Research - Reports
SETTLING IN THE ‘HUMANITARIAN CITY’: THE SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND POLITICAL IMPACT OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ASYLUM SEEKERS, HUMANITARIAN ACTORS, AND LOCAL SOCIETY (IN LESVOS AND ATHENS)
CONTENTS
I. Objectives of the project
II. Implementation of the project and conclusions per Work Package
Work Package 1: Entrance, Skala Sykamnias (Lesvos)
Work Package 2: Settlement, Athens, Eleonas ‘Open Accommodation Facility’ and
apartments of the ESTIA program
Work Package 3: The humanitarian landscape of Lesvos, a qualitative and quantitative
documentation
Work Package 4: Settlement, social and religious networks in Athens
Work Package 5: Dynamic Interactive Atlas
Work Package 6: Project coordination and dissemination of results
III. Dissemination and publicity actions
IV. Impact of the project
V. Summaries of scientific presentations
I. OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
Human(c)ity had the following goals:
1. The study of humanitarian governance as a field of social/cultural mediation, interaction and
negotiation between asylum seekers, private and public, individual and collective
humanitarian actors and, finally, local communities.
2. The focus on three geographical areas with particular emphasis on the third one: a) a small
settlement of first reception (Skala Sykamnias, Lesvos) b) a border town (Mytilene) on an
island with a Reception and Identification Center (Lesvos) and c) the capital of Greece
(Athens).
3. The documentation of transformations regarding the transition from the ‘humanitarian
village’ to the ‘humanitarian city.
4. The comparison of different types of settlement of incoming refugees and migrants – mainly
camps, municipal or privately managed apartments, squatting of private or public spaces –
and the investigation of the different impacts these have on asylum seekers, humanitarian
actors and members of local communities.
5. The investigation of interaction in the humanitarian space and its social and political effects
in relation to the dominant modes of sociality and the different forms of mediation
(humanitarian organizations, ethno-cultural collectivities, and migrant networks).
II. PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
The project was implemented through six Work Packages (WPs). These included two WPs on
Lesvos, two on Athens, one on the interactive atlas, which included an inventory of the
humanitarian landscape on Lesvos, and one on dissemination and publicity. The pandemic
caused serious problems in the implementation of the research, especially as regards
ethnographic fieldwork in Lesvos, and led to significant changes in methodology, the
geographical shift of WP2 from Mytilene to Athens, and two extensions of the duration of the
project. Also, during the project, it was necessary to replace the person in charge of Work
Package 5 and to add new staff to the research team. Despite the obstacles all work packages
proceeded and were completed according to the approved schedule. The successful
implementation of the project was supported by the regular meetings (every two weeks) of the
research group, which from one point onwards took place online, and the continuous
cooperation of all members of the research team. Also important was the contribution of the
members of the advisory committee who closely followed the progress of the project.
File: Extended Synopsis
Entrance – first reception and transit facilities, Skala Sykamnias (Lesvos)
Evthymios Papataxiarchis
with Marica Rombou-Levidi
The first work package (WP1) investigated, through the lens of mediation, aspects of the local
formation of the humanitarian regime in the most important site of first reception, the border
village of Skala Sykamnias in N. Lesvos. Some of these aspects had not been previously
highlighted in the research of Evthymios Papataxiarchis, the Principal Investigator of Human(c)ity
with long ethnographic experience in this place. At the critical juncture of the peak of the ‘refugee
crisis’ in 2015-6 the demand for mediations of all kinds was enormous, both due to the liquidation
of official, if limited, structures for the reception and management of mass migration flows and
due to the equally massive arrival of professional humanitarian actors, volunteers, and activists
from all over the world. This gave enormous comparative advantages to those who possessed
key qualities—language and other communication skills, social capital, social networks, and other
resources—to assume intermediary roles.
This specific work package utilized the long and in-depth knowledge of the specific village
possessed by the PI and, through a combination of new interviews and ethnographic research,
focused on specific cases of individuals, as well as informal and formal networks of humanitarian
actors, with significant mediation action in the formation of the three camps that operated in
Skala at the time: ‘Platanos’, ‘Lighthouse’, and ‘Stage 2’. At the same time, it explored other
aspects of the formation of the ‘humanitarian village’ and, in particular, the transformations of local identity that occurred and their importance for the implementation of a state project, the
upgrading of ‘solidarity to refugees’ into a new patriotism and into a legitimizing factor of the
then newly established humanitarian regime.
