Introduction
Moria camp on Lesvos island in Greece has been described by humanitarian actors as ‘the worst refugee camp on earth’Footnote 1 and a ‘living hell’.Footnote 2 After Moria was destroyed in a fire on 8 September 2020,Footnote 3 European Commission (EC) Home Affairs Commissioner, Ylva Johanson, said there would be ‘no more Morias’, which subsequently became a rallying cry among humanitarian actors and others.Footnote 4 However, conditions on the new camp, Kara Tepe, where thousands of migrantsFootnote 5 forced from Moria now reside, are widely regarded as ‘worse than Moria’.Footnote 6 This article examines the impact of poor camp conditions on the work of humanitarian actors and, in turn, on the lives of those who live in such camps, as well as the perceived explanations of humanitarian actors for these conditions. In so doing, this article explores the perceived intended and unintended effects of violent border practices that expose migrants to considerable harm.
This article draws from literature on the securitisation of migration,Footnote 7 particularly critical scholarship that has built upon Foucault's concept of biopolitical racism to explore the governance of migration through death.Footnote 8 We also engage with the expanding literature on the refugee or migrant camp as quasi-carceral space.Footnote 9 We build upon this literature by discussing ways in which camps serve to contain, control, and segregate, as well as ways in which poor camp conditions can be regarded as carceral by operating as a deterrent and form of punishment. Within the broader literature on the securitisation of migration, much has been written on the (mis)management of refugee and migrant camps, on the (in)action of the state in responding to the needs of refugees and other migrants, and the harms inflicted upon those who seek refuge in the EU.Footnote 10 The increasing violence of the border has also led to a growing literature on ‘humanitarian borderwork’ required to help relieve the effects of such violence,Footnote 11 expanding volunteerism in this space,Footnote 12 and the policing and criminalisation of those who provide humanitarian assistance to migrants.Footnote 13
This article builds upon this scholarship to investigate the impact of poor camp conditions on the work of humanitarian actors and the subsequent impact on the security and well-being of migrants. We argue that these harms are facilitated – actively or by omission – in order to discourage humanitarian actors and, thereby, migrants from travelling to Lesvos, where the services provided by humanitarian actors are regarded as a ‘pull factor’ for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In presenting this argument, we specifically draw upon work investigating the poor conditions of Moria as intended to deter migrants.Footnote 14 We analyse ways in which humanitarian actors navigate the political and physical space of Moria and are impacted by the conditions in which they work, and how this interaction in turn influences their environment. This article aims to contribute to the large, related bodies of work on humanitarian borderwork and securitised responses to migration, by engaging with humanitarian actors’ perceptions of and explanations for poor camp conditions, and the impact of such conditions on their work, which has, to date, generated comparatively little attention.
Methodology
The research involved in-depth, semi-structured, often multiple interviews with 33 humanitarian professionals and volunteers (hereafter humanitarian actors, unless specifically distinguishing between paid workers and volunteers) who have worked in Moria camp. These included representatives of key humanitarian organisations that operated in (or around) Moria camp, including UNHCR, MSF, Drop in the Ocean, and EuroRelief. Around half of the participants (n = 17) were female, and the rest (n = 16) were male. Their ages ranged from 22 to 77, and they were from Greece, Norway, United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Interviews were conducted in May – June 2019 and December 2019 – September 2020 in Norway, in person or via Skype, building on fieldwork conducted previously.Footnote 15 This diversity of research participants reflects our appreciation of the heterogeneity of the humanitarian community.Footnote 16 Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded according to the degree and type of impact of the conditions of Moria camp on their work, along with perceived explanations for such conditions. Pseudonyms were used from transcription and are used throughout this article for all research participants.Footnote 17
Our primary interest is the impact of camp conditions on humanitarian actors and their work in Moria, and the explanations among humanitarian actors for those conditions. Hence, we only interviewed humanitarian actors, although we do engage with official texts and other secondary sources to further inform our understanding about the social, geopolitical and security context.
Methodologically, we adopt a narrative approach,Footnote 18 whereby interviewee explanations of forms of insecurity in the camp, and the impact on those who reside or work in the camp, are privileged. This enables us to engage with a counter narrative to popular and official securitising discourses, which position the migrant as threatening, as constituting a risk rather than ‘at risk’,Footnote 19 and those who help him or her as irresponsible and needing to be policed. Through engaging with this counter narrative, we question the explanations given by securitising actors and present alternative visions of security and alternative narratives of security, risk, and harm. We also shed light on the conditions in Moria, which, until recently,Footnote 20 have escaped robust scrutiny despite being Europe's largest refugee camp and referred to by some humanitarian actors as ‘the world's worst refugee camp’.Footnote 21
We also draw from our professional experience, as a founder of a humanitarian organisation, Northern Lights Aid, which provides humanitarian aid to refugees in Greece (Larsen), and as a scholar-practitioner in peacebuilding and migration more broadly (Gordon). We employ interpretive autoethnography, principally Finnen's concept of the ‘participating observer’,Footnote 22 to inform our desk-based and primary research: our direct engagement in the field has informed our motivation, our research questions, and the way in which we interpret data, and has also been instrumental in gaining access to, and gaining the trust of, research participants.
We begin this article by presenting the theoretical framework within which our analysis sits, building upon the literature that analyses state and non-state discourses and practices that expose migrants to harm, justify that harm, and portray the harm inflicted as the only logical response to the threat that migrants present. We then engage with the primary data to discuss, in turn, the camp conditions, explanations for the poor camp conditions by humanitarian actors who work there, and the perceived impact of camp conditions on those who live and work in the camp. Finally, we broaden our discussion to consider the intended and unintended effects of poor camp conditions, as well as reflect upon the camp as a complex, dynamic site of struggle and a manifestation of violent borderwork.
