Month: August 2019

What is the impact on displaced people of being both en route and immobile over a long period of time? In May 2019, Lucia travelled to Serbia to offer legal advice on asylum and the Dublin regulations to migrants in the camp of Bogovadjia. She sent this message to Leonie just after returning from her trip:

“The camp of Bogovadjia is roughly two hours and a half away from Belgrade. The camp was a previous summer colony for children, so migrants are now using the buildings that are still in place. I haven’t seen many camps but the colleagues that were with me told me conditions are not bad, compared to what you can find elsewhere…the common areas that we could visit were rather clean, there are projects in place to entertain children, people are fed three times per day.

Yet, it was as if time and air were sucked away: people lose count of days, sometimes of weeks. They have little or no legal assistance, they travelled with very vague (often wrong) ideas of what they will have to deal with, they cannot count on any medical or psychological support. They just hang there, with nothing to do but smoke. Some are in the camp since 2017, even 2016: they don’t know if they applied for asylum in Serbia, they don’t know what the status of their application is if they did, they wait for more money to carry on with ‘the game’, or they plan to go back to Greece, and to try crossing by sea. Time slips by, and they lose touch with reality.”

This (disturbing) message resonated with the insights Leonie gained from her research in spaces of transit across Europe, especially with regard to the interlocking of urgency and waiting: of a sense on behalf of policy makers that emergency measures must be taken to reverse the ‘crisis’ and displaced people’s urge to move and find safety, whilst at the same time waiting in uncertainty for long periods of time. This resulted in the notion of ‘politics of exhaustion’, a concept which Leonie previously wrote about with Marta Welander, on openDemocracy.

Here, we address three related aspects of the politics of exhaustion as it currently plays out in Bogovadjia, with implications for the Balkan route more generally. Firstly, exhaustion is a lived experience and relates to the ways in which people become lost (in time) in the camp. Secondly, exhaustion is (an effect of) deliberate migration management policies, which we discuss in the context of changing asylum legislation in Serbia. Thirdly, despite the serious impact of violent migration management practices, displaced people continue to be human beings with active subjectivities who seek to build a better life. We see this here in their involvement in what they call playing ‘the game’.

Lost (in) time

Bogovadjia is one of 5 official asylum centres set up by the Serbian Government. It is located in woods surrounding the city of Valjievo and has a capacity of more than 200 beds, yet only around 100 people are currently residing in the camp. It is thus far from overcrowded. The camp hosts a mix of residents, with families staying together and separate spaces for single women, yet bathrooms are unisex. The vast majority of residents come from the Middle East (mostly Afghanistan and Iran, with some Iraqis); some are from Georgia, Macedonia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Whilst there are a lot of families, including young children – a baby boy was born the week before Lucia’s visit – most are young, single men in their late 20s and early 30s. This reflects the data on arrivals in Serbia more generally: in 2018, the three main countries of origin of asylum seekers were Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, followed by Iraq and Syria. [1]

Working with another lawyer, Lucia offered advice to residents of the camp, who were mostly interested in learning about the Dublin system, which countries in Europe were most welcoming and which countries were more difficult to reach. In this regard, it was a familiar scenario that is replicated in many informal and institutionalised migrant spaces across Europe. The residents shared stories about friends or distant relatives who had successfully settled in one place or another; they had all heard rumours and confusing or contradictory messages, which they sought to confirm or disprove.

Gaining ‘true’ information and dispelling myths is highly valued not only in itself but, more importantly, as a means of enabling mobility. It is thought that understanding asylum and migration procedures and systems will help them navigate their way to a safe space or at least start moving again when they are stuck. There was a sense of urgency in the residents’ eagerness to move; it seemed that their next move was all they had on their mind. In addition to gaining information, they were preoccupied with receiving money from home to help fund their journey and contacts with, and fees to be paid to, smugglers to facilitate the journey. Listening to them, it seemed that every move was imminent, urgent and rushed.

However, and this is the other – yet closely related – side of this familiar story: this urgency had become lost (in) time as it stretched over months and years. As more superficial exchanges focused on information provision developed into deeper conversations, something chilling began to emerge: the people ready to leave, all packed up and about to set off, had resided in the camp for a long time. Some had been there for two to three years, whilst some others had lost track of time. Their carefully crafted plans to move were often what we could call ‘mind-loops’: plans they kept developing and playing in their heads, without being able to act on them, out of fear, lack of resources and/or sheer mental exhaustion. These mind-loops were part of lives that revolved around waiting. They were simultaneously eager to go, and felt they needed to wait a little longer until a better plan or a better possibility to move would emerge. Perhaps these continued efforts to make plans in their minds is a way of coping with the daily reality of waiting, uncertainty, fear and hopelessness.

