, share similarities with the Greek islands and its inhabitants that have been designated border wardens and border-keepers through legislations and political speeches by several Greek administrations. Reading about contested identities of American Border Studies, while teaching Ethnic Studies to young rural (mostly white) Americans, allowed me to see my home island with fresh eyes, seeking out those on the frontline of humanitarian work and populations I was raised to ignore or have prejudices against.

One of the most important lessons of American Studies for this research has been the constant critical engagement with what is considered “popular” and “national.” American

Studies taught me to search, in the fieldwork and the datasets, for how one understands another and their behaviors, along with the adjustments to social performance: I have been trained to look for invisibilities, exclusions, and things beyond the surface. Throughout my ethnographic research I attempted to unlearn many of the beliefs I was raised with, so I could study how communities I was until recently unaware of are pushed to assimilation. Through extensive mapping and analyzing the field of humanitarian work, the present research shows how in

Greece, even outside the immediate borderline, support for the displaced is disproportionately oriented towards temporary relief for asylum seekers and refugees, without providing any opportunity for long term integration to Greek society. This apparently benevolent support thus produces exclusions, taking the form of temporary relief programs that often increase dependency on welfare policies instead of aiding in the independence of the beneficiaries. The 210 myth of Greek hospitality, philoxenia, is understood and perpetuated through “educating” the refugees on how to adjust to the Western European ways and complying with the systems in place, without particular care for maintaining cultures and communities; the similarities to how assimilation is perceived in the USA for minorities, who have been historically forced to abandon their own cultures to get educated in a uniform mainstream narrative of

“Americanness,” are uncanny. However, for many displaced persons that have lived in Greece for extended periods of time, especially middle and working class, even these support systems, with their colonial/Orientalist scope, are often inaccessible and exclude them from State policies.

Social prejudices continually push them to liminality and invisibility.

From the islands on the borderline to the relief support programs, the USA is not only present with academic programs and researchers, but also has a strong State and military presence in Greece, in cultural and financial terms. In 2020 the US State participated in relief support towards Greece with 4.4 million dollars, the largest donor outside the European

Union.168 The close relationship of Greece with the USA in strategic terms is also outlined in the

U.S State Department’s page:

The United States and Greece launched a Strategic Dialogue in December 2018 that

focuses on the areas of regional cooperation, defense and security, trade and investment,

energy, law enforcement and counterterrorism, and people-to-people ties. As a leader in

the region and longstanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Ally, Greece

has been an important partner to the United States in promoting regional security,

stability, and economic development, creating a pathway for EU enlargement for the

168 The 2020 UNHCR budget for Greece was 273 million dollars, of which the bulk was financed by the EU (223.4 million). Nevertheless, the USA has been the largest second donor with 4.4 million. In 2019 the USA contributed with 1.9 million, while in 2018 the UNHCR reports no funding received from the US for its Greek operation. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/gr/en/funding 211

western Balkans, and supporting the diversification of Europe’s energy supplies.169

[emphasis added]

This paragraph from the State Department depicts how the USA traditionally sees Greece, especially in relation to its military operations in the Middle East and its current tense relationship with Turkey. The militarized role of Greece, which often bleeds into Greek culture and how it treats refugees and migrants from Eastern countries, is also present in the defense expenditure of the Greek State in relation to its GDP, which is second only to the USA among

NATO allies.170 The excuse for the continuously heightened sense of alert, which translates into

high military spending and nationalistic tropes that revolve around an existential threat to Greek

culture from the East produces border communities that feel the enemy is not only dressed in

military uniforms, but also in wet clothes, rescued in the sea.

Privileged as I am, as a Greek middle class cis straight man, I have experienced the

hybrid identities imposed on me due to my nationality and appearance at the American border,

although I was “saved” from greater discomfort due to the presence of American military bases

in my island. In early 2015, coming back from a Christmas break for my second semester of

graduate studies at BGSU, I was selected out of the row of passengers at Detroit airport

checkpoint for further control. My flight, with an American company, had been delayed for seven (7) hours in Jordan due to a snowstorm; all passengers that wanted to rest were issued a one-day visa by the local authorities so we could move to the airport hotel and get some rest. It was my second trip to the United States, and I was completely oblivious to procedural matters, even my own rights. At the Detroit airport, I was directed to a few seats across a counter, with a

