Potential and Limits of Municipal Solidarity with Refugees: A Case Study of the Greek Island of Tilos

Abstract

This article discusses the potential and limits of municipal solidarity with refugees to offer solutions to some of the acute problems caused by the lack of international and intra-European Union (EU) solidarity. It focuses on the Greek island of Tilos, which in contrast to the nearby hotspot islands has developed a reception model that safeguards refugees’ rights, preserves social cohesion, and contributes to local development. The article shows that spontaneous expressions of municipal solidarity can be gradually transformed into sustained commitment to refugee reception, and highlights the opportunity that municipal solidarity opens up for strengthening refugee protection in the EU.

Keywords:

• municipal solidarity
• refugees
• refugee reception
• hotspot approach
• Tilos
• Greece

Introduction

In 2016, Ban Ki-Moon famously remarked that the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ was not a crisis of numbers, but a crisis of solidarity (2016). With this succinct but insightful phrase, the then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General highlighted the lack of solidarity with refugees on behalf of the Member States of the European Union (EU), which were intensely introducing measures to prevent further arrivals on their territory (Koca, 2019). At the same time, his words also echoed the solidarity deficit between Member States, which was evident in the reluctance or even straightforward refusal of some governments to take part in the relocation of asylum seekers from Greece and Italy (Bauböck, 2018).

Six years on, this twofold crisis of solidarity continues to shape the EU refugee protection system. Its consequences are perhaps nowhere more apparent than on the Greek islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros, and Kos, which had the misfortune of becoming a testing ground for the implementation of the hotspot approach (Dimitriadi, 2017). In combination with the EU-Turkey Statement from March 2016 and the geographical restriction of movement for newly arriving migrants imposed soon after, the hotspot approach effectively turned the aforementioned islands from places of transit into open-air prisons (Bousiou, 2020; Iliadou, 2019). The slow processing of asylum requests led to prolonged confinement in overcrowded reception facilities with substandard conditions, creating a fertile ground for the routine violation of migrants’ human rights (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2019). Over time, this also brought a dramatic shift in the attitude of the local islanders toward refugees (Fotaki, 2022; Siegel, 2019). The erstwhile Nobel Peace Prize contenders for their warm welcome to displaced people (Schoenbauer, 2016) have more recently made news for repeated outbursts of xenophobia, violence against migrants, attacks on aid workers, and clashes with the authorities in Athens over the construction of new reception centers (Kitsantonis, 2018; Smith, 2020; Refugee Support Aegean, Refugee Support Aegean, 2020). In effect, the crisis of solidarity in the EU translated into a local humanitarian, human rights, and social cohesion crisis on the Greek hotspot islands (Papataxiarchis, 2020).

In view of the challenges related to increased refugee arrivals, scholars have recently departed from the narrow state-centric understanding of solidarity in the refugee system and have highlighted solidarity expressions below and beyond the national level of government (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Okafor, 2021). Individuals, civil society, subnational governments, and transnational networks, they argue, often fill the gaps in refugee protection left (or created) by national authorities (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Bauder, 2021; Rea et al., 2019; Vandevoordt, 2019). Particularly intriguing in this respect are examples of municipal policy activism and local policy innovation in the field of reception and integration recorded in different EU countries (Bazurli, 2019; Garcés-Mascareñas & Gebhardt, 2020; Sabchev, 2021a). Such expressions of municipal solidarity—defined here as institutional solidarity at the local level of government—have the potential to turn into sustainable refugee protection solutions, which safeguard newcomers’ fundamental rights, enjoy democratic legitimacy, preserve social cohesion, and benefit local communities in the long run (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Bazurli et al., 2021; Sabchev, 2021b).

In this context, the present article explores the potential and limits of municipal solidarity with refugees. To this end, the article focuses on the case of Tilos: a small Greek island with just about 500 permanent residents situated a few miles from the Turkish coast. In the period 2014–2015, Tilos provided humanitarian assistance to approximately 6000 migrants who landed on its shores seeking refuge.¹ Unlike other Aegean islands, which at the time received operational support from international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign volunteers, Tilos had to rely almost exclusively on the good will of its residents, its Coast Guard that had no vessels, its three police officers, and its heavily indebted municipality. In 2016, the municipality used a grant from an international foundation to set up a small ‘hospitality center’ for the temporary reception of asylum seekers (Municipality of Tilos, 2016). This marked the beginning of Tilos’ reception model, which provided decent accommodation, language classes, and job opportunities to newcomers, as well as access to formal education to their children (BBC (Producer), 2017; Georges, 2017). Fatigue and xenophobia seem absent from the island (Diniakos, Diniakos, 2017; Felanis, 2021; Giannopoulos, 2018), and locals are largely in favor of the presence of asylum seekers, which has also had a positive spillover effect on the local economy (Ioannou & Savvidou, 2019). Oddly enough, while the nearby hotspot islands seem to be cursed by virtue of their geography (Papataxiarchis, 2020), Tilos appears to have benefited by it (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Tilos and the Aegean hotspot islands.