Governance through death
We locate our research in the literature that investigates the processes that propel and justify the reneging of responsibilities on the part of state authorities to respond to the needs of refugees and other migrants.Footnote 23 Such literature has revealed that these processes help create and support the logic of securitised, militarised, and even violent responses to migration.Footnote 24 Scholarship has referred to the construction of the threat presented by migrants and migration as legitimising what might otherwise be regarded as heavy-handed responses or ‘illiberal practices’.Footnote 25 Maurizio Albahari uses the concept ‘crimes of peace’ to refer to actual crimes, violence, and injustices perpetrated in response to the threats ostensibly posed by migrants.Footnote 26 These politically acceptable and legally enforceable ‘lethal border practices’, as described by Albahari, ‘constitute a clear paradox of liberal-democratic power and rule of law’.Footnote 27 Similarly, Omid Tofighian and Boochani have developed the Manus Prison theory to show how ‘systematic torture’ and other forms of violence and oppression exist within Australia's border regime, drawing from Boochani's experience of being incarcerated as a migrant on Manus Island.Footnote 28 Indeed, thousands of people are allowed to die attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea and many more are systematically oppressed and left to suffer in the deplorable conditions of Moria camp ‘in the name of the freedom, security and justice of EU citizens’.Footnote 29
While such practices may ostensibly contradict the tenets of the EU, liberal democracies have always functioned on the denial of those presented as ‘other’ or less than human – such as racialised or colonised subjects – their full humanity.Footnote 30 Indeed, portraying migrants as a threat operates as a form of governmentality, whereby power can be exercised by the state to create security for some (worthy of protection) by withdrawing it from others (needing to be sacrificed).Footnote 31 These ‘illiberal practices’ can therefore be seen as part of the European project, with concepts such as ‘the rule of law’ and ‘good governance’ being effective tools in the oppression and exclusion of others through seemingly non-racialised, objective, technocratic means.Footnote 32 The harm suffered by migrants travelling to and trapped within Moria camp is therefore not antithetical to neoliberal governance, but instrumental to it. The further paradox, explored later in this article, is how humanitarian actors simultaneously ameliorate the harms caused by such ‘illiberal practices’ while contributing to their continuation through the provision of aid and assistance to camp residents and thus the sustenance of such camps.Footnote 33 This paradox is exemplified in the decision by several humanitarian actors to pull out of Moria and not engage in Kara Tepe, unwilling to be complicit in a practice which detains, degrades, and dehumanises camp residents, while others stayed.Footnote 34
That ‘they’ should be left to die to protect ‘our’ well-being is conceptualised in what Foucault refers to as ‘biopolitical racism’; whereby power is exercised through division of groups within society, the devaluing of some groups over others, and leaving the racialised ‘other’ (and those deemed ‘inferior’ or threatening) to die, so that others can live – to ‘make live and let die’.Footnote 35 Mbembe's work on ‘necropolitics’,Footnote 36 building on the concept of biopolitics, shows how entire populations become disposable and are allowed to suffer and die. Migrants and would-be migrants, in this case, become the ‘walking dead’,Footnote 37 caught between the threat of death and insecurity if they remain, and the threat of death and insecurity if they leave. As one man living in Moria camp said: ‘If I go back to Iraq, I'll die … [but] if I stay here I'll die … Right now, I won't die. But little by little, I'll die.’Footnote 38 Migrants in other camps in Europe refer to the ‘slow death’ resulting from deliberate inaction and indirect, as well as direct, forms of violence,Footnote 39 creating what Mbembe refers to as a ‘death-world’.Footnote 40
In effect, ‘they’ are reduced to ‘bodies’,Footnote 41 or ‘bare life’,Footnote 42 stripped of their humanity, reduced to numbers and to a problem needing to be solved, thus rendering their suffering and death of little consequence.Footnote 43 Drawing from Foucault's work on biopolitics, Vicki Squire refers to this normalisation of death at borders as part of the process of ‘governing migration through death’ (or thanatopolitics – the politics of death).Footnote 44 Even where death does not come but, instead, migrants are kept in perpetual insecurity and suffer perpetual injury or harm, this too can be regarded as a means of control and necropolitical governance.Footnote 45 We must not neglect, of course, as has sometimes occurred with the application of biopolitics in security studies and border studies, that there is a profound racial dimension to dehumanisation and the subsequent infliction of violence.Footnote 46 It is not, after all, white Westerners dying in their thousands in the Mediterranean Sea or trapped in inhumane conditions in official and makeshift camps.