One of them, an Iranian in his late twenties who had been politically active in Iran and who had been in the camp for 8 months, was too afraid of the push-backs along the Bosnian and Croatian borders to embark on a move northwards, and thought that he would stand a better chance to gain asylum in Greece. He came to see the team three times to discuss the idea of moving backwards – he had been in Greece previously – rather than onwards like everyone else. He said: ‘I don’t know whether this plan I have makes sense any more. I have been playing it on my head for too long, I think I am going slightly mad.’ This envisaged ‘backward’ move might seem peculiar but is a manifestation of the fractured character of migratory trajectories across Europe, as noted previously.

Another male, in his early twenties from Afghanistan, told us once that he planned to go to Italy, then to Germany. Yet, when talking to him a second time, it appeared that he had applied for asylum in Serbia but had forgotten about it as he had been waiting for a decision for such a long time. He had resided in the camp the longest – nearly three years – and really had no idea where to go next. The story of an Afghani woman resonates with this sense of being ‘stranded’ and having nowhere to go. The woman had arrived in Serbia with her baby boy, her husband and the rest of his family (notably his second wife), who would treat her like a slave. They all left for Greece, leaving her behind with her baby son. With a young child to look after, the journey onwards seems too dangerous, but returning to Afghanistan not an option. She had not found anyone in Serbia who could properly advise her and was waiting for her husband to either return to Serbia or to tell her to join him somewhere else. Meanwhile time passes: her son Benjamin has just turned one and Bogovadjia has been his only home.

The changing legal context

In 2018, 7,651 people expressed the intention of applying for asylum in Serbia.[2] However, in the same period, only around 300 people actually lodged an asylum claim. This gap between intention to apply and actual application is explained by the former Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection (LATP), which allowed displaced people who arrived in Serbia the right to express an intention to seek asylum without immediately having to submit an application. Through this declaration of intent, people were registered, provided with an identity document and referred to an asylum seeker centre or other facilities designated for the reception and accommodation of asylum seekers. The existence of this declaration of intent thus meant that displaced people arriving in Serbia could regularise their status and gain access to accommodation without having to officially claim asylum.

For many, Serbia is a country of transit rather than an intended destination, which the LATP seemed to recognise. Yet, without any pressure to formally submit an asylum claim, the spatial in-between of being in transit easily turns into temporal suspension. The LATP, in combination with factors such as the remote location of most centres, language difficulties and the lack of access to sound and continuous legal advice, allows displaced persons to endlessly postpone the decision whether or not to lodge an asylum claim. People would ‘settle’ and forget when they had arrived, or how long they intended to stay. The numbers of ‘would be’ asylum thus remained much higher than the number of official asylum seekers. This allowed the Serbian government to rely on such numbers to claim more support from EU agencies while at the same time putting pressure on the asylum system and making it impossible for the relevant bodies to deal without delay with the cases of those who would really remain in Serbia and take up residence there.[3]

Yet, this situation may change after the revision of the LAPT in March 2018. Article 36 of the new legislation introduces strict asylum application deadlines: official applications must be made within 8 days of the registration of the declaration of intent. If the Asylum Office fails to enable the submission of the application within this time, the applicant may do so themselves within another 15 days. It is unclear from the text of the law whether or how these stipulations will be enforced – loss of status/entitlements; transfer to a ‘departure’ centre? Given the lack of provisions for enforcing the law, it is unlikely that this will happen in the near future, however, if enforced, it is likely that the tight deadlines will push more migrants to ‘drop out’ of the asylum scheme and try to move on in order to prevent becoming more precarious.