The focus on leading mediators of that period allowed the research to highlight the great scope
that existed at the time for initiatives, movements, and improvisations. At the same time, it
contributed to an understanding of the processes of production of a hybrid ideological space
where, housed under the rubric of ‘humanism’ but also in pragmatic terms, extremely
heterogeneous ventures with diverse agendas meet and coexist. WP1 showed that the
essentialist re-signification of Skala as a ‘place of solidarity’, a representation that overlooks the
fissures and conflicts produced locally by the refugee situation, is the other side of the
hierarchical subordination of the village to the humanitarian regime.
Some of the findings of WP1 are presented in more detail in the paper titled: ‘Village reborn in
humanity: Mediation in the making of the humanitarian arena’, delivered at the workshop on
mediation that took place in Mytilene in June 2022.
File (in Greek): Entrance – first reception and transit facilities, Skala Sykamnias (Lesvos)
The humanitarian landscape of Lesvos, a qualitive and quantitative documentation
Pafsanias Karathanasis
with Alexandra Zavos
The new conditions that developed after the outbreak of the pandemic forced the readjustment
of the methodology for recording and mapping the ‘humanitarian landscape’ of Lesvos. First, the
impossibility of travel to and from the island, as well as of face-to-face interviews with
humanitarian actors, were addressed by giving more emphasis to quantitative research methods.
Thus, for most of the humanitarian landscape mapping it was decided to use an online
questionnaire combined with an extensive survey of the organizations’ websites and social
networks, which was complemented by field research during visits to Lesvos when these became
possible.
Secondly, the rapid developments that took place in the research field throughout 2020, because
of both the change in government policy on asylum and migration and the imposition of
measures to limit the pandemic, but also of important events, such as outbreak of xenophobic
violence and the destruction by fire of the Moria Reception and Identification Center (RIC), forced
the research team to readjust the recording periods.
After re-working the research design, two distinct recording periods were established (instead of
the three originally planned): (a) the period before the new government’s change of asylum and
migration policy and the outbreak of the pandemic – up to the beginning of 2020, and (b) the
period from autumn 2020 onwards.
These two periods, which effectively concern the time before and after the outbreak of the
pandemic, were chosen for comparative purposes, to highlight and outline the evolution and
change of the humanitarian landscape on the island under these unprecedented conditions.
The results of the research present the humanitarian landscape of Lesvos in two time periods
and at three different levels of recording and analysis:
1. Recording and presentation of quantitative data regarding the presence of asylum seekers on
the island of Lesvos. At this level, the main change was the dramatic decrease in the population
of asylum seekers on the island, from 21,622 in the beginning of 2020 to 1,470 in August 2022.
This was a result of both the decrease in arrivals to Lesvos from 2020 onwards, and, on the other
hand, of the increase in transports from Lesvos to the mainland camps.
2. Qualitative and quantitative mapping of the actors who produce humanitarian work on the
island. During the two periods of the survey, 102 humanitarian actors with a presence on the
island of Lesvos were recorded: 9 of them were Greek state or European agencies/services or
transnational organizations, 11 were large international organizations with a presence in various
countries, 70 were small and medium non-governmental/not-for-profit organizations and 11
were informal groups/collectives. The majority, based on the number of their human resources,
were small organizations with 10 or fewer people (38), while 18 were medium ones, up to 50
people, and only three (3) were large, with more than 50 people. Twenty-seven of the
humanitarian collectives listed ceased their activities on the island after 2020.
3. Presentation of the social, spatial, and political differences caused by the development of
humanitarian governance and by the presence of asylum seekers on the island, and their
influences on the local society.
The dramatic reduction in the population of asylum seekers and their confinement in the
Reception and Identification Center (RIC), both during the pandemic and to some extent
afterwards, resulted in the corresponding reduction of the number of organizations and groups
active on the island, but also the reduction of the activities and services offered by the
humanitarian actors who remain on the island. At the same time, the geographical spread of the
humanitarian landscape of the island changed. After 2021, only the RIC of Mavrovouni (Kara
Tepe) and the transit camp (Quarantine) on the north coast of the island remained operative.
The general reduction of humanitarian presence in Lesvos had an impact on the local community,
limiting its reactions, which had started to take on violent dimensions after 2018 and had peaked
at the beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic.
File (in Greek): The humanitarian landscape of Lesvos, a qualitive and quantitative documentation
Table (in Greek): Table of humanitarian actors (2019-2022)
The Dynamic Interactive Atlas of Lesvos
Kallopi Avanidou
Work Package 5 (WP5) consisted of the analysis of the record resulting from the qualitative and
quantitative mapping of the humanitarian landscape of Lesvos (carried out in the context of WP3)
and the presentation of the material as a geographical visualization in the form of a Dynamic
Interactive Atlas (DIA) of the island (with an emphasis on the city of Mytilene and the village of
Skala Sykamnias).
The work of WP5 started in June 2021, with the replacement of a researcher who left the project.