Hell on Earth
Moria camp has been described by humanitarian actors as ‘the worst refugee camp on Earth’,Footnote 47 a ‘living hell’, ‘worse than hell’,Footnote 48 or ‘hell on earth’ by some of our research participants.Footnote 49 The camp, situated in Moria village on Lesvos island in Greece, was a Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) for asylum seekers and migrants. It was only intended to be a transit centre for migrants to stay a short period of time while filing their asylum applications, before being transferred to the mainland for further processing.Footnote 50 However, Moria camp became a bottleneck as a result of the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement, whose geographical restrictions disallowed migrants from travelling to the Greek mainland to lodge asylum applications.Footnote 51 In effect, Moria became a long-term camp – simply without the provisions, services, and support a long-term camp requires.Footnote 52 Many humanitarian actors subsequently pulled out of Moria, regarding it as a place of detention, unwilling to be complicit in this new policy by continuing to provide humanitarian assistance.Footnote 53
This further compromised the conditions of Moria and the services and support available to migrants in the camp. The camp also became severely overcrowded, with the capacity of around three thousand people far exceeded with up to twenty thousand people residing in and around the camp.Footnote 54 Almost half this population were under the age of 18, many of whom were unaccompanied children, and many families lived without any type of shelter.Footnote 55 Outside the official camp was the unofficial camp, the Olive Grove, where migrants ‘overflowed’ from the main camp or fled growing violence.Footnote 56 There were thousands of people in the Olive Grove, where there was extremely limited, if any, access to water, sanitation or washing facilities, or electricity, which severely compromised the health and well-being of those who were there.Footnote 57
All research participants described Moria's conditions as deplorable. Annie Chapman describes it as having become ‘a place of violence, deprivation, suffering and despair’.Footnote 58 Most research participants said that conditions in the camp had severely deteriorated over 2019–20. One humanitarian volunteer remembers people staying only for a few days in 2015, but by 2019 they stayed for years in the most deplorable conditions:
It's the middle of winter, we have hundreds, well thousands, of children living in tents, with no heating, generally no sanitation, no running water, most of the areas no electricity, and not enough food. It's totally desperate and hardly anyone is being moved anywhere.Footnote 59
Others who had previously worked on the island were shocked that the terrible conditions they had experienced could have deteriorated further:
Four years ago, I thought that this is horrible, but there is a large influx of arrivals and people were not prepared, and people will just stay there a little while, so if we give it some time things will improve. I would never have thought that it would be worse after four years. Not in my wildest imagination.Footnote 60
Research participants invariably spoke of the overcrowding, the absence of proper shelter, the unhygienic conditions due to mounds of rubbish everywhere, and the lack of basic services, including healthcare, clean water, and food. Research participants also spoke of hopelessness,Footnote 61 as well as the terrible mental and physical health conditions of those who resided in the camp.Footnote 62 This was compounded by the poor camp conditions,Footnote 63 which often led to self-harm and suicide,Footnote 64 including among children.Footnote 65 Participants also spoke of violence, especially at night,Footnote 66 including physical and sexual violence.Footnote 67 Several referred to Moria as being a very dangerous place to be, especially for children.Footnote 68 One volunteer referred to many fights, including a recent fight that left a child dead.Footnote 69 Since 2015 there have been regular reports of violence resulting in fatalities in the camp.Footnote 70 Research participants commented on the increasing frequency of such violence since 2018, attributing it to the dire conditions of the overcrowded camp, which lacked basic facilities.Footnote 71
UNHCR underscores the importance of shelter for those who are displaced to restoring their personal security and dignity.Footnote 72 According to Thom Davies, Arshad Isakjee, and Surindar Dhesi, such appalling conditions on Moria demonstrate deliberate state indifference, which in itself ‘is tantamount to violence by EU states towards refugees’.Footnote 73 This indifference, which manifests itself in inaction and abandonment by the state, results in significant physical and psychological harm because basic needs are unmet (including safe shelter, adequate food and clean water, and access to healthcare). It is this structural violence that characterises the violent inaction of the state. Davies, Isakjee, and Dhesi further describe, drawing from Johan Galtung,Footnote 74 how there is a ‘violent accord’ between such structural violence and physical violence, where camp conditions increase the likelihood of physical violence within and directed towards the camp and its residents.Footnote 75 This ‘violent accord’ leads to Mbembe‘s ’death-world’, in which migrants become the ‘walking dead’,Footnote 76 disposable and allowed to suffer and die. Drawing from fieldwork in Calais and Croatia, Isakjee and colleagues show how such violence manifests itself in diverse ways, from direct physical violence at Croatia's borders to subtle, everyday forms of violence, such as state-sanctioned structural violence, including being denied adequate food, shelter and WASH facilities in the ‘Calais jungle’. They also demonstrate that while such violence sits ‘uncomfortably with the liberal, post-racial image’ of the EU, in fact, it ‘embodies the inherent logics of liberal governance’.Footnote 77
Like Davies, Isakjee, and Dhesi, we argue that state inaction displays an indifference towards the lives of migrants, results in significant physical and psychological harm, and can be used as a technique and demonstration of control.Footnote 78 With regard to the latter point, we further argue that the sustained harm inflicted upon migrants is a form of necropolitical governance through which migrants (and would-be migrants) are controlled, not least through the ever-present threat of death. These practices of withholding the means of survival also serve to shift blame from the inaction of the state to the migrant, with the violent conditions and harms suffered by migrants reframed as ‘of their own making’, effectively serving to obscure the violence of the state.Footnote 79
In early 2020, conditions in Moria had further deteriorated as a result of the threat posed by COVID-19 and responses to it.Footnote 80 Moria camp was subject to additional restrictions, beyond national restrictions introduced in March 2020 and those placed upon local residents of Lesvos, which placed strict limitations on the mobility of the camp residents and the activities of humanitarian organisations.Footnote 81 While restrictions for the general population were lifted on 4 May, Moria's continued until the camp was destroyed by the fire on 8 September.Footnote 82 These measures have been described as ‘unacceptable and discriminatory … [making] the refugee population trapped in the camps more vulnerable to the virus than the rest of the population’.Footnote 83 The restrictions also contravened international human rights law, which demands that any restrictions of rights for public health or national emergency reasons must be lawful, necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory.Footnote 84 There was also concern that such measures increased migrants’ stress and fear and also, as a result, violence in the camp.Footnote 85 Such measures were also regarded as having fuelled tensions between migrants and the island's permanent residents, as fears about the virus increased distrust of, and anger towards, migrants as well as humanitarian actors who helped them.Footnote 86