Against the backdrop of the solidarity crisis in the EU and its ramifications on the Greek hotspot islands, the case of Tilos appears highly relevant to both academic and policy debates on refugee reception. However, in contrast to the hotspot islands that have attracted a myriad of researchers and ‘disasterologists’ (Siegel, 2019, pp. 6–8), it has remained largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, I present evidence form desk and field research, and trace back Tilos’ history of assisting refugees to the very first arrival of ‘boat people’ in 2010. I use the conceptual lens of solidarity to analyze the way locals and municipal authorities managed to gradually develop the island’s reception model, which provided dignified living conditions to newcomers, preserved social cohesion, and contributed to local development. The article contributes to the growing literature on municipal solidarity with refugees in two ways: first, by highlighting the important role of mayors in transforming spontaneous solidarity initiatives into sustained local approaches to refugee reception; and second, by arguing that the ultimate success or failure of municipal solidarity expressions that seek to advance refugee rights inevitably remains contingent on the good will of national governments. From a practical perspective, the article emphasizes the potential of municipal solidarity to open up new opportunities for remedying some of the shortcomings of the dysfunctional EU refugee protection system, which currently fails to meet human rights standards in frontline states like Greece.

In the next section, I elaborate on the problems stemming from the lack of international and intra-EU solidarity in refugee protection, and on the recent rise of (transnational) municipal solidarity as an opportunity to adequately address at least some of these problems. Subsequently, I briefly explain the research methodology, followed by a detailed presentation of Tilos’ history of municipal solidarity with refugees. In the final section, I discuss the implications of the study focusing on the potential and limits of municipal solidarity in the EU refugee protection system.

International and EU solidarity deficiencies and the promises of municipal solidarity with refugees

To start with the ‘big picture’, two seemingly insurmountable deficiencies have been shaping the global refugee protection system for decades: the lack of solidarity with refugees on behalf of individual States, and the lack of international (or intergovernmental) solidarity in addressing the consequences of forced displacement. De jure, refugees are entitled to non-refoulement and a number of socio-economic rights (Hathaway, 2021). De facto, however, States largely fail to adhere to international refugee and human rights law (Betts & Collier, 2017; Cantor, 2017; Hathaway & Neve, 1997). Highly effective and ever more sophisticated non-entrée policies—often well-disguised as ‘international cooperation’ arrangements—ensure that undesired refugees are kept outside the jurisdiction of wealthier Global North States at any cost (Gammeltoft-Hansen & Hathaway, 2015; Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2014). At the same time, geographical proximity, rather than equitable burden-sharing, has become the main determinant of responsibility for refugees, the vast majority of whom are hosted by less developed countries in the Global South (Chimni, 2018). The result is a dysfunctional refugee system, which deprives most people in need of protection from access to basic rights, and often puts them in direct conflict with host country populations (Betts & Collier, 2017).

The 2015–2016 ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe unequivocally showed that these two deficiencies are not extraneous to the EU regional refugee system either. In theory, refugee protection here is strengthened by the extensive EU asylum acquis (Moreno-Lax, 2017a), and solidarity between Member States is elevated from an abstract principle to a ‘hard’ legal obligation by virtue of Article 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (Moreno-Lax, 2017b). In practice, however, the sobering experience of the last few years is telling. Following 2015s increased arrivals, Member States introduced more restrictive asylum laws, policies, and practices (Gruber, 2017; Kreichauf, 2020), and some of them abruptly violated EU asylum legislation (European Commission v. Hungary, C808-18). In their attempts to avoid responsibility for refugee protection, Member States outsourced it to third countries, such as Turkey and Libya, through quasi-legal bilateral and multilateral agreements (Giuffré, 2017). At the same time, rather than equally distributed, the responsibility for refugee reception continues being disproportionately shouldered by frontline countries. Illustrative in this respect is the disappointing outcome of the two ‘mandatory’ relocation schemes adopted by the European Council in 2015, which resulted in the transfer of less than 30,000 (out of the envisioned 160,000) asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other Member States in the course of 2 years (Šelo-Šabić, 2017). In addition, the mandatory and yet flexible solidarity mechanism proposed in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum does little to improve the situation in such frontline countries (Bendel, 2021; Karageorgiou, 2021). Despite the limited success of a more recent small-scale voluntary relocation scheme (International Organisation for Migration, 2021), it is evident that the EU refugee system—just like the global one—is characterized by lack of solidarity.

This lack of intra-EU solidarity, however, has far-reaching on-the-ground consequences. It triggers a domino reaction, which ultimately leads to offloading global and regional problems to some unfortunate localities, where refugees’ rights are systematically violated and social cohesion is gradually undermined. The example of the Greek hotspot islands eloquently illustrates this process (Papataxiarchis, 2020). In theory, the post-2015 EU approach to migration governance would provide dignified reception conditions on these islands, fair asylum process, and smooth returns to Turkey of those who would not qualify for international protection (European Commission, 2015; European Council, 2016). In practice, the hotspots became notoriously infamous for inadequate access to even basic sanitation facilities and violation of fundamental human rights, despite the huge resources invested in them (Danish Refugee Council, 2017; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2019). Local communities on the Greek islands were forced to ‘lift the burden’ of an artificially created permanent ‘refugee crisis’ on their territory, which negatively affected their social cohesion, economy, and reputation (Fotaki, 2022; Ivanov & Stavrinoudis, 2018; Papataxiarchis, 2020; Siegel, 2019), and fueled intense conflicts with the national authorities in Athens (Kitsantonis, 2018). In hindsight, the lack of solidarity between EU Member States translated into a migration policy approach that incites social and political conflicts, and falls short of human rights standards.

