Paper details
| Paper authors | Heidi Mogstad |
| In panel on | Resisting Border Violence: The Role of Civil Society, Local Actors, and Researchers |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting | In-Person & Online |
Abstract
Lesvos is a Greek border island known for its lush landscapes and histories of migration, political radicalism, and solidarity. However, in the decade following the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis”, the continued arrival and presence of both living and dead refugees have become increasingly problematised, and subject to violence, exclusion and abandonment.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted on Lesvos between 2018 and 2024, this paper explores local efforts to resist the institutional neglect and undignified treatment of refugees, both living and deceased.
I focus on two cases in which local actors – in some cases supported by refugees and international volunteers – challenge EU and national border regimes and their underlying logics of abandonment and exclusion. First, I examine the creation of a dignified burial site for refugees, known as the “Memorial of Humanity”. Second, I analyse local resistance to the opening of a new, EU-funded, and remote reception and detention centre, described by another activist as a “prison in the middle of the forest.” These practices of care and protest are read as attempts to reclaim and rebuild a shared sense of humanity on the island, while also taking or assigning responsibility and honouring the fragility of social life and the environment.
The presentation will draw on a series of photographs to communicate affective and material landscapes and arrangements – but also to raise critical, ethical questions about my own representational choices and omissions, including the very absence of refugee bodies.