To understand what might happen to those who fail to meet the deadline, we must also consider the new Foreigners Law (also passed in 2018), which provides for the possibility that the government adopts an ordinance regulating the ‘tolerated’ presence in Serbia of irregular foreigners who cannot be returned to their country of origin due to the non-refoulement principle or who cannot leave the country due to circumstances beyond their control. The problem is that what is meant by ‘tolerated’ presence has not been defined and the government enjoys very broad discretionary powers to interpret this legislation. It suggests that the presence of displaced people who are not in the asylum procedure may no longer be ‘tolerated’ or only ‘tolerated’ under strict – and potentially arbitrary – terms and conditions set by the government.[4]

Playing the ‘game’

The Balkans, with their mountains and fragmented borders, have been used as the mainland road to reach western Europe since the peak of the ‘crisis’ in 2015. The infamous ‘EU-Turkey’ deal has not stopped the movements. According to UNHCR, 1,117 migrants arrived on the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina in February 2019, a significant rise compared to 2018, when only 479 people arrived. In Serbia, 2,512 people arrived in May 2019, 1,826 the month before. Recent reports have confirmed that push-backs along the borders (between Serbia and Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, Bosnia and Croatia) continue with alarming frequency. The border between Serbia and Hungary remains officially closed.

People continue to both move and get stuck along the Balkan route and elsewhere; journeys remain precarious and fractured due to the ways in which border regimes operate and people continue their efforts to move. We have been struck by how often this is described by migrants as ‘the game’. They use it to narrate their attempts and strategies to reach their ‘destination’ – whether this is a specific country or area, or more generally a place of safety. Despite the uncertainty and suspension they feel, and the frequency with which situations and plans might change – or perhaps because of it – they narrate this ‘game’ in a way that suggest that the end goal is solid and clear. The ‘game’ is dangerous, fraught with doubts and mistakes that can be deadly. Many have died, getting lost on mountains, trying to cross rivers, or sleeping rough on the wrong night. Other ‘mistakes’ are less frightening, but still treacherous: being caught by the wrong border patrol, being pushed back and ill-treated in the process, or, worse even, being fingerprinted in the wrong country, can be disastrous for the continuation of the journey.

This also illustrates another aspect of the politics of exhaustion: migration management policies can be as perilous as the natural environment, yet the latter only becomes so dangerous due to the former. It is due to migration management that people are forced to cross mountains and rivers by foot or survive outside in wintry conditions.

Conceiving of it as a ‘game’ might therefore seem inappropriate, however, as suggested above, perhaps this is a way of maintaining or regaining a sense of active subjectivity, or even adding a sense of adventure, rather than simply subjection to the violence of the border regime. A game is played, not just endured, and offers a prospect of winning or at least of finishing it rather than getting lost (in time). The situation in Bogovadjia, and in Serbia more generally, illustrates the stakes of the ‘game’ and suggests that it will continue to be a violent, precarious, slow and urgent endeavour of simultaneously being subjected to the politics of exhaustion and developing active strategies to counter it.

[1] Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Right to asylum in the Republic of Serbia 2018, March 2019, p. 13

[2] Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Right to asylum in the Republic of Serbia 2018, March 2019, p. 11

[3] Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Right to asylum in the Republic of Serbia 2018, March 2019, p. 23

[4] Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Right to asylum in the Republic of Serbia 2018, March 2019, p. 24

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We live in dystopian times. The crisis of global capitalism is revealing itself in the most uncompromising fashion. Quantitative easing – the one ‘solution’ to the last crisis – has only re-inflated the global financial bubble, and created the prospect for the next impending crisis to be greater than witnessed heretofore. Government bonds across the industrialized world are either approaching, or already at, negative interest rates. Financial investors, aware of the next big recession, are betting against long term economic growth, for up to the next thirty years. Something is clearly amiss!

Those not fortunate enough to gamble on financial markets are already living the dystopian consequences of capitalism. In the Global North, wages have stagnated over the past decade, employment is increasingly temporary and insecure, and the ongoing erosion of the welfare state has become manifest in a housing crisis, health care crisis, and an elderly care crisis, all of which increases the care burden placed upon women. The ‘age of austerity’ created the perverse situation that children of the rich industrialised world increasingly face poverty. The aftermath of the global economic crisis has brought with it prolonged neoliberal restructuring, authoritarianism and heightened inequality.

In the Global South, poverty, violence and climate change continue to push thousands into dangerous attempts to migrate across borders, risking either death or imprisonment in inhumane detention centres with little or no regard for human rights. Natural resources have been depleted to the extent that we have little chance of reversing the harm that has been caused, and climate change proceeds unabated.

This is global capitalism in 2019. In order to understand current political responses we need to diagnose capitalism, and point towards potential alternatives, grounded in a utopian vision for making a better world possible.

The Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPERN) aims to provide a space through which to develop this kind of knowledge. We meet this week in Manchester, as part of the European Sociological Association’s 14th conference. The research network was established in 2005 as part of efforts to reassert the centrality of critical political economy perspectives, and to promote and facilitate research aimed at understanding and challenging capitalism.

CPERN brings together those working across the social sciences – including political scientists, economists, human geographers and sociologists – and activists politicizing capitalist crises. Our shared conviction is that we need to understand the way in which global capitalism has developed historically as a socio-economic system, the way it operates in the present, and the public policies which have underpinned those developments.

What makes our approach a critical political economy is a shared concern with understanding the changing and antagonistic social, political and economic relations that constitute contemporary global capitalism. Global capitalism is not only an economic system. It is a type of society which includes and relies upon profit-seeking firms, global finance, states and international organisations, waged workers and unwaged care-givers, the extraction of environmental resources, and the exclusion of those who stand in the way of its relentless pursuit of growth and profit. It is only through forms of knowledge which are focused on these different, but interconnected, parts of the global capitalist whole that we can also consider ways that global capitalism is susceptible to change.

CPERN members have been active in many of the key academic debates of our time; and we do so in a way that reflects this shared concern with understanding the interconnected and antagonistic nature of contemporary global capitalism. Network participants have contributed to debates on the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis, the increasingly authoritarian and disciplinary approach taken by governments in recent years, the global rise of the far right, the adoption of neoliberal public policies, the transformation of the workplace in the so-called ‘digital age’, and the privatisation of essential resources. In each case, we have done so in a way that considers not only the developments or policies in question, but also highlights their relationship to the changing nature of global capitalism as a social, economic and political system, built upon hierarchies of class, gender and race, and ways in which this is constantly being confronted, challenged and contested.

This week in Manchester promises to make some important contributions to critical political economy. Phoebe Moore and Jamie Woodcock are leading one of the conference semi-plenary sessions, talking about some of the key tensions in contemporary digital capitalism, including the impact of artificial intelligence and the new technologies that are driving changes to work, in cases such as Uber.

We also have over 45 papers that will be presented on a wide range of topics by scholars from across the world. This includes work on finance by Matthew Donoghue, Pelin Kilincarslan, and Caroline Metz, each of whom focus in different ways on financialisation, the gendered dimensions of indebtedness, and the gendered consequence of attempts to stabilise European debt markets. Anne Engelhardt will consider the effect of capitalism’s continuous pressure for new technological developments. Javier Moreno Zacarés will present work on the ongoing effects of the global economic crisis in Spain. Clémence Fourton will talk about the effects of government austerity policies, whilst Gerardo Costabile Nicoletta will consider the effects of the EU’s system of multi-level governance.

We will also consider ways in which public policies are changing: Angela Wigger and Luuk Schmitz analyze the likely impact of the EU’s recent turn to a new industrial policy and how this exacerbates economic asymmetries within and beyond the EU; John Evemy, Ed Yates, and Andrew Eggleston will present their research on the changing nature of monetary policy; and David Casassas and Jordi Mundó will evaluate the growing calls for a Universal Basic Income.

We need also to understand ways in which global capitalism is contested, and so we will hear about a number of social movements that are currently seeking to resist the pressures of global capitalism: Andreas Bieler will present his research on campaigns against the privatisation of water supply; Bernd Bonfert will present his work on transnational anti-austerity campaigns; Oscar Berglund will talk about the wave of environmental protests that we have seen over the past 12 months, including Extinction Rebellion; and Nikolai Huke will discuss refugee solidarity initiatives that have arisen as responses to increasingly anti-immigrant public policies.

Finally, in terms of international developments, Frauke Banse will consider European efforts to increase financial power over African markets; Oreste Ventrone will talk about the current trade war being led by the United States; and Steven Rolf will discuss the changing digital capitalism of China.

Whilst it is often said that global capitalism is crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that this global capitalist crisis is coming to a head. To understand this we need to know how and why capitalism operates the way that it does. We need to understand how this is occurring in the present, across our economies, democracies, and public policies, as well as the ongoing efforts that are being made to survive within and resist the disasters that are being unleashed as a result. It is with these goals in mind that the Critical Political Economy Research Network continues to create the space for this kind of critical scholarship. We invite you to join us!

