On mediation and brokerage in humanitarian action and migration governance

 

Evthymios Papataxiarchis (Univ. of the Aegean)

 

This paper introduces a brief theoretical framework on mediation and brokerage in humanitarian settings and more generally in migration. It is inspired by my ethnographic experience on the humanitarian mobilization and the establishment of the humanitarian regime in Aegean Greece during the ‘European refugee crisis’ and based on a review of the relevant literature on mediation in anthropology and the social sciences. The following text is a working document that aims to clear the theoretical ground for the Human(c)ity project. In this respect it does not include a comprehensive argument, but it is rather built around a set of points which I hope will encourage some further thinking around a set of questions about mediation and brokerage in humanitarian action. For example, what are humanitarian mediation and brokerage, in theory and, in actual practice, on the ground? Which cultural logics inform the practice and the subsequent organization of humanitarian mediation? What kind of resources are mobilized through mediation, by what kind of actors and to what effect? How do mediators and brokers account for their mediating activities? How are the mediating activities perceived by the involved parties as well as by outsiders? What is the impact of mediation on humanitarian management and how is it related to the type, the subject, and the logic of mediation?

Here, I argue that the critical rethinking of mediation and brokerage and their employment in our ethnographic work can be very productive in approaching some key dimensions of humanitarian management and humanitarian governance such as relief, protection in its multiple dimensions, and integration. It particularly allows the ethnographic grasp of features of humanitarian action in the context of the recent ‘European refugee crisis’, such as the multifarious production of connections, networks and assemblages in the course of humanitarianization, the wide spread of initiatives of different kinds and the circulation of meaning in translation, features that have impressed me as particularly interesting, not to say intellectually exciting. It also offers a window to approach the impact of humanitarian action in relation to the wider processes of globalization in the context of which humanitarianization takes place. In one word, I believe that the analytical emphasis on mediation is ethnographically promising, and that brokerage is good to think with.

My reading of the relevant social science literature is not exhaustive but rather eclectic. It is guided, to a certain extent, by the research interests that dominate Human(c)ity. Based on my current understanding of this literature I could briefly distinguish two main areas or research on mediation. On the one hand, there is an older literature on mediation and brokerage in the domain of (humanitarian) development and migration. On the other hand, there is a more recent research trend about mediation in humanitarian relief in ‘Third World’ countries. In one part of this recent literature mediation is approached as an ingredient of NGO action that does not deserve special treatment. Another part gives special attention to the role of intermediaries in the realization of humanitarian projects. Also this upcoming literature on mediation and brokerage in humanitarian relief increasingly includes works on Europe.

File: On mediation and brokerage in humanitarian action and migration governance

Village reborn in humanity: Mediation in the making of the humanitarian arena

 

Evthymios Papataxiarchis (Univ. of the Aegean)
with Alexandra Zavos (Univ. of Crete)

In this paper I focus on a very familiar place, ‘my anthropological village’, Skala Sykamias, a small fishing community in Northern Lesvos. This border community became the focal point of the European refugee crisis. First, because it was the gate into Europe for hundreds of thousands of displaced travelers from the ‘East’ who followed the Aegean route during the long ‘summer of migration’. Second, because it attracted the attention of many thousands of humanitarians from all over the world, particularly from Northern Europe, and, effectively, became the frontstage of the humanitarian regime in Greece (see Papataxiarchis 2016a).

Here I want to consider the effects of the refugee crisis on this community, the transformations that took place as the village became entangled with humanitarianism and subjected to the unsettling as well as shaping power of the (primarily humanitarian) forces that permeated it. I am particularly interested in the impact that the establishment and functioning of the assemblage of humanitarian structures, mechanisms and practices had on the locality. I call this process ‘humanitarianization’. At the analytical level, I depart from the narrow version of the concept of humanitarianization, which suggests the use of the language of rights and humanitarian values for the justification of practices that actually contradict or even violate these values (see Lemberg-Pedersen 2021). I also distance myself from the normative notion of ‘humanitarian space’ (suggesting neutrality) that dominates the official humanitarian vocabulary (see Hilhorst and Jansen 2020). Instead, I employ a broader version of the term humanitarianization that focuses on the structural processes generated by humanitarian interventions and their impact on localities. In this regard my argument is closer to studies which discuss the transformation of borderscapes under humanitarian rule or analyze the merging of humanitarian with securitarian concerns in the governance of national borders (see Walters 2011, Pallister Wilkins 2016 and Rozakou 2020). In the case of Skala the humanitarianization of the locality was intrinsically linked with the transformation of the border regime and the emergence of a caring border at the place of the securitarian one.

For the purpose of my ethnographic analysis, I approach the humanitarianization of the locality as a complex, threefold process i.e., a process that, as it unfolds, produces transformations on three levels. First in space, with the establishment of camps, offices, and other spatial structures for humanitarians and asylum seekers only. In fact, a new humanitarian spatiality, which I have called ‘humanitarian village’, was born out of this process. Second, in meanings, with the transformation of the locality’s identity as a traditional agricultural and tourist idyl into a topos of ‘solidarity’. And third, in social relations, with the rise of new networks between the different categories of actors and the opening of the locality to a global audience through a sequence of honors, ritual visits and other celebratory acts.

I start with a discussion of the humanitarianization of space, then I proceed to the analysis of the visual production of a ‘solidarian topography’ through the use of photos and the subsequent changes in the identity of the locality and, finally, I turn to the global networking of this small rural locality which was achieved by the transformation of Skala into a site of humanitarian pilgrimage and global significance. The above order of presentation does not reflect a chronological succession of events since it is impossible to reduce the humanitarianization of the locality in a linear time sequence (and frame it as a classic historical narrative organized in phases).

