Graduate Journal of Social Science, Volume 15, Issue 1 themigrantsfiles & UNITED, n.d.)? How can these border crossings and deaths have been ignored? What “crisis” are they talking about, since the odysseys and tragedies that border crossers experience had been unfolding during the previous two decades? How can the EU and Greek policymakers speak about crisis by pretending that crisis is a sudden, unforeseen event, an “accident” and not an outcome of political decisions? Refugee “crisis” as a term has been challenged and problematised by scholars (Albahari, 2016; Collyer & King, 2016; De Genova & Tazzioli, 2016) on the grounds that it has been misused in order for EU policymakers to justify and legitimise emergent and exceptional measures –a state of exception (Agamben, 2005)- in the name of humanitarianism but at the expense of border crossers’ lives. The “refugee crisis” language and events which have proliferated resulted in particular governmental responses (De Genova & Tazzioli, 2016, p. 5) and practices. These were manifested via the overwhelming securitisation and militarisation of the external EU borders (De Genova & Tazzioli, 2016, p. 10; Fassin, 2011), internalisation and externalisation of the borders as well as a huge humanitarian intervention particularly in Lesvos (Howden & Fotiadis, 2017) enabling what Maurizio Albahari frames as, “a moral economy of salvation; a sovereign humanitarianism (...). A way of doing nothing while pretending to fight trafficking and the lethality of the border (Albahari, 2016, p. 278). Safe Havens and Prison Islands I want to be a bird to fly everywhere. To build a nest and every day I fly wherever I want. It would be a cheerful life. Birds don’t have nation they don’t have borders.” (Anonymous, 2009) Mytilene, January 2017. It is 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and I am hastily walking down the road. A child, barely twelve years old, stands in my way. In broken English, she says, “Madam, I am from Syria. Please give me money, I am hungry.” A few steps away her mother is talking to a man, who is carrying bags full of goods. The man pulls out his wallet and gives her money. Inside a small blue car, which is parked just a few steps away, I see three men “stalking” us. They are cynically smiling. Are they secret police? Members of the Nazi Golden Dawn? Traffickers? An unspecified fear overwhelmed me. Due to my political involvement with activist networks on Lesvos, supporting border crossers, I have lived experiences of intimidation and harassment by the police, and the scene of the three men 6 (Unformatted version, page numbers not final)