169 US State Department, “Relations with Greece.” Accessed March 10, 2021. https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-greece/ 170“Defence expenditure of NATO Countries (2012-2019).” nato.int https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_06/20190625_pr2019-069-en.pdf 212 uniformed officer behind it, in a room adjacent to the arrival hub. In the room there was another smaller room, which looked awfully like an interrogation site, similar to the cop shows on cable

TV. I was left waiting along with three (3) other men, all of us with a certain phenotype: beards, not-so-white-skin, at least for American standards, and stressed. When my turn came, I approached the counter but was still oblivious to why I was there. Soon through the line of questioning it became clear that my 7-hour stay in Jordan was a red flag, even with the temporary visa. I was asked questions about Jordan, the Middle East, and Greece. At some point, when I mentioned Crete, another uniformed officer appeared from an adjacent room, obviously somehow listening to the conversation. He proceeded to ask me very specific geographical questions about Crete, and a couple of them had obvious (to a local) false information. It turns out he had served in the island’s US Navy base, one of the largest in South Mediterranean, and even jested about the island’s beaches and his time there once he made sure I was indeed a

“local” and that my passport was legitimate. A Greek passport grants free movement to all

European countries, but the same passport, paired with what the leading force in the West considers a suspicious trip and a threatening appearance, is the cause for further control and racialization.

Greece is a state synonymous with the maritime borders of Europe. Thus, projects that discuss life on the margins of Greek society can become valuable sources of information to study the perceptions of concepts related to borders, hybrid identities forming at the borderscapes, and perceptions of the “othered subjects,” the people waiting at makeshift tents and open prisons for their asylum applications to be processed. The securitization of the discourse over people’s movement in Greece echoes similar discussions in the US about “building walls” and the threat of the “Other.” Greek governments often initiate similar discussions on an international level 213 when asking for funding and support, even if they rarely admit the country’s role when addressing the Greek public. The goal of “training” the displaced in the Western ways, and the perceived need to do so, along with the constant categorization of certain displaced as

“vulnerable,” excludes others from fundamental human rights, trapping them in camps and detention facilities like those in the Southern US/Mexico border. Exhibitions like Hostile

Terrain,171 directed by Jason De León, that maps those that died while attempting to cross the

Sonoran Desert of Arizona shed light on death and physical loss. However, there is an equally

important need to document the cultural crossings and the means of survival for those that are

stranded in the borders, waiting for the next stop on their journey. One of those (European)

border stops that brings together different generations of displaced populations, with different

goals and support systems, is Crete.

Crete as a Border Community

Crete markets itself as a welcoming tourist destination, with local residents greeting

guests with generous hospitality, especially if the latter are well-off and/or plan to invest in the

island’s economy and real estate. All the displaced interviewees stress how safe they feel in the

Cretan cities where they live, and describe their mostly positive encounters with local authorities.

Athens is often mentioned as the primary counterexample, seen as dangerous and chaotic. For

those coming through the notorious “refugee camps” at the Greek border, Crete is also a

welcome change from the bleak, precarious life at the camp. Crete does not follow the hotspot

approach, which helps create the sense that this is a more humane place for the displaced moved

through international programs or coming through their own volition. There are no camps in any

part of the island, and contrary to rumors circulating every other month, local authorities,

171 Jason De Leon, Hostile Terrain. https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/hostileterrain94 214 especially the Regional Governor and local mayors, do not wish to change that. The reception program, ESTIA, has spread housing facilities for displaced people throughout several neighborhoods, in the various cities it is active, to avoid visibility and concentration of the populations the Cretan cities host. While avoiding some problems like increased visibility and intense reactions and protests from local communities, the approach has created other problems on a daily basis for beneficiaries in cities like Iraklion that have expensive and scarce public transportation. The ESTIA services have to this day focused primarily on short term relief and connecting their beneficiaries with health and social services. The meaning of ESTIA in Greek however is “home,” and the acronym stands for “Emergency Support to Integration &

Accommodation;” ESTIA in Crete, much like the rest of Greece,172 does not have the funding or

the personnel numbers to move forward with a social integration agenda that would help create a

sense of home for most beneficiaries.