At the local level, the European ‘refugee crisis’ was a generative event, involving both the deconstruction and the reconstruction of established historical forms of action and patterns of sociality. The travelers of need who came from ‘the East’ broke the locality. The humanitarians who came from ‘the West’ contributed to the break down but also remade it in a new humanitarian form, what I coined as ‘humanitarian village’. First the visitors from all sides dismantled the very defenses and the cohesion of the local community. They made it a ‘broken place’ (Papataxiarchis 2016a). And then the humanitarians reconstructed it by imbuing a new content, attributing to it a quality of universal significance, eventually turning it into a topos of ‘solidarity’.

Almost one hundred years after its creation in 1922 by Anatolian ethnic Greek Christians, who were forced to leave their homes and come to Lesvos as refugees, Skala was reborn. This time not as a refugee but as a humanitarian village. It was reborn in (universal) humanity in a double sense – as an icon of humanness (anthropia) and empathy to the predicament of the displaced travelers and as a topos of universal significance and global reference.

File: Village reborn in humanity: Mediation in the making of the humanitarian arena

The ‘humanitarian town’: An overview of the humanitarian scene in Mytilene (Lesvos)

Pafsanias Karathanasis & Kelly Avanidou (Univ. of the Aegean)

 

The research in Mytilene and the island Lesvos attempts an extensive mapping of the ‘humanitarian field’ on the island in two different time periods using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. In other words, the research has been carried out through both ethnographic fieldwork on the island, in three different research visits, and extensive online research on the webpages and social media pages of the different actors that produce humanitarian work, as well as an online survey that was circulated among the humanitarian actors we have mapped.

Thus, the research is focused on gathering, analyzing, and presenting the “humanitarian landscape” of Lesvos in its multiple dimensions, and at different times, and the results are being recorded in a dynamic interactive atlas of the island.

File: The ‘humanitarian town’: An overview of the humanitarian scene in Mytlene (Lesvos)

The Municipal ‘Triplet’: Mediation in the Covid-void

 

Marica Rombou-Levidi (Univ. of the Aegean)

 

In this paper I discuss mediation in asylum seekers’ settlement in apartments in Athens by focusing on the EU funded accommodation program ESTIA (Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation) and its implementation by the Municipality of Athens (MoA). Drawing on ethnographic research carried out between June 2020 and July 2021, I focus on a particular operational system employed by the municipality, the system of the “triplet” − small working teams of three, a social scientist, an accommodation officer, and an interpreter− which constitutes an elaborate framework of mediation that links the migrants with both the local and central authorities. I argue that despite internal regulations and safeguards that were issued successively by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum (MoMA) aiming to guarantee a smooth settlement process for all parties involved in ESTIA, and despite the efforts of the municipality to apply these regulations in practice, the triplet is imbued by tensions and contradictions that undermine constitutional intentions, while, at the same time, further shaping the notion of mediation in the context of migration governance.

The research on which this paper draws, although planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, coincided with the successive lockdowns applied throughout Greece. Evidently, this conjuncture necessitated important modifications in the methodology, including to a very large extent the switching from on the ground fieldwork to online ethnographic research. This was a severe restriction, while, at the same time, being a positive challenge. The pandemic caused significant unrest in the field of migration governance. I conceptualize the period of the pandemic as one of numbness; as a mediation void which, I name the Covid-void. Here, I explore the shrinking of mediation for asylum seekers and humanitarian workers in the context of this void, while unpacking aspects of its impact on the former’s minds and bodies. Thus, while the paper concerns mediation in the context of asylum seekers’ settlement, it deals largely with the gap left by the freezing of mediation caused by the very particular circumstances of 2020-2021. Ethnographically, to consider the decline or the pausing of a process may be as important as examining its growth.

During fieldwork, my interlocutors were Greek people working for state or private institutions, humanitarian actors, members of local society, and asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and several African countries – Congo, the DRC, Cameroon, Nigeria, Libya, and Morocco. Communication with asylum seekers was facilitated by interpreters, who, on the ground or online, translated oral interviews from Arabic and French into Greek.

Mediation in the framework of asylum seekers’ settlement involves interaction between different parties. This interplay consists of initiatives and actions that are taken by all sides to connect the disparate social worlds of asylum seekers and Greek society. Therefore, mediation also refers to agency. Connection, however, goes hand in hand with distance. This is because asylum seekers’ encounters with local society involve the bridging of divergent world views, cultural systems, value frames, social groups, and levels of political and social inclusion. In the case of the ESTIA program, the parties being connected were the asylum seekers on the one hand, and the UNHCR or the state on the other. To a large extent, in the case of official policies on asylum seekers’ settlement in Athens, mediation acquired an institutional character. Here, I approach mediation as a bundle of social practices, social roles, social relations, encounters, and ethical engagements. Furthermore, I consider the work of the MoA and the implementation of the triplet system as an instance of biopolitics, in the sense that it constitutes a technique for the management of populations.

File: The Municipal ‘Triplet’: Mediation in the Covid-void

Informal practices of mediation in the process of asylum seekers’ settlement in Athens

Ervin Shehu (University of the Aegean)

The project in Athens concerns ethnographic research related to the accommodation of asylum seekers. The research negotiates the social mediation factors that affect the relationship of the asylum seekers from Pakistan and Afghanistan with the local society, public and private sectors. In particular, it focuses on the informal forms of mediation during the accommodation process and explores two main axes (models) that have substantially contributed to this process:

1) Ethnocultural and social networks and
2) informal humanitarian actors with reference to the field of housing and labour.
The fieldwork was conducted on four ethnographic fields, namely: in the neighbourhood of Metaxourgeio, in Pedio tοu Areos, in the Afghan association, and in the «Solidarity House».

File: Informal practices of mediation in the process of asylum seekers’ settlement in Athens