In this context, new expressions of solidarity with refugees below and beyond the nation-state level have gained momentum all over Europe (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Cantat & Feischmidt, 2019; Heimann et al., 2019; Kousis et al., 2020; Shutes & Ishkanian, 2022). Examples include autonomous citizens’ initiatives (Fouskas, 2019; Rozakou, 2016), civil society mobilizations (Oikonomakis, 2018; Schnyder & Shawki, 2020; Vandevoordt, 2019; Guma et al., 2019), transnational solidarity mobilizations (Kanellopoulos et al., 2021), and policies and practices of subnational authorities (Glorius & Doomernik, 2020), which aim at safeguarding and fulfilling refugees’ rights. While often overlooked in the past for their limited impact on the refugee protection system at large, such expressions of solidarity have more recently become a major ray of light in the rather bleak international ‘solidarity tapestry’, with municipalities having a substantial merit in this (Okafor, 2021).

Municipal solidarity with refugees manifested itself in different forms and contexts all over Europe in the aftermath of 2015s increased arrivals. Large cities and small towns alike were at the forefront of developing innovative and rights-based approaches, both in the initial ‘sprint’ of reception, and in the subsequent ‘marathon’ of integration (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2018; Geuijen et al., 2020; Sabchev, 2021a, Sabchev, 2021b).² They covered gaps in the provision of adequate shelter and services, at times surpassing their legal competences, and at times even defying national laws and policies (Oomen et al., 2022). Often building upon local autonomous and civil society mobilizations (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Della Porta, 2018), municipal governments promoted a culture of hospitality and welcome, and developed pragmatic solutions to support newly arrived refugees (Bazurli, 2019). In sum, the experience of the last few years unequivocally demonstrates the potential of municipal solidarity to generate approaches to refugee reception and integration that seek to preserve social cohesion and conform with international and European human rights standards.

Importantly, rather than being confined to the administrative boundaries of a given locality, some expressions of municipal solidarity extend to refugees residing in other municipalities, or even in other countries (Bauder, 2021; Schwiertz & Steinhilper, 2021). Such transnational municipal solidarity engagements have directly addressed the aforementioned deficiencies of the EU regional refugee system. In 2016, for instance, the mayors of Athens and Barcelona established the ‘Solidarity Cities’ initiative, and proposed a city-to-city relocation scheme that would transfer asylum seekers from the (overburdened at the time) former to the latter municipality (Garcés-Mascareñas & Gebhardt, 2020). More recently, initiatives like ‘Seebrücke’ and ‘From Sea to the City’ that unite local civil society and public authorities from a number of Member States, have called for the direct relocation of refugees from hotspots in frontline countries to municipalities across the EU (Schwiertz & Steinhilper, 2021). In a similar vein, the majority of Dutch municipal councils supported a proposal for the transfer of unaccompanied refugee minors from the Greek islands to the Netherlands (Oomen & Miellet, 2020). While such expressions of transnational municipal solidarity are neither a strictly novel, nor an exclusively European development (e.g., the ‘Cities of Solidarity’ programme in Latin America, see Varoli, 2010), they have grown exponentially in recent times in the EU (Lacroix, 2021; Oomen, 2020).

Thus, against the backdrop of international and EU solidarity deficiencies, municipal solidarity with refugees emerges as a potential new ‘basis for shaping social and political alternatives’ (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019, p. 123). Municipal solidarity seems to offer sustainable solutions to at least some of the problems generated by the lack of solidarity between Member States. For instance, it can translate into rights-based local policy responses, calls for more equitable burden sharing, and attempts to avoid the emergence of local crises destructive for the wellbeing of refugees and host communities alike. To be sure, this is not to say that no central government has shown practical solidarity with refugees, or that all municipalities are willing to welcome refugees. One could recall, among others, the response of Germany’s federal government to the increased arrivals in 2015, or the proliferation in Italy of local policies of exclusion that explicitly target asylum seekers (Ambrosini, 2020). Nevertheless, the two general trends highlighted above—the international and EU solidarity deficiencies, on the one hand, and the rise of municipal solidarity, on the other—can be clearly identified in the recent migration and refugee scholarship (Bauder, 2021, pp. 2–5). Be it because of local pragmatism, pressures from civil society, political contention, self-interest, or yet other reasons (Bauder, 2021), municipalities have been increasingly developing policy solutions that respect refugees’ rights, benefit local communities, and crucially, also enjoy the support of local electorates.

Despite its potential to provide remedies for some of the pressing problems related to refugee protection in the EU, municipal solidarity has been so far widely neglected, or in some cases even met with hostility by national governments. The aforementioned relocation of refugees between Athens and Barcelona, for instance, was halted by the Spanish government (Garcés-Mascareñas & Gebhardt, 2020). The Dutch government on its behalf relocated just two unaccompanied minors from Greece, even though municipalities across the country expressed their willingness to welcome and accommodate five hundred (Broekers-Knol, 2021, p. 2). Such examples demonstrate that Member States directly counter expressions of municipal solidarity rather than taking advantage of the opportunities they open up, as some scholars have suggested (Bendel et al., 2019; Sabchev & Baumgärtel, 2020).

In the context of the juxtaposition between the EU solidarity deficiencies and municipal solidarity with refugees, Tilos constitutes a compelling case study. Tilos is a small and remote island with very limited resources. Until a decade ago, it had not experienced any spontaneous refugee arrivals. In the period 2014–2015, however, local volunteers and the municipal authorities organized the temporary reception of several thousand refugees, without receiving almost any external assistance (Carter, 2014; Sotirchou, 2015). Subsequently, Tilos was not subjected to the migration policy approach implemented on the hotspot islands, thus avoiding the aforementioned consequences of the lack of intra-EU solidarity. Instead, the municipality of Tilos developed its own reception model that provided adequate conditions to asylum seekers and, at the same time, brought benefits to the local community (Ioannou & Savvidou, 2019).³ Moreover, the municipality developed a transnational link with a small Swiss town, which contributed to newcomers’ integration and enhanced the island’s visibility and economy.⁴ Before presenting in detail the history of Tilos’ municipal solidarity with refugees, I briefly elaborate on the methodology of the study.

