Olga Lafazani, PhD,  Postdoctoral researcher & Eleni Kyramargiou,  PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher:
“The refugee camp as a technology of control in time and space: experiences from Greece”
22.5.2018
NKUA /

Ms. Lafazani approached refugee camps from an historical and institutional perspective. She tried to refute theoretical analyses that view the camps as spaces of exclusion, of absolute power and of bare lives. On the contrary, she analysed the camp as embedded in concrete social, political and economic relations that takes its particular form in actual times and places. Multiple forms of resistances by refugees, inside the camps, reshape their conditions of living as well as their legal and political status.

In her historical overview she discussed how the “camp” emerged in Greece in different periods and places: from the first deportation camps in the borders with Albania in the beginning of the 90’s to the detention camps of the Aegean islands and Evros region in the borders with Turkey in the 2000’s reaching to the Hot Spots that the last two years are one of the basic devices in the management of the “refugee crisis”. Her presentation was accompanied by pictures taken from the interior of refugee camps in Greece.

What she stressed was the intrinsic relation between the form and the organization of the camps to the form and content of the dominant socio-political regime. As she characteristically claimed: “the meaning and the form of the camp functions inside a particular framework, in a dialectic relation to society”.

Therefore, one of the main conclusions of her workshop was the need to understand the camps by focusing on their concrete social and political conditions, while being attentive to the acts of resistance and creation by the refugees themselves inside them.

A rich and lively discussion followed after the workshop. Comments, Critical remarks and questions where posed concerning the workshop and the refugee crisis in general.

Find more (including pictures) at:
http://riskchange.phs.uoa.gr/past-events/workshops.html