Solidarity and Contestation: Local Refugee Reception Practices at the South-Eastern EU Border Islands

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of how various actors engaged in and reacted to refugee reception practices in a multi-level governance setting at the main island entry points to the European Union (EU) from the south-east. Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros received almost one million people out of the 1,6 million which arrived in the EU in 2015 and 2016. In the humanitarian emergency, which followed the increased arrivals, the local administration and the local community took important initiatives to fill the gaps of the European and the national responses while also opposing the EU policies which degraded the human dignity of refugees. Drawing on rich qualitative material I demonstrate how solidarity and contestation derive from a complex local reality. The findings of the article point to the consequences of the multilevel governance structure of asylum for actors’ interactions or lack of interaction on the ground of the border islands.

Keywords:

• Migration
• refugee crisis
• European asylum policy
• refugee reception
• border islands
• multi-level governance

Introduction

This article analyzes how various actors engaged in and reacted to refugee reception practices in a multi-level governance setting at the main island entry points to the EU from the south-east. The islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros received throughout 2015 and 2016 almost one million people out of the 1,6 million which are calculated to have arrived in the EU. The article argues that the local reception of refugees during a protracted humanitarian emergency at the EU borders can be better understood by studying the interaction – or lack of interaction –, responses and rationales of the various actors involved in receiving the refugees.

Contestation in relation to European integration has so far mainly been studied through a multilevel governance perspective at the meso-level (Marks & Steenbergen, 2002). In this article I focus on the local level while bringing in a critical case of the border islands during the steep increase of arrivals of 2015–2016. Multilevel governance literature has been employed in theorizing the local turn of migration policy-making (Caponio & Borkert, 2010; Caponio & Jones-Correa, 2018; Filomeno, 2016; Scholten, 2016; Zapata-Barrero et al., 2017). More recently, studies have started to look on the multilevel governance of asylum (Bendel et al., 2019; Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020; Glorius & Doomernik, 2020) and irregular migration (Spencer, 2018) as well.

Exploring the reception of refugees in Europe at the local level of these five islands is important not only because there is a growing body of literature on the local reception in relation to asylum governance (Dimitriadis et al., 2019; Doomernik & Glorius, 2016; Glorius et al., 2019) but also because the situation at the Greek islands, which remain a key EU border, is still a protracted humanitarian emergency. The increased arrivals of asylum seekers in Europe should be seen in the light of long-term conflicts and war in the Middle-East, in particular the Syrian civil war. This is also shown by the fact in 2015 and 2016 the main nationalities of the asylum seekers were Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2019). Millions of euros of EU funding (816.4 million in emergency assistance only since the beginning of 2015) as well as the largest intervention of the European Border and Coastguard Agency (FRONTEX) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) have not managed to resolve the reception crisis (European Commission, 2019).

In the beginning the local authorities and the local civil society tried to provide humanitarian assistance to the asylum seekers who often were homeless or living in tents after being rescued and before they could leave the islands. The main reception, identification and registration facilities initiated by the Greek state and in line with the European Commission’s Agenda for Migration (European Commission, 2015) were the hotspots. Human rights organizations’ reports and academic research describe the hotspots at the islands as detention camps and they condemn the systematic human rights violations which takes place due to the very poor reception conditions (ECRE, 2018; Papoutsi et al., 2019; Tazzioli & Garelli, 2020).

This article brings to the forefront reception practices which existed before the EU hotspots and some which even continued afterwards. These were created by local actors since 2015. Examples of these practices include provision of first aid at the landing points, transportation, accommodation, provision of food and non-food items. The local solidarity (Fotaki, 2021; Rozakou, 2016) received a lot of public attention in 2015, and in 2016 the five islands were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (Tselios, 2016). From organizing rescue teams at the shores of the islands, to soup kitchens for newly arrived refugees and repurposing of old buildings to provide housing the local initiatives provided an ad hoc solution to an emerging crisis. This atmosphere changed soon, especially after the EU-Turkey statement of 2016. Multiple protests were organized at the islands where the local authorities, the civil society and the refugees together opposed the EU-Turkey statement and the hotspot approach (Kingsley & Smith, 2016).

