An ethnographic study of the asylum system in Greece, this book looks at how people seeking asylum, humanitarian service workers, and government employees negotiate the system. The larger questions this book asks are the result of Greece's position as the border between the European Union and a landscape of failed states and desperation economies. At the same time, Greece itself is struggling with a major political and economic crisis that renders its own position in relation to this border insecure. The author is interested in how EU frameworks of governance, human rights, and humanitarianism damage the people involved in the asylum system. The book focuses on an NGO in Athens, and also looks at how the global economic crisis is changing Athenian society. The book draws some metaphors from classical Greek tragedy, and is divided into three sections: governance, judgment, and citizenship, with a concluding chapter on the bureaucratic machine and the idea of deus ex machina. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
On the Doorstep of Europe examines the way asylum seekers, bureaucrats, and service providers in Greece attempt to navigate the dilemmas of governance, ethics, knowledge, and sociability that emerge through this legal process.
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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