On the Doorstep of Europe
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Greece has shouldered a heavy burden in the global economic crisis, struggling with political and financial insecurity. Greece has also the most porous external border of the European Union, tasked with ensuring that the EU's boundaries are both «secure and humanitarian» and hosting enormous numbers of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by land and sea. The recent leadership and fiscal crises have led to a breakdown of legal entitlements for both Greek citizens and those seeking refuge within the country's borders. On the Doorstep of Europe is an ethnographic study of the asylum system in Greece, tracing the ways asylum seekers, bureaucrats, and service providers attempt to navigate the dilemmas of governance, ethics, knowledge, and sociability that emerge through this legal process. Centering on the work of an asylum advocacy NGO in Athens, Heath Cabot explores how workers and clients grapple with predicaments endemic to Europeanization and rights-based protection. Drawing inspiration from classical Greek tragedy to highlight both the transformative potential and the violence of law, Cabot charts the structural violence effected through European governance, rights frameworks, and humanitarian intervention while also exploring how Athenian society is being remade from the inside out. She shows how, in contemporary Greece, relationships between insiders and outsiders are radically reconfigured through legal, political, and economic crises. In addition to providing a textured, on-the-ground account of the fraught context of asylum and immigration in Europe's borderlands, On the Doorstep of Europe highlights the unpredictable and transformative ways in which those in host nations navigate legal and political violence, even in contexts of inexorable duress and inequality.
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On the Doorstep of Europe
Tobias Kelly, Series Editor
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Five minutes to the southeast, you could push your way through Psiri, the old meat-packing district, silent during the day with shuttered windows, but at night coming alive with bars and restaurants that open into the street. Psiri connects labyrinth-like with some of the back streets where long-standing Greek inhabitants and recent migrants live side by side, and the grilled fish, onion, garlic, and lemon smells of old tavernes mingle with the scents of curries, sour bread, and spicy eggplant. Or you could take a tourists’ walk that Athenians also love, snaking through Psiri to Thisseio and Monastiraki, where the lines of the Acropolis vault above the narrow streets and faded shop fronts of old Athens. In a mixed sea of Greek speakers and fair-skinned tourists speaking German, English, or French, you could follow the tracks of the ιlektrico (ηλεκτρικό), Athens’s first public train system, which carves a moat on the side of the Acropolis, beneath the ancient Agora. You would also pass street vendors. Men from Bangladesh sell goods they have obtained from Chinese wholesalers—sometimes sunglasses and jewelry, but mostly knick-knacks, plastic toys such as windup dolls and windmill hats, and surprisingly useful items like whistles, key chains, and LED flashlights, which you can buy for 3 Euro. There are also West African traders selling “designer” purses—replicas of Louis Vuitton and Gucci spread out on soiled white sheets, which make for both a quick get-away and a quick way to reopen shop. When other vendors—or often customers—whisper warnings of “police” or astinomia [αστυνομία], sellers gather up their goods, only to lay them down again moments later, once danger has passed.
If you head five minutes to the southwest away from Chinatown, you will find Gazi, a relatively new center of Athenian nightlife, housing the temple of Athens’s contemporary art scene, the “Technopolis,” a converted factory that is now an exhibition space. Here, if you know where to look, you will also find the ancient gates of Athens and the ancient cemetery of Keramikos, an oasis of quiet green, replete with a small brook and the occasional snapping turtle. If you go a little to the southwest beyond Gazi, with its recently opened metro stop that has dramatically increased the crowds of club goers, you will find another crucial node in my map of Athens: the Boulevard of Petrou Ralli, and the Police Department for Aliens, where, until recently, people lined up in order to apply for asylum.7
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