This article is contributing by exploring how contestation and lack of cooperation, as in lack of interactions between actors, can be a scenario of multilevel refugee reception. By focusing on interactions and rationales of actors on the ground I provide a nuanced image of refugee reception at the border islands and within the multilevel governance setting. The findings point further to multilevel governance arrangements which in the same local context of the border islands produced different governance outcomes. The article demonstrates how different rationales behind actors’ interactions in the multilevel governance arrangement at the islands lead to different responses.

Refugee reception in Greece beyond the emergency of 2015

Greece is located on the EU’s southeastern external border. For many years Greece has been criticized for failing to ensure adequate refugee protection and for insufficient humanitarian reception conditions (McDonough & Tsourdi, 2012). This criticism was overshadowed by concerns regarding the control of the external borders of the EU in 2016. The situation escalated to the point that Austria, followed by Sweden and Germany, threatened Greece with expulsion from the Schengen Area (Traynor, 2016).

In practice, the standards of the European refugee reception were severely circumscribed during 2015–2016 on the Greek border islands (Kandylis, 2019; Papataxiarchis, 2016; Rozakou, 2017). The Greek asylum system is highly centralized and policymaking with regard to reception policies is decided by the central government. Any coordination or consultation with local actors and civil society organizations has no biding effects (Caponio et al., 2019). Moreover, the humanitarian emergency at the islands should be read in the context of a long financial crisis in Greece which has affected living conditions and service provision for both locals and migrants (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2017; Cabot, 2019; Fotaki, 2021). Additionally, the five islands have an economy which relies a lot on tourism (Ivanov & Stavrinoudis, 2018) and thus struggled to manage refugee reception while protecting their livelihoods.

The above socioeconomical context in Greece needs to be complemented with a short presentation of the main European political response which was the EU-Turkey Statement. The EU-Turkey Statement emerged in the form of political declaration and during a press release, issued by the Council of the European Union on March 18, 2016 (Council of the EU, 2016). In a brief document, the signatory parties listed the conditions of a readmission agreement under which all asylum seekers who entered Greece via Turkey after March 20, 2016 would be returned to the latter (Council of the EU, 2016; Demirsu & Cihangir-Tetik, 2019; Dimitriadi, 2016).

The EU-Turkey statement was implemented in Greece through a geographical restriction decision which provided that each and every person who arrived from Turkey on one of the hotspot islands could not leave the island before their asylum claim had been examined, or in case that they did not seek asylum, until their deportation. The rationale was that when asylum seekers or recognized refugees enter mainland Greece, they try to leave the country irregularly and move toward the north of Europe. Keeping them in the island of first arrival was supposed to facilitate returns to Turkey.

Interactions, responses and rationales: an actor centric approach to the multilevel governance of asylum at the border islands

This article draws on multilevel governance (MLG) in order to make sense of the local reception of refugees at the border islands. Multilevel governance was introduced as a concept by Hooghe and Marks (2001) to explain how the EU functions. This theoretical approach looks at the dispersal of power upwards toward supranational organizations such as the European Union, downwards to regional and local governments and outwards to different governmental and non-governmental actors (Hooghe & Marks, 2004, 15).

Although there is a strong normative undertone in MLG research which encourages the inclusion of different levels and actors to more cooperative and efficiently handle policy issues (Scholten & Penninx, 2016) there is also a risk of interlevel conflict. This article speaks to the growing literature on what has been called the local turn in migration governance in multilevel systems. This literature analyses how the local administration copes with conflicting political agendas between local, national or supranational level (Alexander, 2017; Caponio & Borkert, 2010; Filomeno, 2016; Penninx et al., 2004; Spehar et al., 2017) and argues that the local perspective can “contribute to a more in-depth understanding of why and how cities and regions respond differently to similar challenges” (Zapata-Barrero et al., 2017, p. 2).

More specifically, theorizations of the local turn in migration policy making have been exploring both the horizontal and the vertical dimension. For instance, Vermeulen and Stotijn (2010) argue that local migration policies differ from other level in their pragmatic approach to problem-solving. In this vein, the horizontal cooperation between local governments and non-governmental organizations is a result of pragmatic needs such as spreading information and forming alliances in promoting policy implementation.