Meanwhile, those who resided in Moria camp remained especially vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19 because of the unhygienic conditions, overcrowding, lack of clean water (with up to 1,300 sharing one water tap), limited availability of soap, poor access to adequate healthcare, and the need to queue for hours each day to get food,Footnote 87 which further compromised any effort to socially distance.Footnote 88 A large number of people also shared sanitation and washing facilities, which again compromised socially distancing efforts. In some parts of the camp there were 167 people per toilet and 242 people per shower; respectively, eight and five times more than the recommended minimum standards in an emergency setting.Footnote 89 Many of these people are also more likely to be vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 as their immune systems have been harmed as a result of ill health from stress and trauma, malnourishment, and living in unsanitary conditions, and because they have limited access to healthcare.Footnote 90
On 2 September 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the camp, prompting the Hellenic Ministry of Migration Policy, which is responsible for Moria, to lock down the camp, preventing migrants from exiting or entering the site.Footnote 91 On 8 September, as we were concluding our research, Moria camp was destroyed by fire, amid protests about camp conditions and miscommunication about the movement of some camp residents who had contracted the disease to a quarantine facility:Footnote 92
If you treat people terribly for long enough, they will do bad things, simply out of frustration … We have seen how the conditions under which they live have become less and less hospitable and how this affects their ability to have a dignified life and keep their hopes up. This is something we have warned against for a long time, in the end it finally happened.Footnote 93
Several research participants had previously mentioned fires having occurred regularly in the camp due to technical faults as well as migrants protesting camp conditions, or, as referred to by another research participant, ‘desperate refugees who said they wanted to burn the camp to the ground, out of desperation’.Footnote 94 A number of these fires have resulted in deaths, including of children.Footnote 95
The fire on 8 September forced up to 13,000 migrants to evacuate and seek shelter in the surrounding area.Footnote 96 However, they were prevented from moving too far away:
I have spoken to families with young children who tried to get as far away from the burning Moria as possible as their children were terrified. They tried to get to safety but were stopped by police, which forced them to sleep in the street just outside Moria.Footnote 97
After ten days sleeping on roadsides and in fields, and following their protests against the insufferable conditions, which were stopped with police violence and tear gas,Footnote 98 the migrants were moved into a new camp, Kara Tepe.Footnote 99 There are already reports that the conditions on the new camp are as poor, if not worse. There have been concerns about contaminated soil of the old military barracks potentially leading to lead poisoning among those who live and work there, and reports of unexploded ordnance on the camp.Footnote 100 Safety conditions have also been sharply criticised, especially after the rape of a toddler in December 2020 on the camp.Footnote 101 Some NGOs have refused to work there to avoid sanctioning the move of migrants to such a poor camp, while research participants say others are only granted access if they agree not to criticise the camp.Footnote 102 It seems, therefore, that the pledge of EC Home Affairs Commissioner that there would be ‘no more Morias’ has been quickly forgotten.Footnote 103
Camp conditions: Punishment, containment, and deterrence
Most research participants believe that the worsening conditions in Moria were because the Hellenic Ministry of Migration Policy reneged upon its responsibility to effectively manage the camp.Footnote 104 The reason for doing so, research participants supposed, was because Moria was regarded as a transit camp. This is despite thousands of people having resided on the camp for many months, sometimes years. Thus, the attitude of governing authorities was that services, facilities, and support should not be provided that could acknowledge, or even encourage, a more permanent status. As one research participants told us: ‘The conditions are what they are, because they don't want a permanent structure.’Footnote 105 In effect, the temporality of a supposed transit camp ostensibly excused the poor conditions of the camp.Footnote 106 There have been reports of the import of accommodation being obstructed by local authorities,Footnote 107 as well as the refusal of plans to build a kindergarten, because it was argued that permanent structures should not be built in a transit camp.Footnote 108 Even so, the camp had inadequate facilities for a transit centreFootnote 109 and did not meet UNHCR's transit centre standards.Footnote 110 There was even less requirement, it seemed, to respond to basic needs outside the official camp in the Olive Grove.Footnote 111
As mentioned above, these poor conditions contributed to significant security, health, and psychosocial harms, and led to insecurity and violence. In other words, the ‘violent inaction’ of the state directly results in significant harm and generates conditions that lead to direct forms of violence and further insecurity.Footnote 112 Poor camp conditions, and the resultant harms and violence, contribute to framing the migrant as dangerous and deviant, as ‘undesirable’,Footnote 113 as risky rather than at risk. We hear of the fights and the protest fires, but rarely the conditions that have led to them.
As will be discussed shortly, presenting migrants as threatening and deviant serves to absolve the state of responsibility towards them and can be an effective strategy to alleviate any guilt felt about their suffering. In effect, this not only justifies withholding humanitarian assistance, it also legitimises the use of punitive, even violent, means to control migrants.Footnote 114 Such constructions can also encourage attacks by far-right extremist groups as well as feed local hostility.Footnote 115 Tensions with local permanent residents of Moria had also been increasing, alongside violent protests by residents and vigilante attacks on migrants and humanitarian actors by far-right extremist groups.Footnote 116 This violence escalated after Turkey opened its borders to Greece on 29 March 2020, resulting in tens of thousands of migrants attempting to cross the border. Far-right extremist groups attacked migrants and humanitarian actors, doctors, and journalists.Footnote 117 The resultant violence was so extreme that many humanitarian actors left the island, bringing to a halt many of the humanitarian projects they were working on, including the provision of food and medical assistance.Footnote 118 This departure left migrants, especially the most vulnerable among them, exposed to further harm and even harsher conditions as essential provisions and services were drawn back. The departure was also hastened because of the perceived lack of protection by the local authorities and police from such violence:
When the Norwegian volunteers were attacked by the mob of locals, the volunteers at one point drove past a police bus that was stationed next to a road block. There were riot police with gear inside the bus looking out, and they did nothing to stop the visibly angry and violent locals following the volunteers.Footnote 119
Several research participants reported that police not only turned a blind eye to violent attacks against them, but that they felt targeted and harassed by the police, including random police checks perceived as being targeted at humanitarian actors.Footnote 120 While several research participants referred to good collaboration with the local police and camp authorities,Footnote 121 others were left reluctant to contact the police for assistance if, for instance, a fight broke out on camp as ‘they would escalate things further or be too brutal’.Footnote 122 Some said calling the police would be ‘a last resort’.Footnote 123 Others suggested that, in order to address the needs of the migrants, they sometimes had to work against, rather than with, the police. Many research participants regarded a perceived lack of partnership and cooperation with the police as likely to undermine efforts to address the needs of migrants and further compromise their well-being and security.
