H: ‘How did you recognize that you had reached Greece?’

E: ‘I saw it in the water, the water in Greece is just more blue. It was so clear, when I saw this water, I knew I was in Europe.’

At first glance, a passport seems like a simple thing. On second thought, however, it shows its incredible complexity and its deep connection with human endeavour. This deep connection is reflected in the human desire to escape from one place to another through movement, change and transformation. As the epitome of modernity, the passport has become a symbol of violence, colonialism, oppression, hierarchy and exploitation as well as a representation of freedom, hope, and safety.

Passports or identification papers are connected to refugee camps in numerous ways. Using a passport is associated with movement from one place to another. However, as in the case for refugees and refugee camps, this thought will not hold on closer examination. An escape route is never a simple journey away from one country to another; it is a complex and conflict-ridden process of escaping to a safe haven.¹ For many refugees this safe haven is Europe. The Greek islands in the Aegean Sea are often the first point of entry due to their geographic position at Europe’s external borders.² But on Samos Island the promised safe haven turned out to be a ‘prison island’.³

G: ‘I belong to the LGBTQ community. At the moment I’m in Greece but I lack papers, I do not have my passport. How can I function without papers? I am here on this island since 11 months, the next month it will be a year that I have spent in the camp. I don’t have any documents, does this whole organization work? I sleep in the camp, we are not protected here, we are exposed in the camp. We live here like animals and as a result we aren’t in good condition. I come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo – there we were persecuted by the church, we were persecuted by the state, then finally we arrive in Europe, but we are also persecuted in Europe.’

This young Congolese refugee sums up his situation in the Vathy refugee camp, which applies to numerous other asylum seekers living in and outside the camp as well. The Vathy refugee camp is located at the periphery of the city. One has to go up a steep slope to reach its iron gates. The intended capacity was for 650 persons which has long been exhausted with 7500 people now living in and around the hotspot (UNHCR Greece Samos monthly snapshot as of January 2020). The largest group of refugees is from Syria (36%), then Afghanistan (22%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (13%), Iraq (7%), followed by Palestine (3%) and other countries (19%) (UNHCR Greece Samos monthly snapshot as of January 2020).

As it was initially planned for 650 people, there are nine square metre containers with bunk beds for three to four people each, everyone else lives in tents.⁴ Those were often brought by the refugees themselves; a plan of the UN refugee agency UNHCR is above that. There are also containers for 40 people, in which four people share separate areas demarcated by felt curtains. The whole camp is characterized by walls and barbed wire, for example being, around the camp administration office. The appearance of the camp resembles a detention facility.⁵

 

The Samos camp is a formal administrative unit, run under the direction of the Greek government with the camp manager as its civilian representative, and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in its management. From the outside, the camp appears as a territorially restricted space, surrounded by fences and security guards, but it is an extremely heterogeneous and fluid space.⁶ The refugee camp is characterized by the activity of various collaborating and competing actors (e.g. the Greek asylum service, Greek police, camp manager, UNHCR, state institutions such as GCR or Metadrasi, NGOs, FRONTEX, residents of the camp and the local population). The Samos island is actually a tourist place, which has led to a strange situation: on the beautiful harbour promenade, ice-eating, sunbathing tourists meet refugees who run along the shore a hundred times a day as they have little else to do. Many refugees who have been here for months also isolate themselves in the camp and do not go out. The whole place is like a prison island – one does not do anything, one cannot get away, so one just squats around.

During my field research on Samos from June until October 2019, I collaborated with a self-organized group of refugees living in ‘the jungle of Samos’, which is an encampment outside of the official camp. The refugees built a church on their own, where they collectively pray every Sunday for European passports and a positive decision by the asylum authorities. As a result of their behaviour, I wondered what consequences the power imbalance of different passports would create. I argue that different values are attached to different passports – the European passport being the most sought after by the refugees stranded on Samos island. Between the different passports, a strong Dumontian hierarchy has arisen, and it is clear that the passports of their countries of origin hold little value for them. This hierarchy is embedded in the set of rules regulating regular and irregular migration to the European Union. To understand the context it is necessary to focus on the relevant legal framework. The hierarchy of the passports is inherent in the European migration and asylum laws that allow holders of a European passport freedom of movement in the Schengen area, and by restricting the movement of asylum seekers in the Greek hotspots.