The team was joined by a new colleague, specializing in graphic design, with the aim of assisting
in the visual processing of the DIA. The two new members of the WP5 research team
systematically collaborated with WP3 researchers as well as with the rest of the project
researchers in order to construct the Atlas (https://humancity.sah.aegean.gr/InteractiveAtlas/)
and to create the project webpage (humancity@sah.aegean.gr), housed under the Observatory
of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean website.
The interactive atlas of the Human(c)ity research project is an original and so far unique tool for
visualizing both spatial and temporal information on the refugee crisis taking place on the island
of Lesvos. The data presented was collected through an online survey, questionnaires and
information recorded on the webpages of the relevant agencies and organizations, as well as onsite fieldwork in the context of WP3 (2020 – 2022). The atlas is addressed to the academic
community of researchers working on migration, to humanitarian actors as well as to the wider
public. It is user friendly, providing a full explanation of the tools at hand.
The atlas represents an integrated information system which consists of three subsystems: (i) a
geobase where spatial or non-spatial data are registered, stored, updated and processed, (ii) an
online geographic information system (GIS) through a user-friendly web browser, and (iii) a
subsystem for processing and entering new information by members of the research team.
The web atlas (webGIS) was developed using HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP as a server-side
programming language. The software is all open source, with essential libraries such as
bootstrap, jQuery, Ajax, and a, client-side mapping API, Leaflet. The mapping application is
designed with tools and features common to web pages and is therefore easy to understand by
web-savvy users. The user-atlas interface provides features such as, switching between
background layers and thematic layers, as well as zooming in and out. The left screen of the atlas
includes a toolbox with user information and data presentation capabilities and consists of 4 tabs
(home, data collection, timelines, user guide).
Along with the atlas, an online cartographic application was produced for the members of the
research team, which provides possibilities for entering new geo-data and editing the existing
ones, aiming at the continuous updating of the content.
File (in Greek): The Dynamic Interactive Atlas of Lesvos
Settlement – Athens, Eleonas ‘Open Accommodation Facility’ and Estia Apartments
Marica Rombou-Levidi
Work Package 2 (WP2), also through the lens of mediation, ethnographically investigated two
official forms of settlement of asylum seekers in Athens, in the management of which the
Municipality of Athens had a strong participation: (a) the Eleonas (Attica) ‘Accommodation
Facility for Third Country Nationals or Stateless Persons who have applied for international
protection’ and (b) the ‘ESTIA’ program, which concerned housing in apartments within the urban
fabric.
In both of these forms of settlement mediation had an institutional character. Thus, this specific
work package complemented WP4, which focused on mediation in the context of informal forms
of settlement of asylum seekers in Athens. The two work packages together contributed to the
study of mediation as an aspect of the governance of the ‘humanitarian city’.
The study was implemented through a 13-month ethnographic research οn the above two official
settlements which, due to the pandemic, was largely carried out online. When conditions
allowed, it was supplemented by fieldwork with the researcher’s physical presence in the field.
The ethnographic material includes 61 recorded conversations with representatives of the
Ministry of Immigration and Asylum, the Municipality of Athens, the International Organization
for Migration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the NGOs ARSIS and HUMAN
RIGHTS 360 and, of course, with asylum seekers who resided in the two settlement schemes
under investigation. It also includes informal conversations with people from the above places,
which were either not considered feasible to record, or were recorded, but the informants did
not consent to the material being deposited in the Archive of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in
the Aegean (ARMCA) along with the rest.
With regard to the Facility of Eleonas, at the time of the field research, mediation, which under
normal circumstances included elements of control and guardianship of the inhabitants of the
structure, was carried out in a situation of extreme liminality in space and time that undermined
relationships, roles and experiences. Two elements that were absolutely clear were the Facility’s
overcrowding and its understaffing. Asylum seekers were experiencing an extremely acute
waiting situation and a dead-end living condition.
The process of mediation in the Facility of Eleonas was an ‘official’ process of professional
relationship between humanitarian actors and asylum seekers directed ‘from above’. As such, it
was based on hierarchy and followed rules and frameworks that applied to both sides of the
mediation. It included elements of protection and guardianship of asylum seekers, which,
however, in the context of the pandemic, where all procedures were dysfunctional, had been
withdrawn. It also involved the dimension of power and control over the lives of the beneficiaries
that mediation gives to humanitarian actors. This is a particularly important issue that, to a large
extent, is bypassed by formal forms of reception of asylum seekers. As well as the even more
specific issue of the sense of need that mediators evoke in asylum seekers and refugees, which
adds another dimension to the complex relationship of care and control in the context of
international aid.
Divergences were observed among the views of the representatives of the different agencies
involved in the management of the Facility and, of course, divergences between the views of the
Ministry and those of the asylum seekers.