The vertical dimension explores how the local governance of migration interacts with higher levels of government and in particular with the national and the supranational. Zapata-Barrero and Barker (2014) identify three scenarios of interaction in the vertical dimension. These are namely, centralist, localist and ideal multilevel. Scholten (2016) adds a criterion of whether there are venues which could facilitate the meaningful interaction of different levels. He concludes that when these venues for vertical interaction exist, then there are bigger chances for an “ideal multilevel policy making”, while when they do not exist it is more plausible to have “decoupling” between levels, meaning the pursuit of different and somewhat contradictory policies by the different levels.

Last, but not least a growing recent literature focuses on the multilevel governance of refugee reception (Ambrosini, 2020; Bendel et al., 2019; Fouskas, 2019; Glorius & Doomernik, 2020; Heimann et al., 2019; Oomen et al., 2021; Sabchev, 2021). The most prominent difference between migrant integration and refugee reception is that contestation and divergence in framings of policy problems can be much bigger between different levels (Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020). By looking at both the vertical and the horizontal dimension of the local reception of refugees in Italy Campomori and Ambrosini (2020) elaborate on another scenario of policy making in a multilevel polity. Their analysis concludes that besides centralist, localist, ideal multilevel and decoupled arrangements, there can be what they call “battleground” (Ambrosini, 2013, 2020; Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020). Their definition of battleground describes an arrangement where although the vertical venues for coordination and negotiation exist, the local level resists the higher levels. The result is conflict and non-coordinated action. In empirical terms the local turn of multilevel migration policy making has recorded both locally initiated policies which are more exclusive than the national standards (Ambrosini, 2013) and more inclusive (Spencer & Delvino, 2019). Therefore, the direction of opposition to higher tiers of authority should not be taken for granted and emphasis in the rationales employed by actors who oppose the vertical and/or horizontal dimensions of the multilevel governance arrangements should be considered.

This article engages with the above literature by focusing on actors reasoning around their choice to engage or not with different reception practices. A focus on actors’ interactions (or lack of interactions), rationales and responses offers a nuanced understanding not only of why we can observe different approaches at the local level but also of how these connect to actors’ intentions. This is relevant to the problem-solving approach that has been earlier suggested in the literature. My findings show that different interpretations of problem solving can exist even from one island to the next. By focusing on key actors, I try to move beyond the binary of “native” versus “refugee” and analyze the multiplicity of actors and their relationship to each other.

I have operationalized multilevel governance for my case of refugee reception at the islands as follows. I have considered the border islands to be a subnational space where different rules, laws, and practices might apply compared to other subnational areas especially in relation to the geographical restriction after the EU-Turkey statement. I define the various forms of exchanging, relating, and positioning amongst actors as interactions. Interactions are operationalized as vertical and horizontal relations, while it is also possible to observe a lack of interactions.

Methodology – a qualitative study of local refugee reception

This article builds upon rich empirical material to analyze how both solidarity and contestation derive from a complex local reality. For this article the five islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros form a single case. The five islands differ in size and refugee arrivals. I use the data collected from all five islands as a whole in order to provide a richer account of the situation representing all entry points which host the hotspot approach in the south-eastern European sea borders. The table below presents the size and population of each island, number of arrivals for 2015, 2016 and 2017 and gives a short description of the hotspot and other refugee reception facilities (Table 1).

Table 1. Designed by the Author and based on Fieldwork Material and Official Sources.

Island	Arrivals*			Hotspot date of operation and capacity	Other reception facilities
	2015	2016	2017
Lesvos 1.633 km² 86.436 population	500.018	98.960	12.862	October 2015, 2.840	Kara Tepe (municipal camp since June 2015), Oxy, Skala Sykamnias (transit camps operational between summer 2015–winter 2016), PIKPA (2012–2020)
Chios 842.5 km² 58.055 population	120.804	41.103	6.632	February 2016, 1.014	Souda (Autumn 2015–October 2017) Dipethe (Summer 2015–September 2016)
Samos 477.4 km² 32.977 population	104.518	15.211	5.708	March 2016, 648	Malagari port (Summer 2015–Winter 2016) Vathy port (Summer 2015–Winter 2016)
Kos 340.4 km² 34.396 population	109.505	15.202	2.017	June 2016, 816	Captain Elias (Summer 2015–September 2016) MSF camp (Winter 2016)
Leros 54.05 km² 7.917 population				March 2016, 860	Lakki (Summer 2015–Winter 2016) PIKPA (Autumn 2016–Autumn 2020)

*The arrivals data have been compiled by the author based on the official information at the website of the Greek Police www.astynomia.gr. For Kos and Leros the data are recorded under the 2nd administrative division of the Dodecanese. (Accessed, August 12th, 2020).