Many also regarded what they perceived as targeting practices by the police as ‘a deterrent and … meant to work as such’;Footnote 124 intended to make their work more difficult, scare them away, and deter other humanitarian actors from coming to Lesvos. This can be seen as part of a larger trend across Europe of policing those who provide humanitarian assistance to migrants,Footnote 125 to further feed the rhetoric that migrants are threatening, and must be feared and distrusted rather than helped.Footnote 126 This helps fuel anti-migrant sentiment and exposes those in need to insecurity and harm.Footnote 127
Ultimately, research participants regarded the overall poor conditions of Moria as operating as an effective deterrent for would-be migrants coming to Greece. Polly Pallister-Wilkins refers to the poor conditions on Moria camp as constituting ‘a callous disregard for the well-being of those seeking shelter … and a purposeful policy of neglect intended to act as a deterrent within a wider system of exclusionary border practices’.Footnote 128 A number of humanitarian organisations have also publicly stated that the conditions in the camp were kept deplorable to discourage others:
The EU and Greek authorities continue to rob vulnerable people of their dignity and health, seemingly in an effort to deter others from coming. This policy is cruel, inhumane and cynical, and it needs to end.Footnote 129
Many research participants questioned the extent to which the poor conditions were intentional or, rather, the result of an overburdened, inefficient Greek administration.Footnote 130 Most research participants, however, considered that conditions on the camp were intentionally poor to discourage migrants from attempting to enter the EU through Lesvos:
It is startling who the situation was bad then, and there were sounds of alarm you know, and then it's three or four or five times as bad. It just keeps on being this way, and it's not like there are steps taken to change the situation, rather there are steps taken to make it worse.Footnote 131
It was obvious that the reason the conditions were the way they were was so that it would not be tempting to come to Moria.Footnote 132
It's a way to make it even less tempting to come to Greece. Having Moria horrible is enough. To tell the refugees that you are not getting in to Europe, all you are getting is prison.Footnote 133
That poor camp conditions were intended to deter would-be migrants, while generally not openly admitted by Greek officials, is also evidenced in a recent statement made about the planned establishment of ‘closed controlled structures’ (camps with increased security and restricted access for NGOs, media personnel and others) on the Aegean islands by the Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Notis Mitarakis: ‘closed controlled structures for us are a fence for future events. They certainly work as a deterrent.’Footnote 134 Endeavouring to ensure camps are not ‘attractive’ to migrants relates to broader arguments that ‘pull factors’ for migrants have contributed to a massive influx of migrants. The argument continues that such ‘pull factors’ must therefore be removed, regardless of the consequence to migrants’ lives, including Search and Rescue capabilities in the Mediterranean, for instance.Footnote 135 Such arguments, of course, discount the many push factors involved in migration, including armed conflict, persecution and extreme poverty, and the desperation of migrants.Footnote 136
Moria as carceral space
The official Moria camp was a former military base. Before it was destroyed by fire, it was guarded by police and was referred to by residents and visitors as carceral in nature. Pallister-Wilkins refers to the ‘assorted security architecture such as watchtowers and loudspeakers’,Footnote 137 and research participants also thought Moria resembled a prison because of the perimeter fences, barbed wire and gates, checkpoints and police guards.Footnote 138
Moria's prison-like appearance feeds into the narrative of Moria operating as a deterrent to others who might travel to Lesvos seeking asylum. Resembling a prison can be useful when we recall the role of a prison is to punish (to deprive of liberties), to protect society (from those who threaten it), and to prevent wrongdoing (to serve as a warning or deterrent for others). As described by Daniel Howden, ‘Moria's architecture is shaped by containment and punishment, inspiring fear and violence … where the suffering of those sheltered is performed as a deterrent to those who might otherwise choose to follow them.'Footnote 139 In this regard, the camp is an ‘anti-shelter’,Footnote 140 the antithesis of what a shelter should be. As discussed in the previous section, the poor camp conditions, and the further insecurity that these give rise to, can also be regarded as carceral as they feed into the deterrent narrative and can also be regarded as operating as a form of punishment.
Supporting the analogy of the camp as carceral space, is the fact that the movement of migrants is restricted.Footnote 141 Indeed, Moria did not just look like a prison; it became a space of indefinite confinement. In fact, many migrants have referred to the enforced waiting as ‘prison time’, when they are ‘stuck’ and wasting time and life that cannot be regained.Footnote 142 Evgenia Iliadou refers to this waiting and wasting of time as ‘some of the most obscene forms of violence exercised upon border crossers on Lesvos Island’.Footnote 143 This violence manifests itself in lives wasted, a ‘slow death’,Footnote 144 with Moira a ‘graveyard’,Footnote 145 or ‘death-world’,Footnote 146 for those who spend their lives ‘in limbo’.Footnote 147
Scholarly literature on the refugee or migrant camp as quasi-carceral space engages with the ways in which migration is managed through incarceration, separation, and containment.Footnote 148 Kirsten McConnachie makes an analogy between refugee camp and concentration camp as both being used to contain ‘the other’ or ‘matter out of place’ – or migrants’ ‘unruly mobility’,Footnote 149 as Glenda Garelli and Martina Tazzioli put it – and to separate that which is deemed ‘other’ or ‘out of place’ from the rest of society.Footnote 150 Ways in which the ‘other’ is separated and contained, and the deplorable conditions commonplace in such camps, are justified by recourse to the threat that ‘the other’ is presented as posing to ‘us’. Segregation is both a response to this threat and serves to enhance the perceived threat posed by ‘the other’.Footnote 151
Othering is a common practice whereby marginalised groups are further disempowered through presentation of them as a threat, causing the broader population to fear them and accept measures to control or repress them, or allows them to die so that we can live.Footnote 152 Othering also delegitimises any complaints on the part of ‘the other’, including claims for security, justice, and dignity. What results is a continuum of violence against the dispossessed and marginalised, the normalisation of overt forms of social control, and an insulation of ‘us’ from its effects.