Methodology

I learned about Tilos’ refugee reception model during field research on the Greek mainland in the autumn of 2018. The case was described by representatives of other municipalities, NGOs, and international organizations as a rather unique for the Greek context example of successful co-existence between refugees and locals.

To explore the history, potential promises, and pitfalls of Tilos’ solidarity with refugees, I used a qualitative case study research design (Rohlfing, 2012). I applied several data collection methods over an extended period of time, which comprised of four stages:

1. An initial desk research started in December 2018, including the review of municipal council proceedings and decisions, publicly available interviews of Tilos’ mayor⁵, publications in Greek and international media (see for example Carter, 2014; Georges, 2017; BBC (Producer), 2017), and practitioners’ accounts of the island’s reception model (Ioannou & Savvidou, 2019). This resulted in the preliminary reconstruction of Tilos’ history of refugee reception, and the identification of its protagonists.

2. A subsequent two-week field research on Tilos in April-May 2019, which included interviews with eight individuals directly involved in the reception of refugees on the island (Table 1). While the field research was relatively short, the small size of Tilos facilitated my access to a large amount of information obtained through informal conversations with local Greeks, immigrants residing permanently on the island, and local shopkeepers. Importantly, the majority of my interlocutors were either directly or indirectly involved in the reception of refugees through volunteering, provision of humanitarian assistance, donation of goods, etc. Nevertheless, the study was limited by the temporary absence of asylum seekers on the island at the time of the field research, for reasons explained in the next section.

   Table 1. List of interviews.

   ID	Location	Date	Interviewee	Language
   T1	Tilos	19 April 2019	School teacher and volunteer at ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’	Greek
   T2	Tilos	29 April 2019	Two local volunteers providing humanitarian assistance to migrants in the period 2014-2015	English
   T3	Tilos	30 April 2019	Deputy Mayor	Greek
   T4	Tilos	30 April 2019	Municipal councilor, former employee at ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’	Greek
   T5	Tilos	30 April 2019	Local volunteer, former employee at ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’	Greek
   T6	Tilos	1 May 2019	Mayor of Tilos	Greek
   T7	Tilos	3 May 2019	President of the Municipal Council and volunteer in the first reception of refugees in 2014-2015	Greek
   T8	Online	1 April 2021	Mayor of Tilos (follow-up interview)	Greek
   T9	Online	6 May 2021	NGO representative working on the ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’ project	Greek
   T10	Online	8 May 2021	Municipal councilor, Municipality of Meinier, Switzerland (answers in written form)	French

3. The field research on Tilos resulted also in the identification of social media as a pivotal source of new data, which led to a second desk research starting in June 2019. In particular, some of my interviewees and interlocutors indicated that their Facebook Timelines, as well as some Facebook groups, can be used as a digital archive to obtain further information about the events taking place on the island. Indeed, the application of the ‘scroll-down method’ (Robards & Lincoln, 2017) uncovered very detailed primary (e.g., photos, arrival numbers, etc.) and secondary data (e.g., links to previously undetected publications in local, national, and international media). I continued following closely the subsequent developments on the island through the numerous contacts made during the field research.

4. Lastly, three additional interviews were conducted in May 2021 (Table 1). These interviews filled the remaining gaps in information around the origins and evolution of Tilos’ reception model, and provided an update on recent developments.

The interview transcripts, field notes, relevant social media publications, and secondary sources were all incorporated into NVivo 11, systematically reviewed, and coded using both deductive and inductive approach. The longitudinal collection of data from different sources facilitated the extensive use of triangulation to ensure the reliability of the information. In essence, my analysis resembled an investigative work that connected the different pieces of evidence, reconstructed the history of the island’s reception model, and uncovered the driving forces behind and the consequences of Tilos’ solidarity with refugees.

Tilos: An island of (transnational) (municipal) solidarity with refugees

Oddly enough, the origins of Tilos’ extraordinary story are rooted in the island’s ordinary problems. Being quite small and remote from larger islands and the Greek mainland alike has chronically hindered its development. In the beginning of the 1990s, its population had dropped to just 270 people residing in its two main villages: Livadia, where Tilos’ port is located, and the inland Megalo Chorio (Figure 2). With the lack of basic services, economic opportunities, and interest for investment on behalf of the central government, local decline seemed irreversible.

Figure 2. Map of Tilos.

Nevertheless, an ambitious and rather progressive mayor took over in 1995, changing dramatically Tilos’ future. During his mandate, the municipality heavily invested in infrastructure projects and bought its own ferry that connected Tilos to the closest large island of Rhodes on a daily basis, thus facilitating locals’ access to hospital and services. In an attempt to revitalize the local community, the municipality opened a high school and promoted tourism by turning the entire island into a protected area. The strategy of the visionary mayor was quite costly, but at the same time successful; families who had emigrated started returning, and new Greeks and foreigners settled on Tilos. As a result, within just three decades, the locally registered population increased to over 800 residents, approximately 500 of whom lived permanently on the island. At that time, however, a severe economic crisis hit Greece. The heavily indebted municipality of Tilos lost its ferry, tourist arrivals went down, and locals started struggling again with the painful lack of services and opportunities.