Crete and “Integration”

Those who live outside of Crete see it as a place that is an exception to both camp

policies and the social tensions and discriminatory behaviors present in the rest of the Greek

space: living here for an extended period and speaking with the displaced and locals that

comprise solidarity networks paints a different picture. The displaced in Crete, along with the

humanitarian personnel that is tasked with their support, face incidents of racism daily. These

incidents, often classified as “minor” when discussed later on, include comments from other

Greeks at social services, interactions with other patients and/or a few members of the personnel

at health services, paired with navigating the maze of bureaucracy, which becomes even more

difficult for speakers of other languages without interpreters. In more than a few cases State

172 Kourachanis, Refugee Housing Policies. 215 services employees even refuse to implement the Greek law in the cases of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants. Nevertheless, reporting discriminatory behaviors rarely occurs. The reasons are related with maintaining social relations among community members with whom they routinely interact and co-exist in multiple social environments. Crete’s administrative lack of experience with refugee issues and social integration means that, on a municipal and regional level, the island lacks the tools to promote a social integration agenda.

In the context of the present research, the term “integration” often appears as a goal of administrators and humanitarian workers. I understand the term “social integration” as the next step after immediate relief at the borderline and the reception that takes place through housing programs like ESTIA. The use of the term is highly problematic though as it is exclusionary in its core: most asylum seekers do not have access to reception programs like ESTIA, living for months at reception facilities whose living conditions make them feel like concentration camps.

Therefore the “vulnerability” factor, paired with “deservingness” that is often the product of a flawed asylum system that prioritizes cases of traumatized applicants makes social integration a project that concerns a select few cases of recognized refugees, ignoring other categories of displaced persons that end up living in the Greek space or have lived here for decades. Social integration cannot be achieved without access to education, work, and the freedom to express one’s culture without fear of discriminatory reactions from other members of the community. To that direction, the program HELIOS, designed to support recognized refugees in their first steps towards independence from social services, is also fundamentally flawed because of its limited scope: it accepts only a small number of recognized refugees that applied for asylum in Greece after 2017, thus also creating tiers of “deservingness” among its applicants.

216

The Case of Iraklion

In Iraklion, where the bulk of my ethnographic research took place, while I was participating at the Refugees and Migrants Integration Council I came across a draft commissioned by the city of Iraklion that examines the integration prospects of displaced people in the city. Iraklion, as the administrative center of Crete, often sets the example for such policies, and a successful implementation would mean that it could be set as a reproducible example for other Cretan cities and even in mainland. The “Local Integration Plan for Migrants and Refugees” is a document authored by an experienced social worker that worked in ESTIA and modified by the Refugees and Migrants Integration Council members. I witnessed a few officials, that had a securitarian approach, portraying asylum seekers as more probable spreaders of COVID-19, propose changes that adopted a deterrence and securitization approach. The debates in the Committee were often procedural, most of the members had not read the plan during the designated debate sessions. The document lists several advantages concerning integration in Iraklion, but these are by no means unique or particular to the city. For example, the document mentions the ESTIA (UNHCR and Greek State) and HELIOS (IOM) programs, the aforementioned “Refugees and Migrants Integration Council,” the Regional Asylum Office, socio-medical Services largely present at all Greek cities, “access to education,” and the

“possibility to absorb migrants, asylum seekers, and international protection beneficiaries in the workforce in the agricultural and tourism sectors.” What stands out in the document, which makes the Iraklion case unique, is the “political will to integrate,” which translates into the support for the housing programs that the City of Iraklion manages. This phrasing in the integration plan makes Iraklion and its infrastructure a case study that stands out in relation to 217 other Greek cities, who might have similar plans, but their mayors have not had the political will to put them into their documented policies.

The “Integration Plan” identifies several difficulties and shortcomings for Iraklion, all of which are corroborated by the present research. For example, all the services and programs in place are of limited reach, face difficulties in their implementation, and are all characterized by the lack of access to their intended recipients. For example, the ESTIA and HELIOS programs only serve asylum seekers and recognized refugees respectively, while the socio/hygienic services lack the necessary personnel to provide services to speakers of languages other than

Greek, some basic English, and/or rarely Arabic. Their workload also severely hinders their ability to accommodate the numbers of people needing them now. In many of the guesthouses,

Offices, and Centers, the paperwork required excludes displaced populations that either do not have identifying paperwork or do not know how to obtain it: they are often unaware about their rights to use those services. Finally, access to education is limited, with the number of integration classes fluctuating annually despite the population of displaced remaining steady or rising; volunteering initiatives like the language school I was running are vulnerable because there are no guarantees for their viability other than the tireless work of the participating teachers and social workers.