Rendering invisible to magnify the threat and minimise the harm
Paradoxically, the status of ‘the other’ and its perceived threat is maintained, in large part, by rendering invisible ‘the other’ through segregation and containment in camps.Footnote 153 Rendering invisible enables a discourse to be constructed and maintained around the migrant, relatively unchallenged by direct knowledge. We see in Moria that information about the camp was carefully managed. Many research participants, for instance, referred to the police objecting to photos or video footage being taken: ‘If they get your camera, they delete everything’.Footnote 154 The high-profile arrest of Salam Aldeen on 11 December 2019, while he was distributing food and blankets to people in Moria camp, was also regarded by Salam and other research participants as being motivated by him being a vocal critic of the Greek authorities and their treatment of migrants, and because he was documenting conditions.Footnote 155 His arrest (this being the second related to his humanitarian work with refugees on Lesvos) was perceived by many research participants as intended to silence and discourage those who document and publicise perceived wrongdoings of the Greek authorities, as well as deter others ‘from doing this type of work’.Footnote 156 This perceived strategy to silence camp critics has been potentially formalised in the confidentiality clauses of a recent Greek ministerial decision on the operation of temporary migrant sites. This decision prohibits the disclosure of ‘personal data, information and any other material’ by anyone who works in such camps to any third party, and is regarded by several humanitarian actors as an attempt to ‘muzzle’ humanitarian actors sharing accounts of abuses inside camps.Footnote 157
When we do not have contact with or sight of ‘the other’ and when information about ‘the other’ is carefully controlled, their dehumanisation and discourse about the threat they pose can remain unchallenged. This not only justifies harsh responses to contain the threat, but the violence directed toward ‘them’ does not matter, because ‘they’ are ‘not like us’ and so do not feel pain or suffering as we would. When people are rendered invisible, stripped of their humanity, reduced to numbers, to a problem – they become ‘superfluous’,Footnote 158 or ‘bare life’,Footnote 159 and their deaths, then, no longer matter.Footnote 160 The deplorable conditions in Moria, including camp residents constantly living under the threat of violence, in other words, become acceptable and any responsibility we have for their suffering – including, for many, their deaths – is denied or made invisible. The outgroup's suffering is ignored, and they are treated as infrahumans whose humanity is essentially different or of less value than that of the ingroup.Footnote 161 When suffering cannot be seen, when it is confined behind prison-like barriers, and when it is kept from public scrutiny by destroying camera footage, it is easier to dehumanise and to deny that human rights violations and other harms have occurred.Footnote 162
Tugba Basaran describes how preventing ‘unwanted contact and communication’ between securitised populations, such as migrants and the general public, facilitates detachment and indifference to the plight of the migrant and is also a ‘well-established governing technique … to reduce possible acts of solidarity’.Footnote 163 We forget that ‘no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark … [and that] no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land’.Footnote 164
Policing of those who take photos or video footage is also indicative, perhaps, of the desire to keep what was happening in Moria away from public scrutiny. When large parts of what happens remains unseen and camera footage gets destroyed, Moria becomes, paradoxically, more effective as a deterrent: the spectre of detention (as a deterrent) is all the more powerful because of the element of the unknown. Research participants told us that official visitors would only be shown a small part of the camp and only after that part that had been cleared and cleaned. Some interviewees also explained how these visits were stage-managed to avoid public scrutiny and criticism. As Erica told us:
They don't want to keep the camp so bad so that Greece reputation is completely ruined. When Angelina Jolie and the pope visited, they cleaned up the camp a little bit. Journalists are not let in … They don't want to show the worst part of the camp, but they want to make sure it's bad enough to not want to come.Footnote 165
A difficult balance must therefore be secured between communicating a threatening deterrent to prospective migrant communities (and those who might help them), responding to the concerns of local residents as well as powerful anti-immigration sentiments of influential stakeholders, while avoiding public criticism for reneging upon responsibilities by critical audiences in Europe. Erving Goffman's work on the dramaturgy of social life shows us that only through ensuring different audiences are kept apart and carefully managing the impression each audience receives, can legitimacy and order be maintained.Footnote 166
Inter-agency coordination, competition, and criticism
The poor conditions in Moria camp adversely impacted the work of humanitarian actors, causing significant difficulties, stress, and hardship.Footnote 167 It was not, however, just poor camp conditions that adversely impacted the work of humanitarian actors, nor were poor camp conditions solely the responsibility of Lesvos, Greek, and EU migration authorities. Research participants referred to several other factors that undermined the effectiveness of their work, including inter-agency coordination challenges, competition, and criticism,Footnote 168 as well as the absence of overarching government coordination and support, which in turn further compounded the poor camp conditions and compromised the well-being of camp residents.Footnote 169
While some research participants referred to the existence of coordination mechanisms in the camp, many spoke about poor collaboration, coordination, and information sharing between humanitarian organisations working in the camp, and between them and camp authorities.Footnote 170 It was suggested that these deficiencies resulted from the absence of anyone taking overarching control of the camp. People also referred to competition and territorialism leading to poor coordination, driven by the need to make money and retain a profile, which undermined the efficiency of efforts. The perception of humanitarian organisations being in competition or being driven by profit further sours the relationships between humanitarian actors and local residents, which can further compound the difficult conditions in which migrants live and humanitarian actors work.Footnote 171 Prioritisation of organisational profile above addressing the needs of migrants also further contributes to the deterioration of camp conditions as important tasks, such as cleaning washing facilities or clearing rubbish, are ignored in favour of activities that might better enhance the profile of an organisation.Footnote 172
Others referred to mistrust between organisations and there being a lot of criticism of each other, including between humanitarian organisations and local, national, and supranational authorities, with constant shifting of responsibility and blame:Footnote 173