It was in this context that Tilos faced its first arrival of refugees. In 2010, a boat with 123 people from Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly half of whom were children, landed on the island’s shores. Under the coordination of the same mayor, who served his fourth consecutive term, locals provided first assistance, food, and shelter to the newcomers. After several days, all refugees were registered at the local Police Office and allowed to leave the island:

We did not have any experience; we had not seen people like this… The truth is that the first time the whole village, the whole island, everyone was on their feet… They put them in a hotel in Livadia, which had no electricity. We [the municipality] took care of it, started the electricity, the water supply, etc. (T7).

Boats with refugees continued landing occasionally on Tilos in the following months, triggering the same humanitarian response of the locals and the municipal authorities (T5, T7). However, after the island’s long-serving mayor passed away in 2012 and a new one took over, refugee arrivals intensified greatly:

There was a day in which 470 people arrived. Three boats. We could not catch up. On a single day. Three boats on a single day… (T7).

Moreover, smugglers often abandoned refugees at remote and hard-to-reach locations. With just three police officers who lacked an appropriate vehicle and a Coast Guard comprised of two officers without any vessels, local residents and the municipality had to cover the gap. In the midst of an economic crisis, they supported dozens of search and rescue operations, using mostly private but also municipal resources to bring refugees to safety at the islands’ port. Newcomers usually spent only a few days on Tilos until they were registered and issued documents, which allowed them to continue their journey to mainland Greece. In the meantime, the only available support from the government was the budget of the police for covering food expenses, which amounted to 5,87 EUR per person per day. With the understaffed police office unable to arrange food provision though, the only way to cope with the situation was to rely on the solidarity of the locals and the limited capacity of the municipal authorities. Paradoxically, in the height of the touristic season, locals were leaving their jobs, ‘taking the boat and running to collect people’, while ‘the president of the municipal council was all day around the cauldron, cooking’ (T6). Lastly, due to the lack of suitable accommodation for all refugees, the municipality arranged the provision of first reception in the yard of the local school and in a local monastery, with the most vulnerable people often being hosted in hotels or private homes.

The situation, however, was gradually becoming more and more difficult to manage. While a relatively small core group of locals continued shouldering almost entirely the humanitarian assistance to hundreds of refugees, the unabated arrivals and the lack of adequate support from the central state started generating a visible discontent in others, who were concerned about the potential negative consequences on local tourism. Faced with this issue, Tilos’ mayor repeatedly requested from the Greek government to fund the creation of a local humanitarian assistance center, which would provide adequate conditions to refugees during the time they spent on the island (Municipality of Tilos, 2014). Particularly acute were the problems caused by the chronic lack of healthcare personnel, with Tilos remaining at times without any doctor at all (Municipality of Tilos, 2015). Despite some initial central government commitments, however, and even though the municipality had found an appropriate site for the suggested reception facility, no funds arrived.

More than a year later, and with refugee arrivals not slowing down, Tilians realized that they should look for an alternative solution. They organized several online donation campaigns, and used the collected funds and materials to remodel an ex-military site in Livadia, turning it into a small reception center with basic facilities. This approach to financing humanitarian initiatives was widespread on the Aegean islands in 2015, where local ‘solidarians’ struggled to provide first reception to thousands of refugees with very limited support from the central state (Rozakou, 2016, p. 185; Oikonomakis, 2018). Increasingly frustrated, neglected by the national authorities, and facing backlash, local residents and the municipality of Tilos seemed to be reaching a breaking point.

At that time, a turnaround marking the beginning of Tilos’ municipal reception model occurred. The humanitarian emergency on the Aegean islands had attracted not only international attention and volunteers, but also voluminous public and private funding (Oikonomakis, 2018; Papataxiarchis, 2016). The mayor of Tilos saw the opportunity lying in the crisis, and quickly capitalized on the solidarity with refugees that locals had shown. Using Tilos’ reputation as a solidarity island that had welcomed and assisted thousands of refugees, she managed to obtain two grants from a Greek NGO that administered international private funds. The first, and relatively small grant, covered for the presence of a doctor and a nurse on the island, thus meeting the needs of both refugees and locals. The second, and relatively large grant, served for the construction of ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’. The Center consisted of ten furnished prefabricated container houses with electricity, hot water, air conditioning, Wi-Fi, and separate showers and toilets. It also included a large kitchen facility where refugees could prepare their meals, a common area with a TV and computers, and a playground. Importantly, the grant resulted in the creation of six new jobs, and the purchase of a new minivan, which although initially intended to serve exclusively the needs of refugees, was subsequently used to enhance the island’s public transport in the busy summer months. In this way, the mayor of Tilos skillfully managed to improve the reception conditions of refugees, minimize the potential negative effects on local businesses, and provide for the needs of the local community. The tangible benefits that her actions brought to Tilians tamed the growing fears, showed that solidarity with refugees is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and justified the local government’s support to newcomers.

Following the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016, refugee arrivals to Greece dropped sharply. At the same time, however, the main Aegean islands of arrival turned from transit areas into places of prolonged confinement, where newcomers had to await the results of their asylum applications in overcrowded hotspots (Dimitriadi, 2017). Similarly, border closures across Europe had trapped tens of thousands of refugees on the Greek mainland, with the central government hastily looking for sites that could serve as large reception facilities (Sabchev, 2021b, p. 11). Ironically enough, it was the municipality of Tilos that responded to the government’s calls for support. After a unanimous decision, the municipal council notified the responsible Ministry that ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’ was empty and ready to host ten families of asylum seekers. Furthermore, the municipal councilors emphasized that ‘large reception facilities are problematic both for the dignified reception of refugees and for local communities’, and called upon other municipalities to follow their example (Municipality of Tilos, 2016). Importantly, the aim of the initiative was ‘not only the reception and hospitality of those families, but also their smooth integration into the local community’ (Municipality of Tilos, 2016).