The material has been collected through semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation during seven field visits to the islands between June 2015 and July 2018. In total I conducted 47 interviews with the local authorities, the national authorities involved with refugee reception at the islands, the police, the coast guards, EU agents, International Organizations’ representatives, members of solidarity movements and members of grassroots organizations. Access to interviewees was facilitated by a wide professional network developed during my previous engagement as human rights lawyer and researcher in the field. The selection criteria were based on the analytical framework and therefore aimed at the local administration, the national and European administrators present on the island, the local/national and international civil society organizations, the police and the coast guards and the international intergovernmental organizations. The interviews were conducted in English and in Greek and the duration varied between 30 minutes and 1.5 hours. The non-participant observations took place in all five islands’ hotspot camps, in the other reception facilities, during coordination meetings, and during municipal council meetings. In the thematization of the material I was guided by theory, and the operationalization described in the above section while I remained open to new themes which arose from the empirical data (Savin-Baden & Howell-Major, 2013).

Analysis

I begin the analysis of the empirical material by presenting different responses of the actors in the first section. The objective is not to create a typology of responses since the situation has been changing constantly during the time of the study and such categorization would oversimplify the empirical material. My intention is to present how in key moments different actors decided to position themselves in alliance horizontally, or in opposition to other levels/vertically, by opting to engage in problem solving or opting out from problem solving. Then in the second section I untangle the grievances behind the multilevel setting of the policy area of asylum and more specifically the effect of Europeanisation at the local/border island level. Last, I look at the rationales behind the different grievances expressed by local actors.

Local actors’ responses

As mentioned above the local level has no official mandate in relation to refugee reception (Caponio et al., 2019). When in the spring of 2015 hundreds of refugees were arriving at each island daily, the local authorities and also the local communities took initiatives in order to respond to the humanitarian crisis. While previous research on the multilevel migration policies has shown that the competition and lack of clarity about which level is responsible has led to a large variety in how policies are implemented at the local level (Scholten, 2016), this study takes another step beyond divergence. The local responses varied between engaging actively in creating or supporting reception facilities or opposing and contesting these initiatives. To analyze these local responses, I turn to actors active on the ground at the time and in particular the local administration, the national and European administrators present on the island, the local/national and international civil society organizations, the police and the coast guards and the international intergovernmental organizations.

There are huge discrepancies from one camp to another. Kara tepe (the municipal camp in Lesbos) works really well. The hygienic conditions are good. It is all thanks to the municipality. It is with their initiative and with money coming through NGOs that they are operating. No Greek national government or EU involvement. While on Moria (the hotspot in Lesbos), millions are spent and it is awful. The conditions for the people there are unacceptable. Every time I go to a meeting (outside the island) I feel embarrassed… (EU agent, Lesbos, September 2016)

It is important to emphasize here that Greece in 2015 was still under a strict austerity program as a result of the financial crisis which had a strong effect on the budgets of the municipalities. Therefore, engaging in reception practices was not unanimously supported by the local governments and societies.

The mayor of Lesbos created an open reception center, even if it was not within his responsibilities […] I was against the initiative of the mayor for the reception center. He should not take over the responsibilities of the government. […] Already the citizens are filing complaints to the municipal authorities […] today one of the vice mayors resigned as a protest to the mayor’s plan of creating another open reception center. Man-eating Europe is just an observer. Possibly they are thinking that humiliation of refugees can be part of our touristic attractions […] (Vice Mayor, Lesbos, June 2015)

On the other side of the spectrum of responding by building reception infrastructure, some interviewees expressed their discontent with the passivity of the municipal authorities and in some cases, they even narrated how they had to overcome the municipal opposition to initiating reception facilities.