It would be a mistake to consider the shortcomings of the services in Iraklion a local phenomenon. The lack of essential integration policies and services other than immediate relief and reception is a national phenomenon. Any researcher in search of Greek integration policies will stumble into a wall, as although the current administration has a dedicated Office and a

Minister on Integration, it has no real framework to implement any policies, and in practice they have no intention to integrate. Humanitarian workers on a local level have to deal with the 218 national policy of deterrence, the manufactured—with visible social impact— notoriety of

Greece as a place of reception, and the horror and despair of refugee camps at its forefront; even if one leaves the camp, they will be trapped for months in the maze of a Kafkesque bureaucracy.

The goal of the disarray is to portray Greece as an unfavorable border: crossing is dangerous, and living here must be extremely difficult. These sets of policies are designed to encourage, sometimes explicitly, the displaced crossing to Europe to move on with their journey; for the displaced persons already living in Greece, these same policies translate into a liminal life, where they are excluded from social welfare and Greek society.

The City of Iraklion seems to distance itself from this national policy, signing a memorandum with UNHCR in late 2020. The memorandum focuses on “searching for new ways to deal with challenges that concern prosfygiko [refugee crisis] to the benefit of asylum seekers and the local community.”173 The document should be read carefully, as it only focuses on the

“asylum seekers,” leaving out other categories of displaced persons, who also constitute the

majority of displaced populations on the island. In the public announcement of the MoU, the

case of an asylum seeker that found a job and has started integrating is showcased as an example

of the success of the program. Through research on the case of the showcased asylum seeker, it

became clear that the UNHCR and partnering organizations in Iraklion have had little to do with

his family’s integration process; the “success story” is an elaborate public relations stunt, a

version of a “Greek Dream” that sets impossible standards for most of the displaced in Crete in

the long term. The story of an asylum seeker that started his integration is sensationalized and

spun, erasing the systemic difficulties displaced families in border communities face in finding

work and residence, or even connecting with the local community. The purpose it serves,

173 UNHCR Greece, “The City of Iraklion, UNHCR, and Anaptyxiaki.” 219 familiarizing local community with the displaced populations, can be considered noble; nevertheless, few families and individuals, if any, will have the opportunity to work and live decently. Even the person in this case, as an asylum seeker, could have his case rejected by the

Greek Asylum Service, and thus be forced out of aid programs and be in danger of deportation.

The humanitarian workers representing the Greek State and civil society recognize all the shortcomings, voicing their criticism quite candidly. They often feel like they are cogs in the machine of the humanitarian regime in place that justifies its existence by the services it provides to the displaced and the funding it receives from European and national sources. The shift of services from immediate relief and reception to integration must recognize first that the process of integration requires cooperative and willing participants. Educating the displaced persons and teaching them the “European ways” becomes part of what integration is about; the focus is currently on short term relief, with mental health services cognizant that they are working as a buffer to Northern European countries, who get to choose who they want to receive. The humanitarian workers I interviewed are all tired, and many of them are disappointed and pessimistic about the relief programs in place and their viability. They all recognize the need for integration programs, acknowledging that the current conservative administration only sets obstacles to any such process, even attempting to disrupt many of them in process. Failure to comply would mean that a person is to be cut off from State monetary assistance and prone to detainment and/or deportation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made all the shortcomings in the management of displaced populations worse than they already were. Consequently, research in the field was significantly impacted. The current administration has imposed severe restrictions on movement in and out of camps since March 2020, for almost a year. Social workers and interpreters working at relief 220 organizations (both State- and private-sponsored) rarely accompany their beneficiaries to their medical appointments, and many appointments with social and medical services have been postponed indefinitely, unless they are deemed absolutely urgent. This exclusive focus on just short-term responses to only the most immediate crisis contributes to another long-term crisis of mental health: in turn, this requires immediate, short-term responses of its own. For example, regarding COVID-19 vaccinations, displaced populations in detention camps have not been prioritized as vulnerable populations, instead following the age group grouping the administration has imposed, raising protests from civil society organizations as the living conditions in refugee camps are horrific, often inhumane. It is true that the pandemic reduced the number of incoming displaced people by 90% in 2020, and the Greek government also reduced the number of those stranded and trapped at the Greek borders by 50%. However, the horrible living conditions in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, and Kos only get worse by the day. To make matters worse, the Greek government ended many temporary relief programs in mainland, moving displaced populations housed at hotels into camps with unsanitary conditions and restricting their movement outside them.

