Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction -- 2. From the scene of arrival onto the road: The '(mixed) flow' -- 3. From the Olive Grove onto the ferry: The 'refugee volunteer' -- 4. From the relocation to the vulnerability route: The 'deserving refugee' -- 5. From 'self- detention' to 'self-deportation': The underserving 'economic migrant' -- 6. From humanitarian-bordering work to 'incomplete' translation: The 'cultural mediator' -- 7. From to 'integration' to closed hotspots: The 'migrant' -- 8. Conclusion.

This book focuses on processes of bordering and governmentality around the Greek border islands from the declaration of a refugee crisis in the summer of 2015 up until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The chapters trace the implementation of the EU migration hotspot approach across space and time, from the maritime Aegean border to the islands (Lesvos and Samos) and from the islands to the Greek mainland. They do so through the lenses of peoples refusal to succumb to categories that get reified as identities through the hotspot approach, such as that of the deserving refugee, the undeserving economic migrant, the translator, the volunteer, the tourist and the researcher. This book explores how migration management in Greece from 2015-2020, along with the reshaping of space and time, reconfigured peoples relationships with one another and ultimately with ones self. Aila Spathopoulou is Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. She is also co-coordinator of the Research Area Mobility: Migration and Borders at the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research (Athens). She holds a PhD in Geography from King's College London and has published her research in peer reviewed journals.

Responding to the self-declared "Mediterranean migration crisis" in 2015, the European Commission launched a Hotspot Approach to speed up the handling of incoming migrants in the "frontline states" of Greece and Italy. A key element in this operation is the identification of those eligible for asylum, which requires effective communication across cultural and linguistic difference between the asylum system and the migrants, facilitated by officially designated "cultural mediators." We assess the hotspot governance as a form of outsourcing border control within the EU territory. Beyond sorting out and separating migrants into the categories of deservingness and undeservingness, we propose that the hotspot mechanism represents "governing by communication," with cultural mediators as key players in this humanitarian–bordering strategy. A focus on how cultural mediators provide the precarious human labor for this governance, offers, we argue, a productive inroad into the ways in which the hotspot economies of deterrence, containment, and care sustain inequalities embedded in race, socioeconomic status, and citizenship.