When the arriving boats started to multiply and refugees were on the streets without water, food, dry clothes, we started to gather down at the marina and we were trying to help. The municipality did not support us, on the contrary, they obstructed our efforts. They even closed the public toilets […] They said that if they start helping out with the refugees the government will dump the problem to them, and they do not want that. They try to escape any responsibility. They say it is not our responsibility either. (Volunteer, Kos, October 2017)

This is an example where the local level stood divided and chose different forms of responding. The mayor of Kos thought that opposition should be expressed in the form of denying responsibility while the local civil society chose a more constructive way of formulating alternative reception practices to the government. In some cases, such as in the island of Leros, the volunteer groups tried to bypass the municipality in establishing a reception center. Jumping levels in a multilevel governance setting in order to find more favorable allies is a known strategy (Piattoni, 2010).

The municipality did not want to be involved so we went through the ministry of Health who owns the building and we got a permit to use it. In the beginning, the mayor said you will only make this center over my dead body. He has changed now. He is more positive […] (Volunteer, Leros, October 2017)

The dynamics between those who took constructive initiatives in creating refugee reception infrastructures and those who did not want to engage due to the lack of mandate became more complicated after the EU-Turkey statement when refugees arriving at the islands were not allowed to move further to the mainland. This created over-crowdedness at the islands which was difficult to address since the existing infrastructure was already full. Moreover, conflicts emerged in relation to where the camps should be put. An example is Souda camp in Chios which consisted of tents put in the trench of the medieval castle of the capital of the island. The local authorities were unwilling to have it or manage it but were eventually forced to do so as no one else took responsibility. The conditions in this camp, which was situated in the middle of the city, were very bad. As I observed in field visits, no sanitation or proper shelter was provided and mostly single men were cramped along the narrow space between the walls of the trench. Eventually the municipal council decided to close it but even implementing this decision was not without problems.

Souda has right now 1000 refugees. We do not want it to be there. But where will these people go? They (national authorities) do not recognize it as their responsibility. They have imposed this responsibility on the municipality (Vice-Mayor Chios, June 2017)

As municipal authorities we are contradicting ourselves. There is a decision of the municipal council to close it but still it is managed and run by the municipality. […] We do not have any power over the policy-making. We are forced to tag along and we are left in the middle because even at the highest levels there is no real political will to implement the policies on asylum. (Mayor, Chios, June 2017)

Another example comes from the northern part of Lesbos, Molyvos. The shore of Molyvos was during 2015–2016 the main landing point for the boats. Therefore, many of the NGOs set up settlements offering first aid to the refugees upon arrival. At the same time, Molyvos is the most touristic part of Lesbos and it is recognized as cultural heritage by UNESCO.

[…] Till recently every NGO would set a camp, anywhere they wanted. And this is illegal. Following complaints, the urban planning authorities found that all these tents did not have permits. Because all of Molyvos is declared as preserved area by UNESCO. (Chair of local council of Molyvos, Lesbos, January 2016)

These dynamics between urgent needs of refugee reception and existing rules and laws alongside the livelihoods of the locals brought a lot of grievances, which I will try to untangle in the following two sections.

Local contestations and the europeanisation of asylum

In this section I move in untangling the grievances which fed into the variation in local reception practices. Previous research on the implementation of the hotspot approach in Italy and Greece has been discussing the ways that refugees themselves resist and try to navigate the EU reception system (de Vries & Guild, 2019; Tazzioli, 2018). This article adds by bringing to the forefront the locals’ perceptions. A central theme which emerged from the empirical material as a source of grievances for local actors, was the absence of the Greek state and the EU in a situation which they identified clearly as a European Union matter. As the quote below describes, the municipalities saw the refugee crisis as a situation in which they were drawn in without having the mandate.

This is a European problem and it needs European policy. In a second level it needs national policy. […] The municipality comes last. But now it is handled by the municipality […] while it is an obligation of the national government and of Europe. Because these are the borders of Europe. […]. (Mayor, Lesbos, June 2015).

Similarly, the Mayor of another island, Leros, expressed his frustration with the absence of the national government and the situation which was left at the local level to manage.

There were 4–5,000 [refugees] in 2015 and the government was doing nothing. Local people were trying to help, to bring food and clothes. The government only took action in order to implement the hotspot […] Why is it our responsibility? (Mayor Leros October, 2017).

These quotes are indicative of the way in which the multilevel setting of the asylum policy and the relationship between the different levels can be an important source of contestation (see also Hepburn & Zapata-Barrero, 2014). What is even more interesting is the intentions that actors saw behind the absence of central government or EU intervention.

