Grasping the meaning of integration in an era of (forced) mobility: ethnographic insights from an informal refugee camp

ABSTRACT

The European refugee ‘crisis’ changed the migration dynamics of many EU member states. As a result of this mass movement of refugees, the Western Balkan Route was formed. Along this way, temporary settlement camps were created to cater to the needs of people on the move. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork that took place at the port of Piraeus (Athens, Greece) camp. Through insights from participant observation, it brings to the fore imaginaries of movement and inclusion in Central and North-Western European societies along with acts of temporary local integration as a result of arrested mobilities on the ground.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• camp
• imaginary
• aspirations
• en route integration
• unfinished journeys

Disclosure Statement

I would like to state that I do not have any financial interest or benefit arising from the direct application/publication of this research.

Notes

1. The city of Piraeus is 12 km away from Athens city-center and is located in the east coast of the Saronic Gulf. According to the 2011 Census, the city-center of Piraeus (Piraeus Municipality) had a population of almost 164,000 people; while if all adjacent areas of Piraeus were included, then the total population would reach almost half a million people.

2. Recently, a number of studies have emerged that, attempting to shed light on the recent refugee ‘crisis’, focus on mobility and journey (see for instance Brekke and Brochmann 2014; Lukić 2016).

3. Methodologically speaking, it has to be made clear that the mobilities’ paradigm perspective (Sheller 2011) is broadly adopted in this article. According to this paradigm, mobility rests on a number of assemblages that involve human and non-human actors and rests on a specific version of actor-network theory (for instance Law 2008). However, I also tend to agree with Andrian Favell’s (2007) thesis that migration studies as mobilities studies should go ‘on preserving the focus…on real people moving in real space-not virtual and non-human forms of mobility’ (Favell 2007, 272). In this respect, the structure/agency methodology remains relevant.

Additional information

Funding

This work has not been supported by any funding agency and has not received any grand.