Greek municipalities, however, had no mandate to directly manage the reception of asylum seeker, nor they were eligible to directly access the available EU funding, which was administered at the time by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (Sabchev, 2021a). To resolve this stalemate, the municipality of Tilos teamed up with the NGO that had financed its Hospitality Center. The partnership resulted in a pilot project that extended far beyond the mere provision of reception, and envisioned the long-term co-existence of locals and refugees on the island. The project foresaw the development of new services available to both groups, and the recruitment of a number of employees who would not only run the reception center, but would also assist the municipality where needed. The ambition of the mayor was that after an initial period in the center, newcomers would find jobs, gain back their independence, move into houses, and settle permanently on Tilos. Although the project was significantly more expensive than the reception of asylum seekers in other parts of the country, it was funded by the UNHCR because it was considered a promising pilot that could be tested on Tilos and then implemented in other areas (T10).

Soon after, the first asylum seekers were transferred from the hotspot islands to ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’, which provided fifty reception places in total. In line with the idea of connecting reception with local development, thirteen new employees—either local residents or emigrants who decided to return because of the job opportunity—were hired as teachers, social workers, and maintenance workers. This was particularly helpful for the indebted municipality that had struggled in the past to pay its own employees (T6). In addition, all five local supermarkets benefited from providing food and other supplies to the Center. At the same time, the newcomer families received more individualized support than asylum seekers in lager reception facilities. All children were enrolled into the regular school system, and Greek and English language classes were available to them and their parents (T1). Local volunteers regularly visited the Hospitality Center and provided additional activities to its residents, such as music and dancing classes (T1, T5). Importantly, forty per cent of the adult asylum seekers hosted in the Center found employment in the hospitality sector during the summer months, which facilitated the development of social relationships with the locals (Ioannou & Savvidou, 2019). This was possible due to the mediation of the municipality (T2), but also because some employers preferred hiring the already available newcomers, rather than searching for seasonal workers:

Employers, just like my brother, were happy to find a person here on the island, and not to hire one through an agency… Which agencies ask for a lot as well; one needs to pay for employees’ accommodation, food, water… (Τ5).

This initial success put Tilos in direct contrast with the hotspot islands, where asylum seekers lived under squalid conditions (Danish Refugee Council, 2017), tourism had dropped (Ivanov & Stavrinoudis, 2018), and hostility toward migrants had risen (Fotaki, 2022; Siegel, 2019). Tilos, on the contrary, was ‘a flyspeck island that benefited from the refugee arrivals’ (T6). Jobs were created, tourism was growing, and the number of children in the local school reached 20 for the first time since 1970 (ANA-MPA, 2017). Not surprisingly, the solidarity with refugees that locals and the municipality had shown started attracting attention within and beyond Greece. A number of major international media praised Tilos’ reception model (BBC (Producer), 2017; Georges, 2017), and even the popular band ‘U2’ included a couple living at the Hospitality Center in one of their music videos (SolidarityNow, 2017). The mayor of Tilos was invited to present the benefits of hosting asylum seekers at national and international fora. The island’s reception model had eventually turned into ‘the best advertisement, without spending a single euro’ (T4).

Growing visibility soon paid off, albeit in a rather unexpected way. In the end of 2017, a municipal councilor from the small Swiss town of Meinier heard Tilos’ story on the radio. Impressed by Tilians’ solidarity, he decided to support the island’s humanitarian response and local development (T10). He contacted the mayor of Tilos and learned that the main obstacle to newcomers’ long-term local integration was the lack of stable employment in the winter. To overcome this issue, the mayor had previously suggested the creation of a small agricultural cooperative with shareholders both locals and refugees, which would produce the island’s traditional goat cheese and help revive the local primary sector. While the idea had been greeted with enthusiasm by both the national authorities and the UNHCR, practical support had not arrived from anywhere. Ultimately, Meinier City Council decided to allocate part of its humanitarian aid fund for its realization, while the aforementioned municipal councilor contributed further with the organization of fundraising campaigns. The considerable amount of money raised was used for the purchase of a herd of goats, the construction of a stable, and the installation of a small creamery. In addition, an association called Meinier-Tilos was established to supervise and support the progress of the newly founded agricultural cooperative (Municipality of Tilos, 2018).⁶

In the meantime, however, and despite the mayor’s efforts, the transition of asylum seekers from ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’ to independent permanent housing and self-sufficiency had not been achieved. One reason for this was the aforementioned lack of all-year-long stable employment, which prompted even those families who had initially considered settling on the island to relocate—either to other EU countries, or to the Greek mainland (T5, T6). Another reason was that many of the asylum seekers hosted on Tilos already had relatives in Western Europe and wanted to reunite with them. The inability of the mayor to deliver on this aspect of the pilot eventually created frictions between the municipality, the NGO that mediated the access to funds, and the UNHCR. Although the broader benefits for the local community were recognized by all stakeholders, the long-term sustainability of the project was questioned, especially in light of its high cost. Gradually, less asylum seekers were relocated to Tilos, half of the employees of the Hospitality Center was laid off, and in the end of 2018, the project was terminated. Oddly enough, by the time that the municipality managed to obtain a creamery and was ready to put forward its plan to link reception to the development of the local primary sector, asylum seekers were gone.

