“Refugee Voices”

Abstract

This article considers the parallels between ethnographic work and refugee advocacy to show how these knowledge forms seek and yet fail to represent "refugee voices." The predicaments of refugees in Greece have recently captured the attention of the world owing to Greece's crucial position in the 2015 "European refugee crisis," but Greece has long been on the frontlines of refugee reception in the EU. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2005 and 2013, I analyze the ethnographic logics attached to European advocacy projects surrounding refugees in Greece. I explore their use of tragic tropes, and I argue that ethnographers employ similar tactics to carve out space for marginalized voices. I argue that the representational practices of ethnography and advocacy alike are haunted by various "ghosts": traces of silenced subjects who index both the limits and possibilities of representation. I argue, ultimately, for a humbling of the ethnographer: for a careful consideration of the power of not knowing in our work, and for recognition of the overlaps between ethnographic knowledge and dominant formations of power.

Between Care and Coercion: Asylum Seekers’ Experiences With COVID-19 Containment and Mitigation Measures in German Reception Centres

“…All authors are familiar with the study field through previous research and extensive exposure to asylum contexts. We are conscious of our socially privileged situation and the empirical and normative limits of “representing” the voices of our research subjects ( 24 ). Research diaries and team discussions fostered reflections on power dynamics and ethical aspects of the study and allowed to review interpretations and to include multidisciplinary perspectives.…”

Introduction

“…More often than not, these matters reveal the way my interlocutors engage with the historically situated experience of inequality. They form, as the "unknown known" (I know it but I behave as if I do not) or the partly "unknown unknown" (I just don't know or I guess there might be more to it but I do not ask) (Žižek 2004), a ghostly presence in this book (Gordon 1997;Cabot 2016). Human beings are complex.…”

Introduction: Bureaucratic Routes to Migration: Migrants' Lived Experience of Paperwork, Clerks, and Other Immigration Intermediaries

“…The lived experience of immigration bureaucracies, from the perspective of migrants themselves, but also from that of third parties involved in the migration process, has been the subject of recent long-term fieldwork in anthropology. Cabot (2012Cabot ( , 2014Cabot ( , 2016 looked at immigration bureaucracy in Greece. Tuckett (2015Tuckett ( , 2018 and Giordano (2008Giordano ( , 2019 both examined immigration bureaucracies in contemporary Italy, the first through the lens of political and legal anthropology and the second through the perspective of ethno-psychiatry.…”