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Europe’s Border Guards
By Stathis Kouvelakis and Angelos Kontogiannis-Mandros
Source: Jacobin Magazine
May 3, 2016
Last year, the attempt of Greece’s newly elected radical-left government to resist austerity policies imposed by the European Union institutions and the International Monetary Fund put the country at the center of world attention. This battle was definitively lost when Alexis Tsipras capitulated in July to the demands of the creditors, signing up to a third memorandum only days after a referendum in which Greeks had rejected a softer EU proposed austerity package.
Since that moment, the plight of Greek society has only deepened. But it is now a silent suffering, deprived of the expectation of change and hope that had fueled the mobilizations of recent years.
But 2016 again made Greece headline news, this time for a different reason. The laboratory of neoliberal shock therapy is also Europe’s entrance gate for the millions of people leaving countries devastated by war and poverty.
Since that moment, the plight of Greek society has only deepened. But it is now a silent suffering, deprived of the expectation of change and hope that had fueled the mobilizations of recent years.
But 2016 again made Greece headline news, this time for a different reason. The laboratory of neoliberal shock therapy is also Europe’s entrance gate for the millions of people leaving countries devastated by war and poverty.
According to the available figures, between 15,000 and 17,000 people died in the Mediterranean between the late 1980s and 2012, before the recent exodus from the Greater Middle Eastern area. More than 10,000 have died since, 2015 being the peak year with 3,800 deaths.
This dark side of the “European project” has been so far the least visible and debated one, except for those networks of courageous activists and researchers who have been working on the situation of migrants. The “refugee crisis” — a term which assumes that migrants and refugees pose an inherent threat to order — has at least the merit of politicizing the European project and putting it at the center of public debate. This has been the case in Greece, which found itself, once again, at the frontline of a battle of much wider proportions.
Seen from Greece, the “refugee crisis” reveals in the most brutal way the nature of the European Union as an entity for the surveillance, the policing, and the hierarchical categorization of the population. At the same time, it uncovers another dimension of an allegedly “left government” which, following its shameful surrender to the blackmail of the EU and the IMF, has aligned itself at all levels with the dominant logic of “crisis management.”
This dark side of the “European project” has been so far the least visible and debated one, except for those networks of courageous activists and researchers who have been working on the situation of migrants. The “refugee crisis” — a term which assumes that migrants and refugees pose an inherent threat to order — has at least the merit of politicizing the European project and putting it at the center of public debate. This has been the case in Greece, which found itself, once again, at the frontline of a battle of much wider proportions.
Seen from Greece, the “refugee crisis” reveals in the most brutal way the nature of the European Union as an entity for the surveillance, the policing, and the hierarchical categorization of the population. At the same time, it uncovers another dimension of an allegedly “left government” which, following its shameful surrender to the blackmail of the EU and the IMF, has aligned itself at all levels with the dominant logic of “crisis management.”
Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/europes-border-guards/