With regard to the ESTIA project, the research highlighted the urgent nature of the program,
which oriented it exclusively towards short-term reception and housing that did not provide for
a social integration process. It also highlighted gaps in the mediation process and marked
differences among program workers in their uptake of UNHCR and Ministry guidelines for the
reception and settlement of asylum seekers. All this created scope for personal initiative, which
extended beyond the official guidelines, and aimed at supporting the socialization and
integration of asylum seekers. However, at the same time, it also created serious dilemmas for
the workers themselves.
The research focused on the importance of an innovative system of relations and mediation
mechanism of the Municipality of Athens called the ‘triplet’, which relied on the collaboration of
three people – a social scientist, an accommodation officer and an interpreter. Through the study
of the triplet, which, it should be noted, has no counterpart in the international literature on
humanitarian governance, dimensions of the ESTIA program emerged and were confirmed; these
are developed in the more extensive WP2 report attached as a deliverable. The most important
of them were the tensions and oppositions that arose during the process of reception and
settlement of asylum seekers among the members of the working groups of the Municipality of
Athens and, also, between the latter and the beneficiaries. These challenge the statutory
objectives of the official operating instructions of the ESTIA program, while illuminating
dimensions of the humanitarian regime of wider interest.
Finally, an element highlighted by the research which concerned both forms of settlement was
the management of the termination of the beneficiaries’ right to stay in them, by ARSIS and the
Municipality of Athens as well as by their individual executives. The issue of evictions caused
tremors in the mediation work of humanitarian professionals and led to significant restructuring
and resignations.
The results of the research are presented in more detail in the extensive report of WP2 as well
as in the paper titled ‘Mediating asylum seekers’ accommodation in the ESTIA program in
Athens’, which was presented by the researcher at the workshop on mediation.
File (in Greek): Settlement – Athens, Eleonas ‘Open Accommodation Facility’ and Estia Apartments
Settlement, Social and Religious networks in Athens
Ervin Shehu
Work Package 4 (WP4) explored informal types of social mediation in the settlement process of
asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Pakistan in Athens utilising a comparative perspective. Two
key types of mediation that contributed to the settlement process were studied: the
ethnocultural networks of asylum seekers and the informal types of humanitarian governance
that specialized in housing and work. The research focused on the level of everyday practices and
examined the impact these two types of mediation have on refugee asylum seekers and local
communities. Specifically, on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork, five cases were studied: a) a
mixed type ad hoc voluntary group, b) a ‘solidarity’ group, c) a non-governmental organization
(NGO), d) an Association of Afghan migrants and e) a group of newly arrived Pakistani asylum
seekers.
Through the analysis of the two types of mediation and the comparison of the five cases, with
reference points the relations between asylum seekers and ‘supporters’ and the practices of
mediation, it was observed that collective mediation took different forms and involved different
characteristics. All cases were based on different cultural backgrounds, which revealed and
determined the motives and purposes of the actors as well as the quality and forms of mediation.
In addition, it was found that the five cases referred to different types of dependencies and
hierarchical relationships between asylum seekers and humanitarian actors, and in this sense
allowed for an exploration of the meaning of the concepts of ‘protection’, ‘guardianship’,
‘patronage’ and ‘autonomy’. Relationships between asylum seekers and humanitarian actors
appear to be discontinuous compared to relationships acquired within homo-ethnocultural
networks which have continuity.
Regarding the comparison of the ethno-cultural networks of Afghan and Pakistani asylum
seekers, they are characterized by significant differences and particularities between them. For
the two groups, the settlement paths showed some peculiarities. As far as Afghan asylum seekers
are concerned, there is no historically rooted community in Athens with sufficient economic
activities to absorb them into their own labor market, unlike the Pakistanis. For Afghan asylum
seekers, several other factors play a key role, such as the online communities in which they
participate and the friendly networks they build in Greece, mainly with humanitarian actors
(activists, ‘solidarians’), as opposed to Pakistani asylum seekers who show a tendency to
remaining ‘entrapped’ in their homo-ethnocultural relations.
The research clearly showed that Afghan asylum seekers interact and gain more direct
relationships with humanitarian actors than Pakistani asylum seekers. The fact that Afghans
become part of the humanitarian regime, either as ‘beneficiaries’ or as professionals, unlike
Pakistanis who invest in their co-ethnic networks, does not necessarily mean that the
humanitarian regime itself excludes or favors one community over another based on national
criteria. But since humanitarian status is linked to ‘refugee’ status, it appears that low refugee
status determination rates for Pakistanis are a determining factor for humanitarian actors not
investing in supporting them as asylum seekers.
File (in Greek): Settlement, Social and Religious networks in Athens
The research project was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant” (Project Number: HFRI-FM17-67)