CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Maitra, Adrija |
|---|---|
| Title | Rescaling Refugee And Migrant Bodies On The Island Of Lesvos |
| Summary | The year 2015 is regarded as the peak year in which thousands of refugees and migrants from Turkey, crossing the Aegean Sea, arrived on the shores of Lesvos. The EU-Turkey deal, signed the following year, provided the framework to contain illegal entry into the EU and closed all (land and sea) routes of entry into the EU from Turkey. The research for this study was conducted from April-June in the year 2018. The narrow stretch of the Aegean Sea lying in between Izmir (Turkey) and the north shore of Lesvos still remained active during the time-span of this study. Routinely patrolled by the Hellenic Coast Guard, Frontex vessels, and sometimes by NATO warships, created a border security regime which produced migrant illegality. Once on the shore, they were transported to the refugee camp of Moria within a few hours. Moria, colloquially referred to as ‘hell on earth’, served as another site of body-politics, reducing their bodies to bareness. Through NGO spaces in Mytilene, these refugees and migrants were able to access a platform to create and recreate their temporal realities. This thesis traces the migration trajectory of the refugees and migrants through the border security regime, production of bare lives within the refugee camp, and the negotiation and navigation of temporal experiences. Through the lens of scaling, it illustrates the ways in which borders are being re-mapped, asymmetrical relations among bare lives produced, and the relationships between multiple temporal realities embodied. The material collected from the field was through the method of participation observation, in the capacity of a trainee at an NGO called Lighthouse Relief, and by conducting many semi-structured interviews of full-time NGO workers and trainees. This thesis has attempted to circumvent the pitfalls of a nation-centric approach by studying the multiple scales which impact the bodies of refugees and migrants along their trajectory of migration. Migration is viewed from the point of a journey. |
| Supervisor | Jones-Gailani, Nadia |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/maitra_adrija.pdf |
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