Migrant Advocacy under Austerity: Transforming Solidarity in the Greek-Refugee Regime

Abstract

Abstract With the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ declaration of an emergency in 2016, Thessaloniki’s refugee regime began to develop rapidly. Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were transformed from underfunded initiatives to institutions managing large budgets and requiring staff with intercultural competencies and experience with migrant populations. For this, they turned to the ‘lost generation’— Greek youth who had come of age during the economic crisis and who had formed close relationships with migrants through political mobilizations and local solidarity networks that had sprung up in response to widespread austerity. In this article, I ask: How is the conversion of young ‘radicals’ from ‘anti-state’ activist networks into NGO representatives achieved? How does this transition impact former activists’ relationships with migrants and how do former activists make sense of this change? What, if anything, makes this a ‘Thessaloniki story’? My argument is three-fold. First, the conversion of activists into NGO representatives is made possible by a combination of young people’s exclusion from economic opportunities and the state’s disciplining of forms of solidarity that exist outside of the refugee regime. Second, the refugee regime converts solidarity established through political struggle into a form of human capital that affords former activists social mobility. Existing solidarity between former activists and migrants is undermined as a result. Third, on account of their new role as gatekeepers in NGOs, former activists struggle to offer a compelling narrative of continuity with their left-wing identity and their politicized commitment to migrants. In doing so, they rely on identifiable forms of boundary work and justification.