Pursuing “Alternative Forms of Life”: Migrant Resistance in Greece and its Implications for Visions of Borderlessness
By Katia Diamond-Sagias
Introduction
Greece is considered to be a “gateway” of Europe and has seen a massive increase in irregular migration since the 1990s. Following the “refugee crisis” of 2015, during which the “flow of migrants [to Greece] increased dramatically…to more than 1 million”, the Greek government, under pressure from the EU to stem the flow of refugees, implemented the infamous “hotspot approach,” which necessitates that irregular migrants must undergo processing at an island camp. While this approach was initially conceived to manage the flow of refugees, it has since become a mechanism for mass detention and deportation. It is within and despite this oppressive border regime that migrants continue to enact daily forms of resistance and exercise their agency. In this piece, I gather examples from existing ethnographies and interviews to identify threads of defiance to Greek border securitization and immobilization. In my analysis, I examine protests, hunger strikes, and squatters to consider the ways these actions frustrate the state, its border regime, and popular conceptions of the poor, powerless refugee. I argue that for visions of borderlessness to be truly conceivable, they must be informed by localized experiences of resistance.
Methods of Resistance
Hunger Strikes
In January 2011, over 200 migrants began a hunger strike in Athens, Greece. A local NGO “played a key role in the protest”, securing the locations where the strikers would stay, as well as publicizing their demands to the public. When the Greek police forced the strikers out of the Athens Law School, advocates from the NGO and its supporters accompanied them to a new location. “When this building was found unsuitable to host all of the protesters due to space limitations, it was a nearby squat that eagerly accommodated some of the hunger strikers till arrangements were made.” In this regard, it was the combined efforts of the migrants, as well as of members of activist organizations and the community at large, which facilitated the longest and most robust hunger strike in Europe in recent memory.
While the Greek government did capitulate to certain demands of the strikers, many of their promises were broken. Still, the strike was a powerful act of resistance and solidarity, thrusting the daily criminalization and oppression of migrants into public discourse. The successes of these acts of resistance should not rest solely on the government’s response. Instead, success can be considered through the lens of migrant autonomy, and the ways that migrants enact visions of borderlessness through their resistance— whether it be organized and public or in private spheres.
Protests
The 2016 protests by Pakistani migrants on the island of Chios are a prime example of migrant autonomy in Greece. Migrants who were detained on the island for “processing” gathered at a port and held a protest as a ferry prepared to embark for Athens. Some also tried to board the ferry, often clashing with the police. The protesters held signs during their nightly protests which said, “We are not refugees, we are economic migrants.” This represented a defiance of the practice by Greek border officials to deny the asylum applications of Pakistanis outright, due to the assumption that they were not refugees deserving of asylum but “economic migrants,” which is not a legally recognized classification.
In identifying as “economic migrants,” the Pakistani protesters resisted categorizations as “refugees” and disrupted the asylum process. Migrants enacted “a refusal of the very logic of the border, the temporal and spatial categories that it produces.” Rather than undergo the hopeless asylum process, the protesters’ aim was to be issued official deportation papers, which would provide them some kind of legal status (as deportable) in the eyes of the state, and allow them to travel by ferry to Athens, where they could at least have freedom of movement. The ability to leave the island and go to Athens could provide further opportunities to resist, rather than being stuck in the liminal space of the island hotspot.
Squatting
Migrant squats in Greece can be considered a private act of resisting a state that criminalizes movement through public spaces and prohibits renting to migrants without papers:
The arrival of thousands of migrants along with the rapid marginalization of the
population (whether native or newcomers) altered the geography of squatted spaces.
New enclaves of occupied spaces sprouted as more and more migrants started to inhabit
Athens. Such spaces (mainly abandoned buildings) remain well hidden in the urban fabric.
Τα Προσφυγικά, or The Refugees, is a famous example of a migrant squat from the mid-2000s. A large complex built in the 1930s, the original intent of The Refugees was to host refugees from the Greek genocide and Turkish occupation. It is fitting that this complex became the location of a squat of more than 400 migrants during the “European refugee crisis” of 2015. The “Prosfygika” squat “is not just a housing project but an ongoing battlefield, a place of struggle. For the last three years two assemblies have been running, one of the inhabitants and one of… people in solidarity, while they have organized collective kitchens, a kindergarten, and a barbershop. Some of the squatters also take part in wider Athenian anti-fascist networks.”
Not only do migrant squatters reclaim an essential right to shelter that would otherwise be denied to them, they also create social networks with other migrants and native Greeks. They form ways of navigating a hostile system that criminalizes daily activities. As they clandestinely reclaim an essential resource, they engage with the system politically and act in solidarity with other marginalized communities. Despite the oppressive obstacles that they face, these migrants enact a form of submerged citizenship. Though illegalized, they occupy spaces that would otherwise remain empty, create communities and support networks, erect neighborhoods within neighborhoods, and provide services to each other that allow not just survival, but opportunities to thrive. The squat is an antagonist of a state which outlaws renting to “illegal” migrants, and often detains migrants far from any access to local communities, healthcare, or legal representation.
Conclusions
While there is a dearth in the Western imagination of border abolition, it is from these acts of migrant resistance that visions of borderlessness can be drawn. Whether it be through direct political action or through the creation of “alternative forms of life,” migrants enact borderlessness through the circumvention and defiance of countless nodes of oppression they face within border regimes. The most salient abolitionist praxis must be informed by localized migrant resistance to construct visions grounded in reality. The call for border abolition is a call for the end of capitalism, colonialism, and the carceral state, as border regimes are created in service of these systems. From these examples of migrant resistance, we can envision an alternative way of life, where borders were merely cartological—a way of describing culture, history, or topography—unguarded by border officials or checkpoints. We can imagine what it would be like to move through a border as if walking through a curtain, finding on the other side the freedom to stay or go.
Katia Diamond-Sagias is a first year MPP student with an interest in migration, resistance studies, and international human rights. In their career, they hope to contribute to advancing humane, equitable immigration policy, either in the US or abroad.