Residents’ responses to refugee reception: the cracks and continuities between care and control

Abstract

Since 2015, residents in Europe have responded to the so-called "refugee crisis" by undertaking bottom-up activities in which they engage with newcomers. These resident responses-both supportive and restrictive towards refugee reception-apply pressure on governments to change protection regimes. In the Netherlands, for example, "ordinary people" join anti-migrant patrol groups that target refugees, or assist border-crossers and accommodate refugees. In this article, I study grassroots movements in which residents undertake practices focused on refugee reception in the Netherlands, and discuss the democratic potential of these undertakings. In the wake of extensive neoliberal processes that seek to "craft good citizens" and emerging forms of public action that bring perceived injustices to light, this article investigates the cracks and continuities between practices of care and control. It does so by analysing and comparing two explanatory mechanisms that prevail in recent literature to account for grassroots movements: active citizenship and counter-powers.

‘Not in my name’: Empathy and intimacy in volunteer refugee hosting

“…The denial of multiplicity in a refugee’s life, not least the desire to seek out and enjoy spontaneous rather than deferred pleasure, is integral to the dehumanising disciplinary power of immigration regimes, bearing down heavily on some young men. The onerous reproductive labour of hosting can then become a pre-emptive bordering, affectively full and utterly embedded in a moral economy in which care and control are intertwined (Van der Veer, 2020). That the threat of a brutal and unforgiving immigration system cannot be negotiated, even when transgression has gone undetected, underscores how ethical imagination can be overwhelmed by border politics.…”