Graduate Journal of Social Science, Volume 15, Issue 1
tensions, and ambiguities of experiences of gender, sexuality, and power in contemporary
life” (Gilson, 2016, p. 73).
As for people who are classified as “delinquents”, they do not have many chances to be
granted asylum in case they are asylum seekers. In fact, deportability seems to be the
corollary of delinquency. Classification on the grounds of “delinquency” (Greek Council
for Refugees, 2016b; Ministry of Interior, 2016) is implemented on Lesvos in order for the
“unwanted”, “unworthy” and “disposable” border crossers to be expelled. It is based on
a very vague and ambivalent definition linked with border crossers’ country of origin. As
Wakil emphasised,
They [Greek authorities] indicatively list some of those countries, so as it will
be more convenient for them to implement discriminatory and racist policies.
The nationalities in the list are the ones they want to treat as delinquents with
rejections and deportations.
What was clear to me during my fieldwork was an obscene, inhuman and degrading
treatment of all border crossers being penalised as “delinquents”. Delinquents are
detained and thus coerced to live only within a prison inside Moria camp called ‘Section B’
for an uncertain period of time. What I found during my research was that the detention
on the grounds of “delinquency” is in most of the cases unfounded and arbitrary.
According to the NGO Greek Council of Refugees, “findings on-site do not confirm
allegations of “law-breaking conduct” in the vast majority of the cases” (2016, p.16). The
most well-known cases of arbitrary detention on the grounds of delinquency are that of
Arash Hampay -an Iranian border crosser who went on a hunger strike for 41 days in July
2017 by demanding the release of “all arbitrarily detained refugees and migrants from
Section B in Moria” (Sea-Watch, 2017)- and the “35 of Moria” case (Legal Centre Lesbos,
2017).
This racial profiling of people seeking international protection based on their country of
origin raises important issues of state racism. As many of my interviewees, who are
activists and support refugees, have noted, people being classified as “migrants with an
economic profile” are facing multiple forms of discrimination. From the moment they
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