Notwithstanding some delays, the persistency of Tilos’ mayor eventually brought the restart of the island’s reception model. After negotiations with the Greek Ministry of Migration Policy, the municipality obtained access to EU funding and started directly implementing a new reception project. This time, the arriving asylum seekers were hosted in independent houses and apartments on the island, while ‘Tilos Hospitality Center’ remained empty. The new project—part of the national Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation (ESTIA) program—covered the costs for the accommodation and subsistence of several families, who were also provided access to local services. As in the past, seven new jobs were created for local residents, while asylum seekers managed to find temporary employment, with one of them working at the local creamery (T8). The ‘Tilos’ model’ continued being projected within and beyond Greece as a successful and sustainable practice for refugee reception (Felanis, 2021; NPO (Producer), 2020), and locals’ support for it seem to have strengthened:

In the beginning, there were those of us who said “Yes, at any cost”. There were also [those saying] “Yes, we can manage it”. There were the next 20–30 [per cent] who said, you know, “But how?! They might become more than us. How are we going to manage it? It’s going to be difficult…” etc. And there were 5–10 [per cent] who said “Away [from us]! Why do you want them here?” etc. Now? Now everyone is in favor. Everyone. Everyone. And if anyone has—say one, or two—has a different opinion, they do not dare to come out and say it because the rest would tear them apart… (T8).

However, regardless of the invested funds and efforts, and despite its positive contribution to the well-being of asylum seekers and local Greeks, Tilos’ reception model seems to be approaching its end. The reception places on the island have been recently reduced from 52 to 30, and the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum (2022) has announced the termination of the ESTIA program, which currently finances the accommodation of asylum seekers’ on Tilos, by the end of 2022. As a result, asylum seekers will be no longer hosted in apartments on the island or in other municipalities, but in large reception facilities—either on the hotspot islands or on the Greek mainland.

Discussion and conclusion

The review of Tilos’ case against the parallel developments on the hotspot islands and in the context of the intra-EU solidarity deficit brings several insights into both academic and practitioners’ debates on the potential and limits of (transnational) municipal solidarity with refugees.

As an initial remark, Tilos’ history of solidarity with refugees features a number of intriguing similarities and differences with the nearby hotspot islands. For instance, in both cases, one of the most urgent and frequent question in the initial period of intense arrivals was ‘Where is the government?’ (Siegel, 2019, p. 164). At that time, it was mostly the locals who struggled to provide first reception to thousands of people despite the economic hardship. Subsequently, however, Tilos neither experienced the emergence of a local rescue industry of professional humanitarians (Papataxiarchis, 2016; Bousiou, 2020), nor it hosted a hotspot. After the EU-Turkey deal, Tilians—unlike their fellow Greeks on the hotspot islands—were not asking in despair ‘Where is Europe?’ (Siegel, 2019, p. 164). Due to its smaller scale, Tilos remained in the periphery of the EU and the Greek government’s radar, and managed to develop its own reception model. Just a few years later, when Lesvos, for instance, was facing ‘the greatest crisis’ of its recent history (Papataxiarchis, 2020, p. 23), Tilos was bearing the fruits of its municipal solidarity with refugees.

In this respect, the case of Tilos largely confirms the capacity of municipal solidarity to produce local responses that effectively fill the gaps in refugee protection left or created by central governments (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019). It suggests that even a small, remote, indebted, inexperienced, and at times extremely overburdened municipality can eventually meet the challenges stemming from refugee arrivals in a human rights-conforming way. Perhaps more importantly, the case of Tilos shows that refugee reception—even when it happens at the margins of Europe—is not necessarily a zero-sum game, where the presence of newcomers inevitably translates into a heavy burden for local communities. On the contrary, if timely and properly linked to a local development strategy refugee reception can turn into an opportunity, as Zobel and Krabbe (2021) have recently argued. From this perspective, Tilos’ ‘inventive’ and ‘generative’ municipal solidarity (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019) comes in direct contrast to the proclivity of the international and EU solidarity deficiencies in refugee protection to inflict on-the-ground social, political, and human rights crises, such as the ones on the hotspot islands.

Along these lines, the case of Tilos also highlights the possibility to gradually translate spontaneous expressions of municipal solidarity with refugees into sustained commitment to refugee reception, even in against-all-odds contexts (Sabchev, 2021a). Given the lack of financial and operational support from the central state in the period of intense arrivals, one would expect solidarity to steadily disappear from the vocabulary of Tilians and their municipal authorities (Fotaki, 2022, p.18). On the contrary, solidarity with the refugees landing on the island’s shores persisted, and, in 2016, the municipality even invited the Greek government to send asylum seekers on Tilos. Furthermore, the subsequent evolution of Tilos’ reception model seems to have further reinforced local’s solidarity with refugees. Crucial in this respect appears the stance of the mayor, who tamed locals’ fatigue by skillfully balancing between providing dignified living conditions to newcomers and meeting the needs of the local community in terms of access to jobs and services. The case of Tilos therefore confirms that local political leadership can play a crucial role in refugee reception (Bazurli et al., 2022; Sabchev, 2021b), signaling the need for national governments and EU institutions to increase their collaboration with mayors in this policy area. Ultimately, this would create possibilities for the co-production of better-informed and more sustainable strategies for refugee reception that enhance, rather than undermine social cohesion.