By elaborating the relevant legal framework concerning the asylum procedure on Greek islands, the concept of a hierarchy of values and encompassment of the contrary by Louis Dumont is applied to the situation to explain the hierarchy of European values in the migration context resulting in my ethnographic example, where a group of refugees regularly prayed to receive European papers.

 

‘Good fences make good neighbours.’ – R. Frost, 1914⁷

H: ‘What does Europe mean to you?’

B: ‘Hm, for me Europe has become a place of refuge. Back home, I had a problem with the government. My homeland has become a threat to my life; the moment I step my foot over there, I will be put behind bars. They could even kill me. So Europe has become a refuge for me; I have run away, I am a refugee. Being in Europe is like I have gotten a place to hide myself. But the asylum process we are going through is not helping at all, because it is a whole bureaucracy… I’ve been here for the past whole year.’

K: ‘Europe means freedom, a place where I can be and people accept who I am. So yeah, it means a place of freedom for me.’

 

There was no outcry at the beginning of March when Greece decided to stop accepting new demands for asylum. The one-month suspension of asylum law in Greece follows the previously restrictive asylum policy. The approach in the European Union was to externalize migration management⁸ by creating the so-called ‘Hotspots’ within the Fast-Track Border Procedure which implements the EU Turkey deal. The core idea of the EU Turkey agreement was to reduce unplanned and spontaneous immigration to the European Union across the Aegean Sea in Greece.⁹ One central approach within the legal framework of the EU to regulate refugees was to create protection outside the European Union.¹⁰ This emerged as a response to the strong refugee movements from Turkey to Greece and via the Balkan route to the target countries in western and northern Europe.¹¹ One element of the EU Turkey agreement was to improve protection for refugees in Turkey, and Turkish authorities should take active steps to prevent the migration. This, however, came to an end in February 2020, when the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, opened the borders to Greece. As a result, asylum seekers found their way to the Greek border, and the situation violently escalated against the refugees. For those who made it to one of the Greek islands, the Fast-Track Border Procedure was still applicable.

 

 

According to Greek law, the Fast-Track Border Procedure can be exceptionally applied in the case where third country nationals or stateless persons arrive in large numbers, creating disproportionate migratory pressures. This was the case in Samos. The refugees apply for international protection at the border or while staying in the Reception and Identification Centres (camps). This implies that the whole asylum procedure, from the registration of asylum applications to the notification of decisions, takes place in the Hotspot. Originally the asylum procedure should have been concluded in a very short time period. Moreover, the asylum seeker is geo-graphically restricted to stay on the island for the duration of the procedure.

 

At the beginning, the camp on Samos was closed and applicants were detained for the duration of the procedure. This was challenged resulting in the setting up of an ‘open’ camp. On 18 March 2016, the European Commission published a statement that is referred to as the European Turkey Deal. The objective was to end all irregular migration from Turkey to the Greek islands by returning irregular migrants back to Turkey.¹² This bilateral re-admission agreement between Greece and Turkey should prevent people from crossing the border in the first place. Also, Turkey is considered a safe third country, that is a foregone conclusion in European Asylum Law. Asylum seekers who crossed over to a safe third country, could be deported back. As a result, Greece would not be responsible for the application of asylum seekers who have stepped foot on Turkish territory.

In addition to these regulations, there is the Dublin III regulation in the European Union. The objective is that every asylum application shall only be processed by the first European member state which an asylum seeker enters. So only that member state should be responsible for the examination of his or her application. Since only a few asylum seekers obtain a visa and enter directly via air into European territory, the responsible countries are all those adjacent to non-EU territory. To ensure that this regulation is implemented, the EURODAC system is applied in the member states. In the case of Samos this signifies that after arriving via dinghyes on the shore, the asylum seekers have been transported by FRONTEX to the camp in Vathy. They are brought into the police station, have a screening interview with FRONTEX to clarify their country of origin, their fingerprints are taken and registered in the EURODAC database. Besides that, their personal belongings are searched. Their mobile phones are taken away by the police and some refugees reported that photos on the mobile phone had been deleted or the Facebook password changed when the phone was returned.

 

With these regulations, asylum seekers have been left at Europe’s margins; these laws and regulations stand in sharp contrast to the freedom of movement that European citizens enjoy. Asylum seekers on Samos constantly wonder and debate as to why they have been left stranded on Samos island. Moreover, the refugees are united by the collective trauma of crossing the ‘deadly border’¹³ in a small dinghy. One refugee, with his pregnant wife on board as well, told me to that they had been stopped by a small speedboat coming towards them from Greece while they were attempting to cross from Izmir, Turkey, to Samos, Greece. Two masked persons wearing black clothes shouted at them to stop, then proceeded to destroy the petrol bin and engine of the boat so the boat couldn’t move anymore and the waves carried the refugees back to Turkey. Within 30 minutes the Turkish Coast Guard arrived and arrested them. They were transferred to a police station and held there for two days.

