Paper details
| Paper authors | Bram Jansen |
| In panel on | “Humanitarian borders” between care and control |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
In early 2020, angry people turned on humanitarians on the island of Lesvos, Greece. Responding to the prospect of the building of a permanent detention center for asylum seeking migrants on the island, locals and nationalists first protested the government and the police, jointly with humanitarians and human rights activists, and then turned on the humanitarians themselves. Deemed co-responsible for the troubles of Moria camp, and beyond, humanitarians, volunteers, and activists were regarded as inseparable from the politics of migration, and indeed, constituted a part of a humanitarian border.
This paper explores how and to what extent Europe’s humanitarian border is shaped by protest and violence, and the threat thereto, and how this has evolved since the ‘migration crisis’ is 2015. It focusses on the case of Lesbos, but expands to discuss protest and violence as part of the bordering process elsewhere, and its effects for local and international humanitarian and volunteer groups. It is based on fieldwork on Lesbos and literature review of other cases and localities.