The discussion on the sustainability of municipal solidarity with refugees relates also to the highly interesting and equally significant contribution of the Swiss town of Meinier to strengthening Tilos’ reception model. Meinier’s support for Tilos represents an unusual type of transnational municipal solidarity, which does not typically feature in scholarly and policy debates. Neither it was related to participation in a transnational network (Heimann et al., 2019), nor it was the result of structural factors, such as contentious politics and pressure from grassroots or civil society (Bauder, 2021; Schwiertz & Steinhilper, 2021). Rather, it came about from the initiative of a single individual—Meinier’s municipal councilor—who successfully mobilized both institutional resources and his local community for the benefit of Tilians and refugees alike. The tangible results of the Meinier-Tilos connection suggest that transnational municipal solidarity engagements can make a difference for refugees and local communities, even when such engagements are rather informal and of limited scope. At the same time, however, the case also confirms that such transnational engagements remain highly dependent on decisions taken by national governments, rather than mayors and municipal councilors (e.g., relocating or not asylum seekers to Tilos). Overall, the success or failure of transnational municipal solidarity to shape alternatives to the current dysfunctional EU reception system, remains contingent on the willingness of national governments to allow such alternatives to emerge and develop.

The reference to the relevance of national governments remains inevitable also when discussing the limits of refugee reception and integration initiatives grounded in municipal solidarity. The case of Tilos serves well to illustrate this. For instance, the chronic lack of support from the central government in the period of increased arrivals could eventually lead to very different outcomes on the island, if the mayor had not managed to capitalize on Tilians’ hospitality and access external resources. In addition, the mismatch between asylum seekers’ aspirations (e.g., stable employment, reuniting with family members in Western Europe, etc.) and reality on Tilos posed significant challenges to the eventual successful settlement of newcomers. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Tilos is also home of a number of third-country nationals, including refugees, who arrived and settled there before the recent ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. In this respect, the efforts of the municipality to link reception to local development could be strengthened by using matching mechanisms to identify and relocate to the island asylum seekers who have better prospects of successful long-term integration there (Bansak et al., 2018). In any case, such a scenario, once again, would be feasible only with the sustained commitment and support of national authorities, who are the ultimate decision makers when it comes to refugee relocation.

Overall, the evidence from Tilos suggests that Member States and EU institutions could build upon municipal solidarity expressions to—at least to some extent—mend the dysfunctional EU refugee reception system. In 2015, cities and towns all over Europe spontaneously welcomed refugees and provided for their settlement needs (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2018; Doomernik & Ardon, 2018; Oomen et al., 2022). In many cases, just like on Tilos, the initial spark of municipal solidarity subsequently grew into permanent commitment to refugee reception, and calls on central governments to alleviate the pressure from hotspots and frontline countries (Bauder, 2021). In this respect, municipal solidarity could open up possibilities for developing a new approach to reception in the EU, which would conform with the provisions of international refugee and human rights law, bring benefits to local communities, and enjoy local legitimacy (Bendel et al., 2019). Needless to say, such an approach could be effective and sustainable on a larger scale only if tangibly supported by national governments. While the question of how to systematically scale up expressions of municipal solidarity goes beyond the scope of this article, the fact that over a thousand municipalities across Europe have declared their willingness to welcome and support refugees clearly signals the presence of a fertile ground for such a discussion (Boeselager et al., 2021).

In closing, it should be recognized that Tilos’ specific context limits the generalizability of the insights from the above analysis. Indeed, the events described in this article occurred in a very particular setting. Tilos has a politically progressive municipality and local population that is well-accustomed to hosting dozens of foreign seasonal workers and thousands of foreign tourists every summer. In contrast, small landlocked municipalities in continental Europe are usually more conservative and homogeneous (Haselbacher, 2019). That said, expressions of municipal solidarity with refugees resembling the ones on Tilos have emerged in different EU countries before, during, and after the 2015–2016 ‘refugee crisis’. Many German, French, Spanish, and Italian municipalities, among others, have been welcoming refugees, and have been calling for more support from national governments and a more equitable burden-sharing among EU Member States (Bauder, 2021; Kron & Lebuhn, 2020; Lacroix et al., 2020). While it is clear that municipal solidarity a la Tilos is not the solution to the shortcomings of the EU reception system, it is also clear that the island’s experience—especially when viewed in parallel with the developments on the nearby hotspot islands—exemplifies opportunities that all too often go unseized. Therefore, the potential of (transnational) municipal solidarity to translate into local approaches to reception that fulfill refugees’ rights and benefit local communities certainly merits further attention from scholars and policymakers. In this respect, despite the contextual particularities of Tilos, this case study will hopefully contribute to future research and practitioner debates on municipal solidarity and refugee reception in the EU.

Notes

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research under grant 453-16-001 (‘Cities of Refuge: local governments and the human rights of refugees in Europe’) awarded to prof. dr. Barbara Oomen.

Notes

1 The ratio of local residents versus arriving refugees on Tilos for the indicated period was 1:12. In comparison, the respective ratio on Lesvos for the same period was only 1:5.

2 The phrases ‘sprint of reception’ and ‘marathon of integration’ belong to Ioannis Mouzalas, former Greek Minister for Migration Policy.

3 Greek municipalities have no mandate in refugee reception and have only limited competences in the field of refugee integration (see Sabchev, 2021, p. 2).

4 See https://www.meinier-tilos.com/

5 See for example https://www.rodiaki.gr/article/407463/pws-ginetai-ena-toso-mikro-nhsi-na-kanei-toso-megala-pragmata (January 2019); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG2Nqu_Lkdk (November 2018); and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHLIB69t_1c&t=1s (October 2016).

6 See https://www.meinier-tilos.com/