 

The approach to externalize the asylum procedure, combined with the ‘weak’ passports of the asylum seekers, produced dangerous escape routes.

H: ‘Can you describe your feeelings when you were on the boat?’

B: ‘It was not easy, even the sea was very rough – the waves kept moving the boat a lot. Some of us were trembling and we feared for our lives. Even at mid-sea it wasn’t easy because of the way the storms were moving the boat back and forth, almost toppling us into the sea. We nearly sunk, but eh god is so good, we were able to get to the shore. Our case was different as we were not rescued. The strong men amongst us, we were about 54 on the boat, ensured that we landed on the shore and thus we were able to save ourselves. But it wasn’t easy at all, it was like an adventure, an adventurous escape. It took us about three and a half hours.’

This stands in sharp contrast and was contrary to the paramount values of the EU for European citizens, which we will further elaborate.

One of my informants, a refugee from Ghana living in the jungle of Samos, declared that it is a political decision to treat the refugees the way they are treated on Samos.

‘Here is the case that the camp is overcrowded. It isn’t human. They don’t have to treat us this way. Because a place that can accommodate 500 people to now accommodate about 5000 is a punishment. We are living in the jungle, the rats are eating our food.’

Louis Dumont provides a useful theoretical tool to analyze the European value system concerning asylum law. The Dumontian theory of value, particularly the hierarchy of values,¹⁴ states that some cultural elements are regarded as dominant and others as subordinate.This can vary in different contexts. Robbins elaborates further, that highly valued elements ‘tend to be more elaborately worked out, more rationalized.’¹⁵ This reflects the situation on Samos, as refugees debate their legal position regarding the procedure for asylum, lacking ‘high value’ papers, resulting in a collective prayer for European passports in the Vathy refugee camp. Furthermore, Dumont’s concept of values states that ‘a culture possesses a paramount value that ultimately structures the relations between all the other values it contains.’¹⁶

 

Also Dumont’s concept of hierarchy is marked by what he terms the ‘encompassment of the contrary’.¹⁷ It describes the relationship between a whole and its parts, so the parts are at once constitutive of and because of this, identical to the whole. Yet they are different from the whole, resulting in being contrary to it. In this context, hierarchy presupposes a whole. The whole, in Dumont’s sense, is ideological, a system of competing and ranked values.¹⁸ The current situation can be best understood by applying Dumont’s theory to the legal landscape of European asylum laws, and to the values of the European Union.

The EU produced through their institutions a framing of values that were shared values. The ‘universal values’ include inclusiveness, unity and freedom of movement, among others.¹⁹ They can be regarded as paramount values. Furthermore, Dimitriadi elaborates that the European Charter on Fundamental Rights is the basis of the value framework, which refers to five basic values concerning the European asylum law: saving lives at sea, solidarity, responsibility-sharing, human rights and the freedom of movement in the Schengen area.²⁰ A duality is inherent in these values. On the one hand, they are normative regulations and rights (such as the Geneva Refugee Convention). On the other hand, they are values that themselves form the basis of the EU and are transformed into legal regulations.²¹

Pursuing theories, which are a useful analytical approach, it is important to discuss Giorgio Agambens work. In the contemporary analysis of power relations Agamben’s concept of the state of exception²² is significant. According to Agamben the camp provides a paradigm example for showing us the bio-political processes of the modern world.²³ The camp is a ‘state of exception’ which has been permanently realized and becomes the rule.²⁴ Because refugees do not fit into the category of citizenship, they do not have access to a political status²⁵ and Agamben describes the camp as a laboratory of the experiment of power.²⁶

 

So Dumont states that the terms of a given opposition are related in different ways to the whole they compose.²⁷ Applied to the situation of refugees living at Europe’s margins, this can be understood as the following. There is a dualism in European laws and values, depending on which passport you have. On the one side, every EU citizen can move freely without passport controls in the Schengen area and on the other, we have geographical restriction for refugees on the Greek islands. The EU is two things at once, and the relationship between the European Union and people living in it is consequently dual.