Everyone is saying ‘this is not my job’ and not my responsibility. So, no-one is actually accepting overall responsibility … It has been the case all way along. The Greek government will blame the UNHCR, the UNHCR will blame the Greek government, and we go around and around and no one is accepting overall responsibility.Footnote 174
Some research participants saw this lack of cooperation between organisations as resulting from, or even being fostered by, the responsible ministries in an attempt to ensure conditions in the camp remained poor and thus deter migrants and those who seek to assist them:
[P]eople do work with each other occasionally, but they have so many problems with the police, with authorities, cars getting stopped, police confiscating licence plates. There is so much hassle, so I think they try not to get involved in other people's projects. In some way, the Greek police and authorities have managed to create a hostile environment for NGO workers.Footnote 175
[A]ll the authorities are doing is making the job of NGOs more difficult … because they want them out.Footnote 176
As this section has explored, humanitarian actors are impacted by and, in turn, impact camp conditions. Essentially, our research has shown how humanitarian actors can simultaneously critique and perpetuate the poor conditions of the camp, as well as contribute to and ameliorate the resultant harms.
Intended and unintended effects
The deplorable conditions in and around Moria camp, compounded by coordination challenges between organisations, severely compromised the safety and well-being of those who resided in the camp. They also made the work of humanitarian actors more difficult. These poor conditions, and their consequences, were compounded by perceived targeting practices by the police, hostility from local residents, and violent attacks by far-right extremist groups. It was widely perceived that conditions were kept poor in Moria camp to deter humanitarian actors and, especially, migrants from coming to Lesvos: ‘a purposeful policy of neglect intended to act as a deterrent within a wider system of exclusionary border practices’.Footnote 177 Discouraging humanitarian actors from remaining within, or travelling to, Lesvos was regarded by research participants as an attempt to remove the ‘pull factor’ for migrants.Footnote 178 One humanitarian volunteer told us: ‘It was obvious that the reason the conditions were the way they were was so that it would not be tempting to come to Moria’,Footnote 179 and perhaps encourage others to ‘self-deport’.Footnote 180 Despite this, it is clear from the number of people who still attempt to cross the Mediterranean to LesvosFootnote 181 that it is not an effective deterrent: ‘Moria is the way it is to because the Greek authorities wants to make it inhospitable as possible. It is clearly not working because people are still coming.’Footnote 182 Other research participants pointed out that the very fact migrants continue to come to Lesvos ‘is very telling about what they are travelling from’.Footnote 183
Many humanitarian actors also told us that the challenges they experienced made them more committed to stay. As Carl said, he was ‘not going to be bullied into not helping people in need’.Footnote 184 Others said that while ‘the authorities actively make life more difficult for refugees and make humanitarian work more difficult, we have become more motivated to continue working because of this.’Footnote 185 Nonetheless, many humanitarian actors have left as the conditions became too difficult, particularly after the violence of far-right extremist groups and the introduction of harsh COVID-19 restrictions. As one British volunteer told us: ‘The harassment of authorities has only made them determined to help. However, many people have left the island because it became so difficult to work.’Footnote 186 Many research participants referred to ‘a massive gap in services’ as a result,Footnote 187 resulting in ‘only making the lives of people in the refugee camp even more miserable’,Footnote 188 and exposing migrants to more harm and insecurity.
Sustaining poor camp conditions – and subsequent associations with disease and violence – can also serve to strengthen the discourse of the threatening or deviant migrant, which not only legitimises continued punitive responses to migration but also removes culpability on the part of EU states for helping to create conditions that have led to the migration crisis. The violence of the border is, thus, depoliticised, as responsibility and blame is shifted towards those who most suffer,Footnote 189 treating the migrant as an object of governmentality rather than a subject with needs and desires.Footnote 190
The camp as a site of struggle
The disconnect between the perceived intended and actual effects of Moria's poor conditions can also be explained by the fact that the camp is not a simple objective, static reality or just a violent manifestation of control, but a site of struggle. Those who live and work in such camps are not simply victims of the material conditions of the camp but interpret, resist, and remake the camp and the way it operates, and constrain or enable its continuous making and remaking. This can be seen if we look beyond the teleology of the camp to the everyday life of the camp. Advancing a focus on the everyday life of the camp enables us to see the complex social relationships that operate within and through the camp,Footnote 191 and see how those who live and work in the camp make and remake the material and institutional structures of the camp.Footnote 192
This making and remaking can be seen, for instance, in the volunteer humanitarianism of migrant and non-migrant humanitarian actors, which challenges, respectively, the deviant- or victim-status of the migrant and the conspirator in the ‘control through care’ of the humanitarian actor.Footnote 193 It can also be seen in the more destructive ways in which the migrant violently resists the violence to which she or he is subject, and the ways in which the humanitarian actor exacerbates the conditions of the camp by competing with or criticising other humanitarian organisations. Our fieldwork demonstrated both the ways in which humanitarian actors simultaneously fill the gap resulting from the violent inaction of the state while contributing to poor camp conditions, as a result of inter-agency competition, criticism, and mistrust, and the broader ways in which they challenge and reinforce the violent governance of migration. For instance, as discussed above, several research participants referred to competition between organisations driven by a need or desire to attract funds and ‘unnecessary criticism’ of other humanitarian organisations, which potentially compromise efficiency and the ability ‘to raise more funds’ when working together.Footnote 194 Fieldwork also demonstrated the broader ways in which humanitarian actors challenge and reinforce the violent governance of migration, by risking their own security and liberty to respond to the harms inflicted upon migrants and draw attention to the injustices suffered, while also helping to sustain the camps that cause such harm through the provision of life-saving assistance and basic services. This dichotomy is epitomised in the dilemma facing organisations when deciding whether provision of assistance to those in need might constitute complicity with policies and practices that inflict harm.
