Update of the TRAFIG fieldwork in Greece
Eva Papatzani, Filyra Vlastou, Alexandra Siotou and Panos Hatziprokopiou from the TRAFIG Team in Greece, report on their activities and insights from the fieldwork in Athens, Lesvos and Chios, and Thessaloniki since September 2020.
Athens
From September to early November 2020 (start of second national lockdown), Eva Papatzani conducted multiple interviews with displaced persons from Syria, Afghanistan, the DR Congo and Pakistan, as well as a focus group discussion with refugees settled in Athens for decades working as interpreters in the humanitarian sector. A significant number of these interviewees (either residing in camps or ESTIA apartments in Athens) find themselves in precarious conditions due to the planned obligatory exits from the official accommodation system, while simultaneously trying to make use of their wide networks and connections in order to plan diverse mobility trajectories.
Elaionas Camp in Athens, September 2020. Photos by Eva Papatzani
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted displaced people’s everyday lives, connectivity, and mobility in multiple ways, including everyday restrictions of movement, the exceptional lockdown in specific camps in the Attica Region during the summer (in a time that the national lockdown was lifted), the postponement of asylum interviews, and the under-functioning of Asylum Service.
Mahdia, a young journalist from Afghanistan, and co-founder of the newspaper “Migratory Birds” describes the period of the pandemic and Spring 2020 lockdown in her article “A time of wandering kisses and lost embraces”.
At the end of September, the Greece team and TRAFIG coordinator Benjamin Etzold were able to meet in Athens to conduct a number of interviews, as well as gain insights on displaced people’s situation in Athens by visiting specific urban areas in the center of the city where refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants encounter or stay homeless in public space (such as Victoria square and Omonia) and the Elaionas Camp in Athens (see Ben Etzold’s Thread on Twitter for some further impressions).
On the Islands
Just a few weeks following the fire that devastated the infamous Moria camp, Panos Hatziprokopiou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Benjamin Etzold (BICC) spent a few intense days on Lesvos (September 26-27) to conduct a range of expert interviews with (Greek) NGO workers and an EASO interpreter and to get first-hand insights into the dramatically changing ‘local figuration of displacement’. They visited both the (remnants of the) old Moria camp and the new site at Kara Tepe at the outskirts of the island’s capital Mytilene to which the entrapped refugees had been relocated. At both sites and in Mytilene they had the chance to speak to several migrants they met and observed how displaced people as well as locally operating NGOs tried to rapidly adapt to the new situation.
Moria camp burned to the ground, 18 days after the fire, September 2020. Photo by Panos Hatziprokopiou
Filyra’s second phase of fieldwork in Lesvos took place between the 20th and 28th of October 2020. At that time, COVID-19 related movement restrictions were lifted on a national level, but were still in force for all camp residents. Interviews and informal talks were conducted with displaced persons, their network contacts, experts and members of the local society. The researchers on the islands also conducted a focus group meeting, discussing the effects of displaced persons' inflows on Lesvos’s economy with the participation of trade, hotel and restaurant unions and associations’ representatives. The increasing vulnerability of displaced people living in Lesvos, and the COVID-19 protection measures affected the fieldwork in multiple ways, as these conditions render people more reluctant to share their experiences. The next phase of the fieldwork is set to start in the forthcoming months - depending on the movement possibilities.
Despite the significant public interest after the Moria fire, the general situation in the islands did not change much in the last months. The analysis of policy measures could be reduced to the following triptych: more local and translocal mobility restrictions, more confinement, and more surveillance, while self-organized shelters for vulnerable people such as PIKPA in Lesvos (an open reception and temporary accommodation facility for vulnerable people run by a local civil society organization), have been shut down by the state.
In the meanwhile, the number of displaced people on the islands has decreased: refugees and asylum seekers were transferred to less crowded camps in the mainland, children were relocated to other parts of Europe and enhanced border-controls and pushbacks contributed towards the same direction. Living conditions on both islands remain dire. Especially in Lesvos, after the Moria camp was destroyed by fire, almost 11000 displaced people, including young children, settled in a new camp at the “Kara Tepe” site that has become known as “Moria 2.0”, dealing with even worse conditions than before (the camp, at the edge of the sea, is exposed to rain and wind, lacks running water, electricity and heating). Residents of the new camp describe the conditions in which they live in details in an open letter: Christmas Greetings from Moria II.
Last but not least, the fieldwork recorded - in line with alarming reports from humanitarian organizations in the field - a growing mental health crisis, directly related to the lack of perspective among displaced people and the living conditions on the islands.
Left:Quay of Mytilene (Lesvos), October 2020. These four displaced people were sitting every evening during the 7 days I stayed in Mytilene, in the same bench discussing. Photo by Filyra Vlastou
Right: View of the new camp that has become known as “Moria 2.0”, (Lesvos), October 2020. The camp, at the edge of the sea, is exposed to weather, especially during winter. Photo by Filyra Vlastou
Thessaloniki
The third field trip to Thessaloniki took place at the end of August 2020, where multiple interviews with displaced persons from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, contact persons from Iraq, Kuweit and Iran as well interviews with locals were conducted.
During this period, the research focus shifted to the receiving community. However, formal and informal discussions with refugees demonstrated once more the transnational flows, the connections between places across different geographical scales - countries of origin, European countries, Greece, Lesvos, camps, public spaces, local supermarkets etc. - and their relation to refugees’ survival strategies despite the mobility restrictions. On the other hand, a visit with a Syrian interpreter at a site one hour away from Thessaloniki by bus shed light on the refugees’ restricted access to mobility. As noticed, the bus company, in collaboration with the Greek police, defines proportions of bus passengers in terms of ethnicity and race. These unofficial regulations – according to which only 1/3 of the bus passengers should be “refugees”- result in refugees’ disempowerment and constant othering, increasing their vulnerability and precarity.
It should be mentioned that the vulnerability of refugees formed a significant part of the research, for instance regarding their refusal to share experiences, last-minute meeting cancelations – realizing that their participation in the research program couldn’t help them with their asylum claim or appeal - or their integration process, related to new immigration policies implemented the last few months, as well as the exits of recognized refugees from accommodation and cash assistance schemes.
As for the receiving community, the oral testimonies show refugees’ everyday life from another perspective, revealing simultaneously that borders between refugees and locals and power relations are reshaped and questioned in multiple ways.
Fieldwork reports by Eva Papatzani, Filyra Vlastou, Alexandra Siotou and Panos Hatziprokopiou
The views and opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the TRAFIG Consortium or the European Commission (EC). TRAFIG is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.