The municipality along with local volunteers, is trying to deal with the problem. There are responsibilities of those who create the refugees and the wars, but above all of the EU, who has decided that Greece will be a warehouse for refugees. A country [Greece] that is undergoing a humanitarian crisis of its own, has to deal with the migration issue, because northern Europeans want to keep their countries “clean” […] Europe is denying the problem although it is primarily a European problem (Vice Mayor, Lesbos, June 2015).

As the vice mayor points out, the friction is not only about the absence of the higher levels which possess the mandate in asylum governance. It is also about consciously imposing the management of the situation to the local level which is in turn unable to respond.

These statements imply that the absence of support to the local level or of initiatives coming from the state is not a result of bad communication or lack of knowledge of the problem at hand. On the contrary, what seems to be the main cause of grievances for the local actors is the lack of meaningful interaction.

Europe knows about these problems, but it is convenient to do nothing. So, they have handed it to the locals (police officer Lesvos June 2015).

The feeling that the local level is ignored and marginalized when it comes to decision making regarding the reception of refugees became even more prominent in interviews and observations after the EU-Turkey statement and the geographical restriction.

The agreement [EU-Turkey statement] was beneficial to the EU and the Greek government but it was detrimental for the island […] What we are all asking is for a change in EU politics (Vice-Mayor Chios, June 2017).

From my perspective in an island of 8,000 I have an extra 1,000 residents to take care off. Without any funds. I try to communicate the problems to the higher levels but I do not get through […] I do not get the resources. And all decisions are taken without anybody asking us, listening to us. […] and we are the recipients of the policies but no one asks us (Mayor Leros October, 2017).

In June 2016 the five mayors of the islands organized the first conference of this sort, to discuss and present their conclusions about the situation at the islands while presenting their own suggestions. In the concluding statement of the conference they clearly demand that their views and their local knowledge should be taken into consideration in the EU and Greek decision making. This move was combined with letters and pleas made to the European Parliament where the mayors, forming a horizontal network, disregarded the national level and tried to interact directly with the EU.

The local level of Government expresses its protest over the continuing practices and especially in regard to moving, transporting, relocating refugees without any information or consultation with the local authorities. […] The creation and operation of refugee and migrant housing structures should be undertaken in cooperation with the Municipalities. […] it should be ensured that they meet the standards required by UNHCR and that they will only accommodate as many refugees and migrants as their capacities allow. (Conclusions of the Local Administrations’ Conference, Samos, June 2016).

A very prominent theme from the interviews, which relates to the local actors’ sense of marginalization, has been the lack of information. Around the time of the EU-Turkey statement many local level’s position changed from frustration toward the absence of the EU and the national level to mistrust.

We are not informed about the intentions of the government or the EU. For example, the EU-Turkey statement was announced last moment. And this creates a huge issue of trust. […] The local political climate would be much more positive if we had a trustworthy channel of information from the higher levels. (Mayor, Chios, June 2017)

Especially for the island of Chios, the hotspot approach became a point of contestation. A group of locals has been protesting against the EU politics and UNHCR outside the hotspot since its inauguration and until 2018. They did not allow any infrastructure improvement by blocking the entrance to any vehicles carrying construction material or workers. At the time I was conducting observations there were banners hanging around their booth next to the entrance with messages such as “We do not want the Europeans to rule our island”. This is a clear example of local contestation against the European and the national politics implemented at the island. This contestation in turn affects both the way that locals view the refugee issue but also the possibility to improve reception conditions.

The real problems with the local society started after the EU-Turkey agreement. Because there were many refugees left in the island, and the infrastructure was not there. The conditions were very bad… 15 months later and still nothing works properly (Vice-Mayor Chios, June 2017).

This section provided many examples of contestation as a result of the dispersal of power in a multilevel system. This was expressed as solidarity to refugees in the form of filling the gap that the government and the EU left but also as protesting and inhibiting the implementation of the EU policies which were enforced without consultation.

Interactions and lack of interactions at the local level: the rationales behind different manifestations of contestation

In this section I look at the rationales behind local interactions or lack of interactions. Multilevel governance studies on migration policy making discuss the horizontal relations between actors in the local level (Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020). Lack of interaction has been less discussed and the rationales behind the lack of interaction remains underexplored. In my material the relations between actors both horizontally and vertically imply that actors might chose to not interact because of contestation. The question of who is opposing or supporting what and why, is key in unraveling the rationales of the actors. Moving further from the binary between “us” locals/natives and the migrant/refugee “other” I try to locate the rationales behind the friction which produces the othering narratives. This adds to the existing literature on contestation on refugee reception policies by exploring potential factors in the form of rationales.

