Dr. Roza Tsagarousianou, CAMRI, University of Westminster

There has been an increased reference to humanitarianism in both the discourse and practice of European border policing over the past decade. Indeed, border policing operations, the establishment and operation of migrant detention centres and nowadays hotspots (European Commission 2015) as well as broader policy and practice are framed in terms of humanitarianism, or sometimes the humanitarianism-security nexus: humanitarianism does not usurp or replace existing trends within security practices; instead it forms a component within policing, developed over time to address the problems of population (see Foucault 2009).

In the case of Greece, this is articulated and practiced in multiple sites on multiple scales and by multiple actors in migration control, from the border police patrolling the Greek–Turkish border, to Greece’s Ministry for Citizen Protection, to experts, facilitators, and practitioners at Frontex, to civil society responses challenging border policing practices today (see Doty 2006). Premised on a series of repeat interviews/ conversations with 50 refugees, hotspot and reception establishment officials as well as local residents on the island of Lesvos, and observation over a month and a half, this presentation explores the ways in which the coupling of humanitarianism and security in refugee reception practices and infrastructures constitutes part of a broader exercise of governmentality, of biopolitical technologies and power. It traces practices of refugee population management and of their relegation to a state of bare life (Arendt, Agamben) and resistances to such technologies of management and control. It is argued that in the borders of Europe under the gaze of European humanitarianism, redefinitions of our understanding of being a refugee and reconceptualizations of humanity and rights are taking place through the categorization and the disciplining of the bodies of the former. 

Bio: Roza Tsagarousianou is Reader in Mass Media and Communication at the University of Westminster, UK. She has authored Diasporic Cultures and Globalization (Shaker), Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave Macmillan), co-edited Cyberdemocracy: Technology, Cities and Civic Networks (Routledge). 

Her new book The securitization Islam in Europe: Public Debate, Policy, Identity and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan) will appear in January 2018. She is also co-editing with Jessica Retis the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Diasporas, Media and Culture (Wiley Blackwell). 

Her research interests  focus on the areas of citizenship and identity, diasporic and migrant cultures, transnational Islam and Muslim communities. She has set up and was convenor of the Diaspora and the Media working group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (2008-2015).