Vulnerable Refugees' and 'Voluntary Deportations

Performing the Hotspot, Embodying Its Violence

Bibliographic Data

ID3948225
AuthorsAila Spathopoulou (0000-0001-6563-5232, Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK), Anna Carastathis (Feminist Autonomous Centre for research, Athens, Greece, corresponding author), Myrto Tsilimpounidi (0000-0003-2706-4824, Feminist Autonomous Centre for research, Athens, Greece)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue4
Pages1257-1283
Publication date2022-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2020.1772237
OpenAlexW3035736995
LanguageEN
Citations received35
References cited28

In this paper, we intervene in naturalised distinctions based on problematic assumptions about agency and choice that underpin the global regime of migration management: namely, that categories of human mobility can be ontologically and juridically distinguished from one another in terms of the degrees or forms of freedom they embody, and that different rights legitimately adhere to each. Focussing on the ‘hotspots’ instituted on 5 islands in the Aegean Sea to manage ‘mixed migration flows’ during the declared ‘refugee crisis,’ we show that the ideological justification for the process of differentiation involves variable attributions of agency, choice, and freedom, or their lack thereof, all of which silence the actual subjects transformed into objects of ‘migration management.’ We argue that the figure of the refugee is divested of agency through the ascription of vulnerability, while the migrant is invested with economic rationality. However, the forms of vulnerability that internment within the camp produces are excluded by design from vulnerability assessments. By tracing the various paths out of the hotspot – including the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration Programme – we show that the hotspot is, in essence, a deportation mechanism. This analysis is based on an ethnographic encounter, which illustrates the psychic and physical violence through which the will is bent and shaped, leading some illegalised subjects to ‘self-deportation.’

Criminology · Democracy · Deportation · Human rights · Immigration · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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