Τhe COVID-19 pandemic also caused significant complications to this research. I had to abruptly stop the ethnography I was conducting in Crete, making the recruitment of displaced individuals very difficult and limiting my research in cities outside Iraklion. On the other hand, the pandemic allowed me to track down and interview humanitarian officials that otherwise might not have time to participate in an in-depth interview that was often almost hours long. I was a volunteer in the field for more than two years, beginning in Fall 2018, working as a teacher and occasionally a cultural mediator at the A&M Kalokairinos Foundation. My connections created through my work greatly helped me in creating meaningful relationships with my 221 interviewees and informants in the community of Iraklion; often, because I was spearheading the initiative, I was given a seat at the decision-making table, representing the Foundation at meetings and committees about displaced populations in Iraklion. The pandemic led to a sharp decrease in the Foundation’s community programs: the administration decided to terminate all educational programs, including the non-formal school for displaced adults I organized and taught.

Future Research

This research offers an in-depth look in the humanitarian services offered in Iraklion, and to this day it is the only one of this extent about the region of Crete and its involvement in the

2015 “refugee crisis.” Throughout the ethnographic interviews I also underline the humanitarian worker’s opinions and analyses of the refugee reception programs and their perception of the local communities’ needs. However, through this work I have also identified various potential areas of future research study beyond this scope of this project.

Specifically:

 The daily interactions displaced people have with health services are underexamined.

Based on the testimonies I have from humanitarian workers, everyday incidents of racism

and discrimination are normalized, swept under the rug, or never pursued for disciplinary

action. While the general experience of the workers is positive, the health sector, with its

long waiting rooms and exhausting lines, remains the field where most of the first

interactions occur between the displaced and the locals, be those fellow patients or

doctors.

 The education system has been a pillar of integration in Greek society, especially for

young displaced persons. Working as an educator and offering my expertise voluntarily 222

as a teacher, I was exposed to the inconsistencies of the Greek education system, its

shortcomings, struggles, and the strategic choices educators and administrators make

daily. Although this research does shed light on informal educational initiatives, as well

as administrational problems in the Greek education system, the latter remains a largely

understudied area. To extend the scope of the research, we should further investigate the

needs of displaced populations and document their struggles in their interactions with the

Greek education system, and the lack of informal education options outside the large

Greek urban centers.

 Further research could be conducted in conversation with the thriving Albanian

communities in Crete. Albanians are the largest ethnicity on the island other than Greeks;

they constitute an important part of the island’s culture; and they have largely been

assimilated to the dominant Greco-Christian national paradigm.

 The Messara valley in the southern parts of Iraklion and the Ierapetra valley to the south

of Lasithi houses thousands of Pakistani and Afghani workers who live in very difficult

conditions, often invisible to the law, withstanding systemic racism and discriminatory

behaviors by locals. The pogrom against alien workers in Messara in summer 2020 and

the attacks at the space that operates as their mosque are only the most recent examples of

locals’ hostilities against them. The living experience of the male workers in these two

areas in Crete remains largely unknown and understudied.

 The Hindu community of Rethymnon, although known locally, is also another example

of a non-Greek community in Crete about which there is little information related to how

they live and their interactions with locals. As many members of the community live in

abandoned villages around the city of Rethymnon, the relationship the communities have 223

with rural Cretans on a cultural level and the hybrid identities formed is a project worth

exploring further.

Proposed Policy Changes

For the city of Iraklion to improve its reception and integration initiatives, it must first document the needs of the people that live in it. To do so what is required is extensive collaboration between the social services and the displaced people themselves. The city should avoid taking initiatives that have not been a product of collaboration between the beneficiaries and local civil society. Based on the present research, I propose the following policy changes, which should be discussed with displaced people prior to any possible implementation:

- There is an imperative need to strengthen the initiatives by volunteers and organizations

already in place. Despite possible political differences, the anarchists’ Initiative and the

NGO Thalassa provide critical work to those that require assistance in the city of

Iraklion. Similarly, initiatives in Chania and Rethymnon fill the gap of the Greek State’s

inadequate assistance and relief programs. Often these organizations do not communicate

with each other or with the State Services. The organizations should be permanent

members of local councils and committees: at the very least, they should be on mailing

lists with all proposed changes and policy implementations, so they can help spreading

relevant information.

