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Greece's hardening migration policies

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Since July 2021, a zeppelin has been roaming the skies of Greece monitoring its borderline. Seeking to reinforce surveillance, the Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection along with the commander in chief of the Greek Police have decreed new guard recruitments to tighten the country’s border control.

The new Aerostats surveilling the Greek border. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

As Senior Landecker Fellow Nikolaos Vrantsis and Alexandra Bogos explain in their new article published  by LeftEast, Greece has been determined to “become a pioneer together with Hungary in lowering safeguards for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.” In their piece entitled “What does the overgrowth of surveillance in Evros mean for Greece and Europe?” the two authors unfold the evolution of Greece’s hardening migration policies.

According to a recent report conducted by the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament, Athens has been continuously violating the right to asylum – Bluntly denying people the security they are entitled to. With no solutions, increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers resort to illegal options. Over the last years, smugglers have made daily headlines exposing the endless tragedy of these deadly crossings.

For Nikolaos and Alexandra, “refugees and migrants are treated as surplus people from a politico-economic apparatus that strategically invests in incarceration, molding a new social division between deserving nationals and undeserving, racialized and gendered “others.” It grows its political legitimacy and harvests political returns by cultivating fear against racialized subjects.”

To read more on Greek’s overgrowth of surveillance, find the full article on this LeftEast page.

Nikolaos is one of thirty 2020-2021 Landecker Democracy Fellows. This fellowship, a collaboration between the Alfred Landecker Foundation and Humanity in Action, was created to strengthen a new generation of leaders whose approaches to political and social challenges can become catalysts for democratic placemaking and community building. Read more about the fellowship here.