Why Europe Must Still Act: The Aegean Islands as a Laboratory for European Border Policies

Guest post by Robin Vandevoordt and Jacob Warn. Robin is Assistant Professor in Migration studies at Ghent University, and has been conducting research with Europe Must Act. Jacob is an activist and consultant focusing on impact measurement and migration issues and is the co-founder of the non-profits Action for Education and Europe Must Act. This is the tenth post in Border Criminologies themed series on 'Everyday Violence and Resistance in Europe’s ‘Migration Management’ During the Covid-19 Pandemic', organised by Dr Marta Welander and Dr Susanne Jaspars. 

It’s summer 2020. On the unassuming island of Samos, where millenia ago Pythagoras was born, the sun meets the turquoise water. Local shops are reopening after the long siesta. Tourists meander on paved streets painted white and ornamented with sleeping cats. 

Then comes a prowling jeep, painted in camouflage. Blue hazards flashing, sirens silent. From its window, a military officer in a casual tank top leans out, surveying the sultry port. Sporadically, he shouts, “go to camp, now”.

It’s 7 o’clock and the curfew for asylum seekers has begun. Brought in during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, by summertime, though borders are open and tourists flock to the Aegean, for some, civil freedoms remain inequitably curtailed.

2015 to 2020: responding to crisis in the Aegean

2020 marked the beginning of a new era of civil apartheid on the Aegean islands. But to understand its roots within the everyday violence of migration management in the region, we have to step further back in time.

In 2015, a small group of islands in the North Aegean became the centre of an international crisis. As tens of thousands of refugees sought sanctuary in Europe, the now infamous islands of Lesvos, Chios and Samos became a political melting pot. State actors, international NGOs and grassroots civil society came to the scene, attempting, each in their own way, to bring order to extraordinary events. 

In the years that followed, the period between 2017 and 2019 was characterised by a strong presence of both local and international volunteer-driven, grassroots groups, acting in solidarity with marginalised communities. They distributed tents, established emergency schools, shows, solar lighting and recreational spaces in overcrowded camps.  

Yet despite the great industriousness of a grassroots movement, relatively little was done to actively oppose the migration policies at the root of these inhumane living conditions. The emphasis was, rather, on taking direct social action. Grassroots groups curiously combined a sense of generalised indignation over the  lack of adequate action by the Greek state, the EU and traditional INGOs, with a genuine celebration of their own achievements. As a result, the Aegaen islands became the site of a relatively depoliticised humanitarian crisis that at the same time demonstrated the alternative of bottom-up solidarity.  

Then in early 2020 everything changed.

Crisis upon crisis: Covid-19 and the hostile environment policy

Though the history books may record Covid-19 as the defining feature of early 2020,  a series of other events were also unfolding in the Aegean that would change the humanitarian and political landscape irrevocably.

Indeed, just as the pandemic was making its way across Europe, the political landscape in Greece was in outright disarray. A new centre-right government led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis quickly introduced a new asylum bill that was slammed for undermining key refugee rights by major watchdogs, such as reducing protections for vulnerable communities and making the right to appeal against negative asylum decisions significantly harder. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions between Turkey and Greece resulted in a surge of migrant crossings in the north west border, along the river Evros, leading to  border closures even before the pandemic. On Lesvos, Chios and Samos, the covert arrival of pan-European fascist groups, sparked unabashed violence with local citizens, volunteers and police all participants and victims of beatings, arson and gun violence.

Amid these events, Greece’s approach to migration management shifted from passive to more active forms of violence. Inadequate reception conditions and limited legal access were enshrined in emergency yet  legitimate policies such as enforced camp lockdowns and heavy (often arbitrary) public finings for being outdoors or not having taken Covid tests, against which refugees had little recourse to legal defence. In the summer of 2020, lockdown measures were applied more strictly and for a longer period of time for refugees than for the Greek population and summer tourists, creating a social apartheid that lasts to this day. 

A rising need for pan-European advocacy

Structural violence against refugee populations continues as we write: health conditions continue to worsen due to poor hygiene facilities; access to vaccination is limited for people whose asylum applications have been turned down or who are forced to live stateless in Greece; the shift to primarily digital services excludes those without digital skills, devices or a basic internet connection from finding clear information and accessing much-needed support services.

These affronts on so many levels culminated in  the burning down of Moria, the largest camp on Lesvos, in September 2020. Meanwhile, controversial legislation aimed at restricting the operations of civil society groups hampered the ability of NGOs to fight back and fill critical gaps. On Chios, operational NGOs halved in number resulting in a weaker grassroots movement and a new reality where local, national and European authorities are not held to account.

For civil society in the region, the Covid-19 pandemic presented yet more evidence of the structural violence of Europe’s border policies for displaced communities. In response, existing organisations as well as new groups began to tackle this desperate state of affairs. These groups harnessed the zeitgeist of public awareness and sympathy, mobilising themselves to raise awareness at the failing approaches to European migration management on a public level.

One such movement was Europe Must Act (EMA), co-founded by members of Action for Education - a British NGO established by volunteers providing education in Chios. In March 2020, EMA launched an open letter, promptly signed by more than 100,000 people,  urging EU leaders to create humane living conditions for asylum seekers on the Aegean islands. In the following months, EMA established more than 50 city and national groups across Europe, and launched several international campaigns to raise awareness of the human costs of Europe’s repressive border policies. 

This double development, of increasingly repressive policies and the politicisation of grassroots organisation, has strengthened over time. The policies put in place by the Greek government, financed by the European Commission, have become ever more repressive. This is best shown by the construction of the so-called ‘Multi-purpose Reception and Information Centres’ (MPRICs). According to government officials, these MPRICs would replace the open camps that have been subjected to so much criticism for their inhumane living conditions. Yet, these MPRICs can only be described as de facto detention centres: placed several kilometres outside of the main populated areas, behind concrete walls and barbed wire, strongly limiting the movements of asylum seekers and their access to  NGOs.

Copy-cats: migration policies around Europe

This turn of events is part of a broader trend across Europe. Throughout 2020, more restrictive border policies have been put in place in other regions, including the Calais region and the Belarus-Polish border. More worrying is that the New European Pact on Migration promises to take the ‘hotspot approach’ developed in Greece as an example of how the EU and its Member States might manage other border regions. In that sense, the Aegean presents us with a horrific picture for what is to come elsewhere: asylum seekers being locked up in detention centres, out of the public view, and with limited access to their rights.  

Movements such as EMA have continued to raise attention to new forms of border violence. As part of its work, EMA has engaged in active monitoring of the less visible border policies taking place in and around the Aegean. This has gone hand in hand with joining advocacy efforts at the European level to prevent the EU’s New Pact from turning into a broadly accepted policy. Together with thousands of supporters and activists, we believe that Europe Must still Act, not only against the injustices that are still taking place on the Aegean islands, but against Europe-wide plans that are taking shape as we write.

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How to cite this blog post (Harvard style) 

Vandevoordt, R. and Warn, J. (2022) Why Europe Must Still Act: The Aegean Islands as a Laboratory for European Border Policies. Available at: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2022/03/why-europe-must [date]