- The professionals hired by the reception programs are currently stretched thin, as their

services are often required outside their working hours by multiple State organizations,

free of charge. The Municipalities should hire translators and interpreters to help

displaced populations with their bureaucratic transactions with State services. The role of 224

translators, interpreters, but also cultural mediators, is critical for the first few months, as

well as the following years for a person that has moved to Crete to start a new life.

- The Greek public sector has notorious bureaucratic issues and often employees only

speak basic English. The municipalities, in coordination with UNHCR should conduct

cultural sensitivity seminars, while offering language classes for their employees to

improve their foreign language skills.

- The municipalities should create a mechanism where people can report hate crimes and

discriminatory behaviors. The Greek police is not often concerned with these crimes, and

police officers are not well-equipped and trained to handle hate crimes, sometimes out of

a sense of a desire to maintain balance in smaller communities. The humanitarian

workers in the field should be able to rely on a mechanism that provides them with the

necessary protection from retaliation, so that they can report behaviors and actions

against themselves and their beneficiaries: the mechanisms in place are inadequate and

inefficient.

- The UNHCR should absolutely strengthen its presence in areas in Crete, especially in

areas that have large populations of displaced workers that live invisible (to the law and

local community) lives. This invisibility reflects the lack of access to State social and

health services. In the case of the health services, injured laborers often lie to hospitals as

they work without permits, and their injuries would make their employers legally liable.

A strong, permanent UNHCR presence with protection officers and legal consultants

would help displaced workers defend their labor rights, as well as have legal

representation which they would not otherwise be able to afford. 225

- All cities in Crete, as well as regions that have large populations of displaced people

should have (multi)cultural centers, managed by trained specialists that can help local

underrepresented communities organize cultural events and allow them the opportunity to

have non-formal educational and recreational activities. This would increase visibility

and would encourage interaction with Cretan-Greeks, who often see displaced persons

from the Balkans and the Middle East as unskilled, uncultured laborers. Cultural

awareness campaigns and events could help combat those prejudices.

Humor in the Face of Adversity

Towards the end of my interview with Faazel, which turned out to be conversational, he described an incident he found quite funny, albeit in a bitter manner. The incident illustrates how encounters among different ethnicities in border communities can take unexpected turns, as if they are inspired by a Hollywood ethnic comedy.

I’m coming home, it’s about 2-3 am. They stopped me to rob me, in Mastambas. Gypsies,

I gave them my wallet—it was empty—and a phone that was not working. I was sick of

all this [life]. I will not fight with you [I said], here’s my debit card, there’s no money in

it [although it did]. So he says, today we have no luck, no matter who we catch, they have

no money. They asked me, what are you doing in Greece if you have no money? So I

answer, ase me re file ti na kano [There’s not much to do]. They said we’re unlucky, no

one has money. They joked about it. They told me, kakomoiri [ my poor (ill-fated) man],

don’t stay in Greece. I jested and left.

The discussion among the robbers and Faazel, in a neighborhood that was once established by

Greek refugees and now primarily occupied by displaced persons of various ethnicities, bitterly showcases how interaction among different ethnic groups set at the margins of Greek society are 226 marked by class characteristics and a mutual understanding of what life in Greece is like for those that find assimilation difficult. The “right” to live in Greece at the end of the day is directly connected with the financial status to buy one’s place into the Greek narrative. If the Greek nationality is an honor and a privilege after all, and if one’s financial status allows them to buy a place in the “Greek Dream,” bypassing racism and bureaucratic discrimination and obstruction, they might as well get robbed one night, in a neighborhood established by Tourkosporous

[offensive term for Greek refugees, means “Turkish seeds”], by the modern rejects of Greek society.

The above interaction is one of many regularly taking place in the Greek space among different ethnic groups that (have chosen to) make a living in urban centers and rural areas.

