Countermapping securitization, dehumanizing and un[care]: Harmful spaces of confinement in the EU's hotspot camps

Abstract

“It scares you. It’s like a prison, with all the fences. I fled from suffering to come here to a prison. There is so much police, and there is so much control. […] Any place that you want to enter you find a private security guy. Any place you want to enter: reception, IOM, going to this place, asylum office. Before you go there, they have to search you. A lot of control, a lot of control, a lot of control.”

In 2021, the inauguration of the first newly constructed remote and closed EU hotspot camps took place in Samos. While the “old” camp in the city of Vathy had been criticised for its inhuman condition, the “new” so-called Multi-Purpose Reception and Identification Centres (MPRIC) promised neat humanitarian conditions. Yet, not “only” the voices of residents and human rights defenders, but even google maps point out: a new prison has emerged. Remote and isolated on the island, a prison-like architecture surrounds the securitized place, with barbed wire double fences, close to a military training ground. The omnipresence of police forces and a worldwide operating private security company shape the everyday life of the residents.

Following the proposal of scaling detention “from the global to the intimate”, this contribution builds on psycho-geographical countermappings, a novel approach derived from feminist geography, critical migration research and forensic mapping. The countermappings challenge the prevailing narrative of “dignified” essentially. They unanimously dismantle a landscape of dehumanization, emerging from intertwined securitization, criminalization and an invisibilized – yet harmful – system [un]care.

What significance does it have for the camp’s construction as a material environment and social space? What are its relations with the subjectivation of [potential] inmates? What can we observe when looking at the Closed Controlled Access Centres (CCAC) across the scales of different hotspot islands in the Aegean - and beyond?