Sappers of Fortress Europe: exploring the micropolitics of borders through the occupational culture of asylum caseworkers in Greece

Abstract

This paper considers borders as ubiquitous and pervasive social relations and as sites of struggles, which are shaped through and transformed by social antagonisms and contestations. While much discussion of border struggles focuses on migrants' resistance and various forms of activism, this paper provides insights on the micro-resistance of those who, instead of overtly opposing and contesting the biopolitical power of border regimes, are integral to their operation: asylum caseworkers who filter and select bordercrossers. The paper presents data from interviews with selfidentified leftist asylum caseworkers in Greece who, through their work, seek to create cracks in the so-called 'Fortress Europe'. By exploring the somewhat unexplored occupational culture of leftist asylum caseworkers, we show how, while trying to resist bordering regimes, leftist asylum caseworkers both critique and reproduce the power relations they seek to subvert. Essentially, we provide valuable insights on the limits of resistance due to the workings of powerful technologies of governmentinformed by neoliberal managerialismthat are operational in day-to-day life of the asylum process. The paper thus provides a novel exploration of the complex and entangled relation between technologies of power and micro-resistances within border regimes in the significant context of Greece.

Doing Digital Migration Studies:

“…That would be to ascribe too much credit to the intellectual creativity of corporate consultants, to deny the "partial, clumsy and non-working" (Tazzioli, 2019, p. 87) character of data-extraction practices at borders, and to obscure the messiness of migration management at the everyday level. Top-down impositions of the kinds of disciplinary measures depicted above inevitably clash with the "counter-conduct" of street-level bureaucrats-camp personnel, police officers, caseworkers-and their capacity to subvert managerial control (Ioannidis et al, 2021;Rozakou, 2017). Above all, and despite their meticulous analysis of every procedural component of the reception regime, McKinsey consultants failed to anticipate how their vision would be continually frustrated by people's unruly and unyielding desire for mobility.…”

“…No longer are we dealing with individual men, women, children but numbers of "transferable," "imminently addressable," or "returnable" migrants, whose sole recorded identity markers are their nationality and their exact location along the procedural chain. As Ioannidis et al (2021) explain in their study of the Greek Asylum Service, "asylum seekers are treated as members of particular sub-populations defined by categorical indicators rather than as human subjects." These categories carry material consequences as they, for example, facilitate the "segmentation" of cases by nationality, a strategy that was at the core of McKinsey's action plan despite warnings from human rights NGOs that it was contributing to "inter-ethnic tensions and riots" inside the camps, "reflecting the frustration of certain nationalities waiting for months without being given access to the asylum procedure" (Papadopoulou, 2016).…”

L’acollida “on the move” de la infància i joventut que migra sola a Catalunya. Una visió des dels i les professionals

“…Es podria conjecturar que ens trobem davant d'un sistema que sembla "voler acollir", però que troba elements estructurals -de caire administratiu i jurídic-que ho obstaculitzen. Les portes mencionades esdevenen fronteres ubiqües i omnipresents que es tradueixen en llocs de lluita (Ioannidis, Dimou i Dadusc, 2021).…”

“Not everyday business.” A caseworker perspective on interpreter provision for deaf refugees and cooperation with interpreters

“…While neither caseworkers nor interpreters are, of course, social workers per se, working and interpreting in such a power-infused, yet fragile social environment like the asylum procedure may contribute to reinforcing power structures and also perpetuate "white abled supremacy" (Chapman & Withers 2019, 6), particularly when dealing with highly vulnerable groups. Both caseworkers and interpreters may be "complicit in systems of oppression and domination" (375) even when they possibly actively seek to oppose contextual disadvantages (see Ioannidis, Dimou & Dadusc 2021). Along with the caseworkers, who remould the applicants' narratives into a written conglomerate of textual pieces that inform their decisions (Jacquemet 2009), interpreters also assume a powerful role in presenting, representing, and potentially perpetuating inequalities and vulnerabilities through their passing of meaning between two often very disparate worlds with potentially different world views: Thus, the role of language is very crucial for power, and when language is assigned the task of translating culture, it translates power under the dynamics of representation, and the one who represents becomes in a position of power, while the represented goes nowhere other than to the position of silence and muteness.…”