The local community is in solidarity but they are under pressure themselves…and it then becomes easy to blame the refugees when actually the problem is the government (Local Politician from the opposition, Chios June 2017).

I can understand that the locals are not against refugees. They are just scared. The island has an economy which is based solely on tourism. Most tourist businesses has high debt. Now they are afraid that they will go bankrupt if tourists stop coming. It is not about the refugees. It is about their survival (Hotspot manager, Kos, October 2017).

While conducting fieldwork I soon realized that for this case the othering narratives toward refugees were not as many as one would expect. In most occasions that locals expressed their frustration toward refugees, the situation was connected to a larger mismanagement issue, such as the complete lack of accommodation facilities or the financial uncertainty. The grievances I recorded were directed toward wider interactions and multiple “others”. It became clear that opening up the study to interactions or lack of interactions between more actors allows for a more complex understanding of contestation in refugee reception policies.

Interestingly, during fieldwork I encountered a lot more negative affect toward the European “other” than toward the refugees. Especially toward the north Europeans who were depicted by many interviewees as trying to escape their responsibility toward refugees. At the same time, the local actors expressed a need to defend themselves against the othering they have been receiving for many years from north Europeans. Greece has been always the “laggard” in Europe in relation to asylum and migration. The failure to provide effective protection to refugees resulted in the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights ruling against Dublin transfers to Greece due to the inhumane conditions for asylum seekers (McDonough & Tsourdi, 2012; Moreno-Lax, 2012).

All these years Greece has been condemned for detaining migrants and for the situation in Pagani, in Amygdalesa (detention centers) etc. and now when the problem is on their own doorstep, you see how they react. Look at Denmark and their new law¹ […] The Belgian minister encouraged us to do push-backs. […] They are threatening Greece with a suspension of Schengen, while it is not only us controlling the border. There are boats patrolling from all over Europe; Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, Finland (Coastguard, Lesbos, January 2016).

Besides the overall moral supremacy of the Greeks compared to the Northern Europeans, that the interviewees expressed, I recorded some individual grievances which were based on the different working conditions for the Greek administrators compared to their European colleagues who were seconded through the European Agencies to assist Greece in implementing the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). These examples are especially illuminating when trying to understand how and why the European intervention has been contested at the local level.

Most of the police officers who work on migration did not have a single day off in two months. They work seven days a week. […] They are getting the worst treatment and the lowest salaries in Europe (Police officer, Lesvos, June 2015).

Frontex staff get 80 €per patrol. The Greek coast guards get 13 €per three patrols. If they do two patrols, they don’t get any [money]. Greece doesn’t have money to pay us equally but we are doing the same job. Through EU money they should be able to pay us the same as Frontex staff (Coastguard, Lesbos, January 2016).

At the same time the European agents who were seconded to Greece arrived with a whole set of perceptions on how to operate which are based on their own cultural and professional background.

FRONTEX takes part in the coordination meetings. FRONTEX wants them only in English while the Greek authorities want them only in Greek. There are tensions and riots at the camps. EASO experts from two different countries said it is not safe for them to work at the hotspot. We are trying at the coordination meetings to establish respect amongst the actors and to make sure that the internationals who come to work in the hotspot respect the Greek authorities (EU agent, Lesbos, September 2016).

Another group of “others” identified by local governmental authorities was the international NGOs. Although there is a clear understanding and appreciation of the work that NGOs done in relation to developing and sustaining refugee reception facilities, many started to be skeptical of the way that international NGOs work.

The biggest problem is caused by the NGOs. No one controls them. In order to legitimize their presence, they are publishing photos and news, and sometimes even altered, “fake” news. This is problematic for us who are trying to restore the image of the island in order to maintain the tourism […] (Chair of the tourist association, Lesbos, January 2016).