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In the Americas, especially in South America, the conversation surrounding the establishment of western civilization is still referred to as “the discovery of the new world.” But, the fact is that, when the Europeans came to America, it was not quite “new” and neither were they “discovering” it.

Before the late 1400’s, many groups of indigenous people inhabited the entirety of the land that we now call “The Americas.” They had their own cultures, their own economic, social and political organizations, their own spiritual ways of being, and their own belief systems. They had their own ways of studying and understanding the world, interacting with nature, and had acquired knowledge in topics such as mathematics, astronomy, and architecture. Some of this knowledge was even more advanced than that which came from the “old continent.”

We are still learning from their ways of life to better understand present-day economics, ecology, and politics. Thus, rather than a “discovery,” we ought to refer to that episode in human history as a mutual contact of civilizations, if not a clash of cultures and a bringing together of divergent ways of thinking, knowing, and learning. First Nations who used to live in what we call “the American continent” in Spanish or “the Americas” in English, shared and fought for their territories, but also lived within their ecosystems and social groups according to their own values and ways of knowing.

THE DISCOVERY DOCTRINE: THE WESTERN TRUTH

The “Discovery Doctrine,” which is rooted in Catholicism and had its origins in the Papal Bull, Inter Caetera, was published in 1493. The document says that “in remote and unknown islands… live a large number of people who seem to be ´sufficiently apt´ to embrace the Catholic faith and be ´embodied´ by good customs.” Spain presumed, according to medieval tradition, that it was legal to appropriate the land of non-Christians, and supported that idea with the Discovery Doctrine.

Under those historical circumstances, indigenous peoples where subjected to political domination in the name of a God and a religion that wasn’t their own. Indigenous people were seen as “savages with inhumane practices” (Bartolome de Las Casas, 1540), and, with that justification, their land was taken, they were enslaved, and, in the best of cases, they would be converted into “pure souls” of Catholic faith.

“Indians, by natural law, should obey people who are more humane, more prudent and more excellent to be governed, with better customs and institutions” (Juan Gines De Sepúlveda, 1534).

They were seen as natural slaves. They were told how to think, which god to worship, how to work, in which language to communicate, under which code of conduct to behave and, above all, who to serve.

Later in colonial Latin America, an economic doctrine was imposed upon them and western nation-states were designed in accordance with that doctrine. Rules and laws were established consistently with the colonizer’s way of thinking and laws were established in favor of their preferences. Ownership of possessions was secured according to what the colonizers considered just to distribute, legalize, and privatize.

THEIR TRUTH

“If I occupy something that I consider abandoned, I have the right to own it” was the logic of colonization. Western “explorers” and missionaries thought that taking “uncivilized” land and owning it was God’s mandate and designation.

They never considered that the indigenous peoples already had their own civilizations according to their surroundings. First Nations understood their connection with ecosystems in a different way, as a part of them. They didn’t consider themselves owners of land. On the other hand, the colonizers’ political ethos was about domination and extraction.

Land has always been a significant aspect of indigenous cultures as the people see themselves as part of the land. The forests, rivers, and animals are not seen as “raw materials, resources or factors of production.” Nature, instead, is seen as part of the extended family of humans who live in harmony with their surroundings.

Today, after more than 500 years, the western world seeks to save indigenous groups from poverty. These groups are said to have incomes of merely $2 dollars per day per person and are still forced to conform to western society. And, even though they continue to be marginalized, excluded, used, displaced and denigrated because they’re different from those who conquered them, developed their land, and destroyed their cultures, it is said that they are now free.

“THE” TRUTH?

Many say that today, anyone can choose where to live, how to live, or where to work, which would all be considered aspects of “freedom.” However, these freedoms are only given to those who conform. So, what is the alternative for those who see the world according to the views of their ancestors and in opposition to the states they live under which were created from ethnocentric, domineering, exclusive, and colonizing perspectives?

Should our western use of biodiversity for extraction of resources and exploitation to maximize wealth prevail amongst other, more harmonious ways of understanding our environment and ecosystems?

An alternative is to try living outside of that western state of being and to stop understanding reality as the hegemony wants us to understand it. However, indigenous and other nonconforming groups would once again be marginalized, excluded, judged, or oppressed for refusing to enter a model that only sees “our truth” and “The Truth” as the same thing.

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We understand our truth. Do we really understand theirs?

This article was previously published at The Impakter. Read the original here