The EU considers itself an advocate for human rights, with freedom of movement as the paramount value. But the EU is also the opposition for the refugees on Samos, who are kept on Europes external border. The asylum procedure in Europe, especially the Fast-Track Border Procedure, the implementation of the EU Turkey Deal, the hotspot approach on the Greek islands, with geographic restrictions for asylum seekers, can be seen as the encompassment of the contrary, resulting in the refugee camp on Samos island.

This all culminates in refugees collectively praying for European papers, in a self-built church in the ‘jungle’ of the Vathy refugee camp. By singing collectively and performing religious rituals in the church, the refugees hope to receive a positive decision of asylum to finally be free to move. Some visitors confessed that they had destroyed their passports from their country of origin, stating that the document was useless to them. They feared being deported back and one refugee stated that his passport was not even able to bring him to Europe; keeping it would have increased the danger of being deported. He decided to destroy it and hopes a positive decision will get him a European passport.

 

Footnotes

1. E. Iliadou, ‘Safe Havens and Prison Islands: The Politics of Protection and Deterrence of Border Crossers on Lesvos Island’, Graduate Journal of Social Science, 2019, p. 68.

2. George Kandylis, ‘Accommodation as Displacement: Notes from Refugee Camps in Greece in 2016’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 2019, p. 1.

3. E. Iliadou, op. cit., 2019, p. 69.

4. Lisa Paus and Antje Tillmann, ‘Bericht über die Dienstreise der Abgeordneten Antje Tillmann und Lisa Paus nach Samos/Griechenland’, 2018, p. 4. Elektronisches Dokument: https://lisa-paus.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Reisebericht-SAMOS-TILLMANN-PAUS.pdf. (zuletzt abgerufen: 12.02.2020).

5. Angeliki Dimitriadi, ‘Governing Irregular Migration at the Margins of Europe: The Case of Hotspots on the Greek Islands’, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, Rivista quadrimestrale 1, 2017, p. 84.

6. Katharina Inhetveen, Die politische Ordnung des Flüchtlingslagers. Akteure – Macht – Organisation. Eine Ethnographie im Südlichen Afrika.bb. Transcript, Bielefeld, 2010, p. 19.

7. R. Frost, ‘Mending Walls’ (1914). Retrieved 29 March 2020, from https://www.poetry-foundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall

8. A. Dimitriadi and H. Malamidis, ‘Talking of Values: Understanding the Normative Discourse of EU Migration Policy’, Deliverable 2.1 for the H2020 NoVaMigra project, published online September 2019, p. 3.

9. R. Hofmann and A. Schmidt, ‘Die Erklärung EU Türkei vom 18. März 2016 aus rechtlicher Perspektive’, NVwZ, 1-9, 2016, p. 1.

10. Roland Bank, ‘Die Asylpolitik der Europäischen Union: europäische Antwor-ten auf ein globales Problem?’, in Stefan Kadelbach (ed.), Die Welt und wir. Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2017, p. 33.

11. Ibid., p. 33.

12. R. Hofmann and A. Schmidt, op. cit., 2016, p. 2.

13. Maurizio Albahari, Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World’s Deadliest Border. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2005, p. 2.

14. Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism. Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986.

15. J. Robbins, ‘Between Reproduction and Freedom. Morality, Value and Radical Cultural Change’, Ethnos 72(3), 2007, p. 297.

16. Ibid.

17. Louis Dumont, 1986, op. cit., p. 252; Louis Dumont, ‘Postface: Toward a Theory of Hierarchy’, in Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, p. 240.

18. Naomi Haynes and Jason Hickel, ‘Hierarchy, Value, and the Value of Hierarchy’, Social Analysis 60(4), 2016, p. 4.

19. A. Dimitriadi and H. Malamidis, op. cit., 2019, p. 26.

20. Ibid., p. 27.

21. Ibid., p. 27.

22. Annett Bochmann, ‘The Power of Local Micro Structures in the Context of Refugee Camps’, Journal of Refugee Studies 32(1), 2018, p. 65.

23. Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 127.

24. Giorgio Agamben, 2002, ibid., p. 38.

25. Philipp Schäfer, ‘Das Flüchtlingswohnheim. Raumcharakter und Raumpraxis in der Gemeinschaftsunterkunft’, in sinnprovinz. kultursoziologische working papers Nr. 7, 2015, p. 8.

26. Giorgio Agamben, 2002, op. cit., p. 183.

27. Michael Houseman, ‘The Hierarchical Relation: A Particular Ideology or a General Model?’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1), Spring 2015, p. 252.