[…]ever since the management of the situation went to the NGOs, there are problems. Each of them (NGOs) tried to harvest the benefits. We were amazed with the photos they took. I never took a photo with a baby in my arms. I was saving them but I never took a photo. […] We, at the municipality, did not have the resources or the infrastructure to accommodate the people arriving. […] So, I have to recognize the important work of the NGOs. (Chair of local council at the north of the island, Lesbos, January 2016).

Overall, the case of the local reception of refugees at the islands shows how in a humanitarian emergency with a multitude of actors the group dynamics become very complex. It goes beyond the idea of conflict between natives and refugees and this is a very important finding because it allows us to escape the established notion of locals competing with refugees over resources. Although the Greek financial crisis took a high toll on the local population (Serntedakis, 2017) and deprived them from many public services, it did not prevent them from showing solidarity with the refugees.

Conclusion

This article provides an empirical and analytical contribution in relation to refugee reception in the EU and at the local level while it also contributes to a growing body of literature on this issue (Bendel et al., 2019; Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020; Doomernik & Glorius, 2016; Fouskas, 2019; Glorius & Doomernik, 2020) by engaging with the question of how various actors engaged in and reacted to refugee reception practices in a multi-level governance setting at the main island entry points to the EU from the east. Extensive fieldwork during a period of over 3 years revealed that local actors’ behaviors and their engagement with refugee reception has evolved. As the analysis shown the increasingly restrictive asylum policies at the national and the European levels as well as the rapid deterioration of living conditions for refugees in the hotspots has funneled contestation. This finding is in line with and it brings the governance perspective to a recent study looking at the ways that the solidarity movement at the Aegean islands has been impeded by the increased securitization of the sea borders after the EU-Turkey Statement (Fotaki, 2021). Moreover, it adds to our understanding of the recent escalation of contestation as it has been expressed during the events of the burning of Moria camp in September 2020 and the protests which followed it (Cossé, 2020).

Although the contestation between divergent political agendas at the different levels has been explored by research into the local turn in migration policies in Europe, this case study brings to the forefront the role of the various actors. In line with the concept of “battleground” (Ambrosini, 2020; Campomori & Ambrosini, 2020) this article shows how contestation among actors with different interests in the case of the Greek islands can be better studied with the inclusion of an analysis of their interactions and with the addition of an emphasis on their rationales. Interview material reveals that local level contestation toward the EU and the Greek state took different forms according to the different rationales of the local actors. For instance, some actors successfully jumped levels such as in the case of Leros where the civil society bypassed its local government counterparts and directly cooperated with the national government. Others, formulated horizontal networks such as in the case of the conference organized by the islands’ municipalities in order to claim some authority in the national agenda setting.

This study shows that the overarching question on whether multilevel governance arrangements can produce a more effective form of governing and how this can be achieved has much more complex answers than has previously been recognized. A main finding is that whether the local level will engage or not in refugee reception depends on their perception of problem solving. For the local governments of Kos and Samos for instance not engaging has been their strategy of problem solving.

Another important observation is that there is a multitude of intergroup relationships at the local level which are worth studying. There is some well-established research focusing on the phenomenon of NIMBY (not in my back yard) (van Alphen et al., 2011) which addresses the negative attitudes of locals toward refugees. In my research at the Greek border islands, the group of locals had a lot more grievances toward the European “others” and the international NGO “others” than toward the refugees. This is also related to the ongoing austerity in Greece and the ways that multiple crises have been fueling a longstanding Euroscepticism (Halikiopoulou et al., 2012; Vasilopoulou, 2018).

The different local responses at the Greek islands in the area of refugee reception can be better understood through analyzing the rationales of the actors in relation to their responses. It becomes evident that in order to reduce local contestation in the area of refugee reception it is necessary to allow consultation with both local governments and civil society in the policy making processes. Overall, all the local actors agreed that in order to improve conditions at the islands for refugees the EU-Turkey statement and the way it is implemented through the geographical restriction needs to be changed. While refugees are trapped in the island of first arrival for prolonged periods, efforts to improve living conditions are hampered by overcrowding and frustration. These findings complement existing literature on the hotspots in Italy and Greece which is focusing more on the management of refugees and their agency in navigating the increasingly restrictive asylum system (de Vries & Guild, 2019; Tazzioli, 2018).

Notes

1 Denmark in 2015 passed a law prohibiting family reunification for Syrians for up to three years since their arrival. For details, see Tommas Gammeltoft-Hansen analysis (2017).