The dynamic, complex character of the camp is epitomised in the varied ways in which humanitarian actors interact with local authorities, including the police, and each other. It can also be seen in the ways in which humanitarian actors simultaneously challenge and perpetuate the violent governance of migrants,Footnote 195 and the ways in which migrants resist, repair (through the provision of aid and assistance to its victims) and perpetuate cycles of violence in the camp. These varied responses contribute to continuously making and remaking the camp and impact the lives of those who live and work there.
This reading of the camp as a dynamic and complex space and site of struggle, continuously made and remade by those who live and work there, acknowledges the agency of the migrant as well as the heterogeneity of the migrant and humanitarian communities. It moves beyond recent studies that rely upon Giorgio Agamben and reduce the migrant to ‘bare life’, caught in a permanent state of injury, precarity, and transience.Footnote 196 Everyday life within the camp can be regarded as forms of political agency and resistance, and not simply ‘the silent expressions of “bare life”’.Footnote 197 The migrant is, in turn, not regarded as an object of harm or help;Footnote 198 not simply acted upon but acts, reacts, and shapes their world.
Likewise, the humanitarian actor is not simply complicit with violent border practicesFootnote 199 or engaged in potentially transformative acts of resistance against such practices.Footnote 200 The political complexity of borderwork, shown through an analysis of how the poor conditions of Moria are experienced and explained by humanitarian actors, goes beyond the ‘Humanitarian Industrial Complex’ that ‘is often complicit in the harms and violence of borders’ and which is distinct from autonomous solidarity.Footnote 201 Humanitarian actors in Moria were simultaneously exposed to harm and precarity, and challenged the direct and structural violence inflicted upon migrants by filling gaps and drawing attention to harm. However, due to a lack of coordination, proper management, and oversight they also contributed to the harms suffered by those living in the camp though territorial competition and poor inter-agency communication. Alison Gerard and Leanne Weber refer to these contradictory tensions whereby humanitarian actors ‘transform borders from below’ while simultaneously being subject to potential co-option and control by ‘governmental security imperatives’ – in other words, shaping ‘the translation of government power … [while contributing] to the government agenda of border securitization’.Footnote 202 It is through depiction of the camp as a complex and dynamic site of struggle, imbued with contradictory dynamics and tensions, in which those who live and work there continuously make and remake the camp and are not simply passive victims of harm or control, that our research contributes to the literature on violent borderwork, drawing from the lived experiences and perceptions of humanitarian actors.
Conclusion
This article has analysed the ways in which the camp conditions in Moria impacted and were impacted by humanitarian actors, and the intended and unintended consequences of these conditions, as perceived by humanitarian actors. The poor conditions in Moria (and now Kara Tepe) and associated threats to security, health, and well-being, are widely regarded as intended to deter migrants and humanitarian actors, regarded as a ‘pull factor’ for migrants. While many humanitarian actors have become more resolute in providing assistance in an environment where they regard it as increasingly needed, the poor conditions combined with perceived targeting by police, hostile locals, and far-right extremist groups have led to several humanitarian actors leaving Lesvos. This further compromises the security and well-being of camp residents.
Poor conditions and the resultant harms, violence, and other forms of insecurity also contribute to reinforcing the discourse of the deviant, dangerous, and undesirable migrant. The poor conditions, alongside anti-immigration sentiment and even violent attacks, are, thus, paradoxically justified with recourse to the threat that migrants are presented as posing. A vicious circle ensues. In this context, policing of humanitarian actors can be regarded as an effort to punish and prevent those who seek to assist migrants, as well as an effort to control the discourse on migration, with policing reinforcing the link between migration and threat. The segregation of migrants and the careful management of information that is communicated out of camps on Lesvos help ensure this discourse is not challenged.
The camp, however, is not simply a static manifestation of violent borderwork. It is a complex, dynamic site of struggle in which those who live and work in the camp continuously make and remake the camp. This can be seen in the ways in which humanitarian actors contribute to the poor conditions of Moria due to deficiencies in coordination and the resultant inter-agency competition and criticism, while simultaneously filling the gap resulting from the violent inaction of the state, as well as the broader ways in which they potentially reinforce but also challenge the violent governance of migration.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all research participants for sharing their valuable time and insights, Elliot Dolan-Evans for his research assistance, and the anonymous reviewers and editors of the European Journal of International Security for their invaluable comments.
Henrik Kjellmo Larsen is a PhD student at Monash University and founder of the humanitarian organisation, Northern Lights Aid. His research and practice focus on forced migration, the effects of migration policies, and secondary trauma among spontaneous humanitarian aid workers.
Eleanor Gordon is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Development and Deputy Director of the Master's in International Development Practice programme at Monash University. Her research and practice focus on building security and justice after conflict and inclusive approaches to peacebuilding.
