Today, as millions are forced to migrate due to war, famine and political unrest, it is important... more Today, as millions are forced to migrate due to war, famine and political unrest, it is important to analyse how states use new bordering techniques to control populations.New Borders focuses on the Greek island of Lesbos.
This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enfo... more This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enforcement. Following the EU-Turkish Agreement which came to force March 2016, migrants crossing from t...
This intervention traces how Europe is being (re-)produced through ‘crises’ on three scales. Firs... more This intervention traces how Europe is being (re-)produced through ‘crises’ on three scales. Firstly, at the level of national territory, looking at the crisis-ridden Greek state. Secondly, through everyday border practices on the island of Lesbos and, finally, in the Mediterranean that acts as Europe’s primary locus for its aggregate (and often experimental) bordering practices.
Out of the policy initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of the "Refugee Crisis", none is more... more Out of the policy initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of the "Refugee Crisis", none is more elusive that the hotspot approach. Our aim in this article is to shed light upon what kind of policy output the hotspot approach entails, by conducting a framing analysis of key Euro-pean Commission (EC) documents. We draw on discursive institutionalist approaches which focus on the policy process. Within the policy process, we focus particularly on identifying policy frames as organizing principles and key ideas, in order to trace the representation of the problem and solutions to it. Our findings show how the hotspot approach, in incarnating both the problem and the solution to migration as primarily a concern for management, represents another string in the long-standing tensions of the harmonisation of the EU asylum and migration policies.
This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enfo... more This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enforcement. Following the EU-Turkish Agreement which came to force March 2016, migrants crossing from the Turkish coast onto the Greek Aegean islands are subject to a set of administrative procedures which assess the country responsible for processing their asylum claim. As I demonstrate their chances of accessing the asylum process or risk being returned to Turkey are shaped by the outcome of vulnerability assessments. Drawing together feminist approaches on vulnerability and geopolitics with recent work that addresses hotspots and the humanitarian border, the article suggest that vulnerability assessments are is crucial for understanding the ways in which state strategies to discourage mobility are woven into protection practices and the ways in which exclusions are authorised through the strategic deployment of vulnerability. The study is based on fieldwork and interviews conducted on the island of Lesbos during three separate periods between the summer of 2017 and December 2018. By interrogating processes of documentation and the role of state and non-state actors in the operationalising vulnerability, I demonstrate how mobile bodies are governed through vulnerability, medical knowledge and trauma. As a result, vulnerability assessments privilege certain, often gendered mobilities as opposed to others while in parallel contribute to enhancing a mode of care and control at the border that justifies the perpetuation of forms of violence.
On a quiet spring morning on the promenade of the port of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, a strange sight caught our attention: flying high on a mast just inside the port gates were two peculiarly selected flags, the French and the Finnish. Perhaps something of a random choice, maybe even a computer error picking up the two EU member-states starting with an " F " , we joked at that time. But a few hours later, during our meeting with the European Commission's representative on the island as part of our research on the migration crisis, the record was put painstakingly straight: far from a mistake, this was a strategic choice ahead of the visits of the French and the Finnish ambassadors to Greece to the island that week. The Office of the Commission stationed in Mytilene was tasked with presenting these two state representatives with a pristine image of the hotspot on the island: the image of some seemingly unhindered and seamless operation of the hotspot, along with all of its ancillary mechanisms. Like salespeople charged with selling a future car model, or real estate agents promoting an apartment through a brochure while construction is still taking place, the Mytilene-stationed officials have been commissioned with convincing EU member-state representatives of the efficiency of the hotspot while the mechanism itself is still under construction.
What is a hotspot? Ask a random passer-by in your average city street and the by now ubiquitous w... more What is a hotspot? Ask a random passer-by in your average city street and the by now ubiquitous wireless internet access point will most probably come up immediately in response: the hotspot is somewhere that connects you to the internet’s everywhere. Ask most European Union officials, however, and the very same word will make them sing the praises of the EU’s blueprint for a holistic approach to the migration crisis: a very special “somewhere” that may very well be on its way to become―as this editorial wishes to warn―a new kind of “everywhere”, one that commences with the decades-long European integration finally reaching a tangible form.
Today, as millions are forced to migrate due to war, famine and political unrest, it is important... more Today, as millions are forced to migrate due to war, famine and political unrest, it is important to analyse how states use new bordering techniques to control populations.New Borders focuses on the Greek island of Lesbos.
This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enfo... more This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enforcement. Following the EU-Turkish Agreement which came to force March 2016, migrants crossing from t...
This intervention traces how Europe is being (re-)produced through ‘crises’ on three scales. Firs... more This intervention traces how Europe is being (re-)produced through ‘crises’ on three scales. Firstly, at the level of national territory, looking at the crisis-ridden Greek state. Secondly, through everyday border practices on the island of Lesbos and, finally, in the Mediterranean that acts as Europe’s primary locus for its aggregate (and often experimental) bordering practices.
