Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The contribution of social work research to promote migration and asylum policies in Europe
- 2 Participatory art in social work: from humanitarianism to humanisation of people on the move
- 3 Grasping at straws: social work in reception and identification centres in Greece
- 4 Migrant girls’ experiences of integration and social care in Sweden
- 5 “Come to my house!”: Homing practices of children in Swiss asylum camps
- 6 Transnational dynamics of family reunification: reassembling social work with refugees in Belgium
- 7 Open or closed doors? Accessibility of Italian social work organisations towards ethnic minorities
- 8 Refugee children and families in the Republic of Ireland: the response of social work
- 9 Sense of place, migrant integration and social work
- 10 “If not now, when?”: Reclaiming activism into social work education – the case of an intercultural student-academic project with refugees in the UK and Greece
- 11 EU border migration policy and unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece: the example of Lesvos and Samos hotspots
- Epilogue: Time to listen, time to learn, time to challenge … because there is hope
- Index
11 - EU border migration policy and unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece: the example of Lesvos and Samos hotspots
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The contribution of social work research to promote migration and asylum policies in Europe
- 2 Participatory art in social work: from humanitarianism to humanisation of people on the move
- 3 Grasping at straws: social work in reception and identification centres in Greece
- 4 Migrant girls’ experiences of integration and social care in Sweden
- 5 “Come to my house!”: Homing practices of children in Swiss asylum camps
- 6 Transnational dynamics of family reunification: reassembling social work with refugees in Belgium
- 7 Open or closed doors? Accessibility of Italian social work organisations towards ethnic minorities
- 8 Refugee children and families in the Republic of Ireland: the response of social work
- 9 Sense of place, migrant integration and social work
- 10 “If not now, when?”: Reclaiming activism into social work education – the case of an intercultural student-academic project with refugees in the UK and Greece
- 11 EU border migration policy and unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece: the example of Lesvos and Samos hotspots
- Epilogue: Time to listen, time to learn, time to challenge … because there is hope
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The hotspot approach
So much ink has been spilled about the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 that it is almost impossible to refer to it without the fear of falling into endless repetition. Reports from international organisations state that in the period between January 2015 and September 2015, the largest number of refugees since World War II moved into Europe. During those months, an estimated 1,000,000 refugees arrived in Europe, about 850,000 of whom via Greece as gateway and mainly via the islands of Lesvos and Samos. Among them, there were thousands of unaccompanied minors; minors travelling without their parent/legal guardian. In May of the same year, the European Commission introduced ‘The hotspot approach to managing exceptional migratory flows’ as defined in the European Agenda on Migration and formally endorsed by the European Council on 25– 26 June 2015. In early 2016, Greece legally introduced the establishment of these centres with Law L4375/2016. Under this law, five so-called hotspots, officially titled ‘Registration and Identification Centres’ (RICs), were created on the islands of Lesvos, Samos, Kos, Leros and Chios. A few days before the Greek law, the ratification of the EU-Turkey Statement came into effect stating that:
All migrants arriving in the Greek islands would continue to be duly registered, and the Greek authorities would process all applications individually at the hotspot in accordance with the Asylum Procedures Directive. Migrants not applying for asylum, or whose application was held to be unfounded or inadmissible under the directive would be returned to Turkey.
With this agreement, ‘the corresponding regimes, which have long been criticized by Europeans for their infringements of human rights and the rule of law, would now be seen as guaranteeing sufficient protection for refugees’ (Fassin, 2016: 1).
The impact of the ‘hotspots’ in Greece on the migration management was immediate and severe (Afouxenidis et al, 2017; Kourachanis, 2018). Suddenly, Greece changed from being one of the main gateways – together with Italy and Spain – towards Northern Europe, to being the main migrant detention centre in the EU. Thousands of people kept arriving to the Greek islands, only to find out that they were no longer allowed to leave, but had to proceed with their asylum application at the RICs. If they refused to apply for asylum at the ‘hotspot’, they were immediately subject of deportation to Turkey.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Migration and Social WorkApproaches, Visions and Challenges, pp. 177 - 197Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023