Greece has been encouraged by its European Union allies to become an effective border warden: yet there is a reluctant discourse of policy developments concerning the people that have already been here and have made Greece home. State services often treat displaced persons as ready to leave, offering temporary relief and assistance, but few things beyond that. Hence, even the persons that had not thought about leaving Greece, are often forced to do so, as there are few options for employment and accommodation, a decent life. With several generations of displaced persons living in invisibility for years, and the only diachronic State policy in place so far being

(segmented) assimilation, the experience of Greece is but a representation of the lack of a common vision from the European Union. It would be convenient to shift the blame to ethnic groups that are stereotypes as uninterested to integrate, as Romani are often discussed. However, it takes a sincere systemic effort to undo decades of discriminatory policies and accept that the world we live in multicultural and should be accepting and inclusive. In the meantime, the dynamic character of integration will continue to solely depend on local histories and cultures, 227 solidarity initiatives, and empirical practices that are not organized in any way by the Greek

State. The present research sheds light on the challenges and the results of the current approach, underlining the importance of a comprehensive long-term plan that benefits first and foremost all who want to live and work in the country with dignity and safety, without worrying that a new administration will cast them as undesirable, someone else’s problem. 228

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APPENDIX A: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVAL

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APPENDIX B: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD ONLINE CONSENT FORMS

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APPENDIX C: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD ON-SITE CONSENT FORMS

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APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW TOOLS Questions for officials ‐ Demographics  Demographic Information (age, nationality, nation of origin, family status, languages you speak)  What is your occupation?

‐ Occupation and Background  How long do you serve in your current position?  What is your academic/professional background?  How often do you deal with refugees and migrants?  What kind of help does your organization offer to migrants/refugees?

‐ Professional Relationships  How would you describe your everyday working relationship with refugees and migrants?  How would you describe your working relationship with other refugee-migrant related services? . What about colleagues in the field?  Do you develop close relationships with refugees/migrants?

‐ Expertise  What do you think of the support refugees/migrants receive from (State) services and organizations such as yours?  Through your experience and position, what do you see as the most urgent needs to be met for refugees and migrants?  Have those needs changed in the past 3 years?

‐ Subject Matter of the Work and the Local Community  What do the terms “refugee” and “migrant” mean to you?  Do you think that Greece faces a “refugee crisis”? . If so, why?  Do you think the EU faces a “refugee crisis”? . If so, why?  How has the local community received the refugees and migrants? . Can you think of specific examples?

‐ Racism and Local Community  How do you define racism?  Is racism a factor in the refugees’/migrants’ reception? . If so, how?  How often do you deal with incidents of racism? . Any examples you can give? 254

‐ Closing Questions  Are there moments/has there been a time you’ve been particularly invested into a case you worked on? . If so, how?  How do you feel at the end of the working day?  Do you see yourself continue working in this field in the future?

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Questions for Displaced Persons - Demographics o Demographic Information (age, nationality, nation of origin, family status, languages you speak) o What is your occupation? o How long have you been in Greece? - Religion o What is your relationship with religion?

- What their journey was like (in terms of deadliness, encounters with violence, cost) o What is the thing you remember most vividly from your journey to Greece? o Can you describe your journey to Greece? . How would you describe your interactions with people along the way? o How much did it cost for you and your family to reach Greece?How did your family affect your decision to travel and stay here? . How was the journey for them?

- Dealing with authorities (from police to Social Services, State Services etc) o Can you describe your interactions with UNHCR? . Can you describe your interactions with other state agencies or NGOs? o How would you describe your first experience at the Greek border? o How long did you stay at the border? . Can you describe your interactions with local authorities at the border?  What about Iraklion? . How were you and your family treated there?

- Do they see Greece as a potential place of residence or do they want to move on to the EU or US o What are your plans and hopes for the future? . Do you plan on staying here for an extended period of time?  If yes, where is your intended/desired destination? o How would you describe your current life? OR Can you describe a typical day for you now?

- Encounters with the local community, interactions, the place o What are some of the things you like about your life in Iraklion? . What about some of the things you do not like? o What is the thing you cannot do here and you miss the most?

- The role of the local and their own community (Any clashes between them)

o How do you identify yourself? Refugee? Immigrant? [National origin]? . What does ______(nationality of respondent) mean to you? . What does [refugee or immigrant] mean to you? o What is your relationship with other refugees FROM ______[your nation of origin, ethnicity, etc.]? 256

. What about refugees/migrants other ethnicities? - Public perceptions of their identity o Do you follow the news, internationally and/or locally? . How do you think ______are presented in those news reports? o How would you describe your daily interactions with locals?

- Racism in everyday life o How do you define racism? o Have you heard of Golden Dawn? What do you think of them? o Have you faced backlash for something you did/wore/said?

- Fear and Violence o Do you feel safe here? . Why/Why not? o Is there something that scares you about life here?

- Closing Question o If you could have anything, what would make life better/nicer here for you?