Out of the policy initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of the "Refugee Crisis", none is more... more Out of the policy initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of the "Refugee Crisis", none is more elusive that the hotspot approach. Our aim in this article is to shed light upon what kind of policy output the hotspot approach entails, by conducting a framing analysis of key Euro-pean Commission (EC) documents. We draw on discursive institutionalist approaches which focus on the policy process. Within the policy process, we focus particularly on identifying policy frames as organizing principles and key ideas, in order to trace the representation of the problem and solutions to it. Our findings show how the hotspot approach, in incarnating both the problem and the solution to migration as primarily a concern for management, represents another string in the long-standing tensions of the harmonisation of the EU asylum and migration policies.
This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enfo... more This article explores vulnerability assessments as practices of filtering, caring and border enforcement. Following the EU-Turkish Agreement which came to force March 2016, migrants crossing from the Turkish coast onto the Greek Aegean islands are subject to a set of administrative procedures which assess the country responsible for processing their asylum claim. As I demonstrate their chances of accessing the asylum process or risk being returned to Turkey are shaped by the outcome of vulnerability assessments. Drawing together feminist approaches on vulnerability and geopolitics with recent work that addresses hotspots and the humanitarian border, the article suggest that vulnerability assessments are is crucial for understanding the ways in which state strategies to discourage mobility are woven into protection practices and the ways in which exclusions are authorised through the strategic deployment of vulnerability. The study is based on fieldwork and interviews conducted on the island of Lesbos during three separate periods between the summer of 2017 and December 2018. By interrogating processes of documentation and the role of state and non-state actors in the operationalising vulnerability, I demonstrate how mobile bodies are governed through vulnerability, medical knowledge and trauma. As a result, vulnerability assessments privilege certain, often gendered mobilities as opposed to others while in parallel contribute to enhancing a mode of care and control at the border that justifies the perpetuation of forms of violence.
On a quiet spring morning on the promenade of the port of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, a strange sight caught our attention: flying high on a mast just inside the port gates were two peculiarly selected flags, the French and the Finnish. Perhaps something of a random choice, maybe even a computer error picking up the two EU member-states starting with an " F " , we joked at that time. But a few hours later, during our meeting with the European Commission's representative on the island as part of our research on the migration crisis, the record was put painstakingly straight: far from a mistake, this was a strategic choice ahead of the visits of the French and the Finnish ambassadors to Greece to the island that week. The Office of the Commission stationed in Mytilene was tasked with presenting these two state representatives with a pristine image of the hotspot on the island: the image of some seemingly unhindered and seamless operation of the hotspot, along with all of its ancillary mechanisms. Like salespeople charged with selling a future car model, or real estate agents promoting an apartment through a brochure while construction is still taking place, the Mytilene-stationed officials have been commissioned with convincing EU member-state representatives of the efficiency of the hotspot while the mechanism itself is still under construction.
What is a hotspot? Ask a random passer-by in your average city street and the by now ubiquitous w... more What is a hotspot? Ask a random passer-by in your average city street and the by now ubiquitous wireless internet access point will most probably come up immediately in response: the hotspot is somewhere that connects you to the internet’s everywhere. Ask most European Union officials, however, and the very same word will make them sing the praises of the EU’s blueprint for a holistic approach to the migration crisis: a very special “somewhere” that may very well be on its way to become―as this editorial wishes to warn―a new kind of “everywhere”, one that commences with the decades-long European integration finally reaching a tangible form.
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Papers by Evie Papada
On a quiet spring morning on the promenade of the port of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, a strange sight caught our attention: flying high on a mast just inside the port gates were two peculiarly selected flags, the French and the Finnish. Perhaps something of a random choice, maybe even a computer error picking up the two EU member-states starting with an " F " , we joked at that time. But a few hours later, during our meeting with the European Commission's representative on the island as part of our research on the migration crisis, the record was put painstakingly straight: far from a mistake, this was a strategic choice ahead of the visits of the French and the Finnish ambassadors to Greece to the island that week. The Office of the Commission stationed in Mytilene was tasked with presenting these two state representatives with a pristine image of the hotspot on the island: the image of some seemingly unhindered and seamless operation of the hotspot, along with all of its ancillary mechanisms. Like salespeople charged with selling a future car model, or real estate agents promoting an apartment through a brochure while construction is still taking place, the Mytilene-stationed officials have been commissioned with convincing EU member-state representatives of the efficiency of the hotspot while the mechanism itself is still under construction.
On a quiet spring morning on the promenade of the port of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, a strange sight caught our attention: flying high on a mast just inside the port gates were two peculiarly selected flags, the French and the Finnish. Perhaps something of a random choice, maybe even a computer error picking up the two EU member-states starting with an " F " , we joked at that time. But a few hours later, during our meeting with the European Commission's representative on the island as part of our research on the migration crisis, the record was put painstakingly straight: far from a mistake, this was a strategic choice ahead of the visits of the French and the Finnish ambassadors to Greece to the island that week. The Office of the Commission stationed in Mytilene was tasked with presenting these two state representatives with a pristine image of the hotspot on the island: the image of some seemingly unhindered and seamless operation of the hotspot, along with all of its ancillary mechanisms. Like salespeople charged with selling a future car model, or real estate agents promoting an apartment through a brochure while construction is still taking place, the Mytilene-stationed officials have been commissioned with convincing EU member-state representatives of the efficiency of the hotspot while the mechanism itself is still under construction.