Graduate Journal of Social Science, Volume 15, Issue 1
A woman who is raped, for example, en route to Europe and is now in a state
of unwanted pregnancy, apart from the fact that it is very unlikely to speak to
someone it is also very unlikely that she will proceed to abortion, since
pregnancy is a ‘bonus’, a ‘ticket’ for vulnerability.
As Serafeim, an aid worker supporting border crossers, emphasised during his interview,
“vulnerability is the royal road which leads to the refugee status”, but which is paved with
massive misery, suffering and pain. What perverse minds would implement obscene
policies and bureaucratic criteria like vulnerability by pushing women into unwanted
pregnancies, even when these are an outcome of a rape?
During fieldwork in January 2017, I was shocked and upset by the news of three border
crossers’ deaths in the space of one week in Moria camp due to the cold. They were all
“single men” who were living in tents, and they had not been considered to be vulnerable
(Médecins Sans Frontières, 2017c). Cold is unbearable for border crossers who even invent
metaphors to illustrate the misery the Greek authorities coerce them to live in. “This is not
an Island. It is the land of ice, an ice-land. That is why I think it is so cold”, Salif, a border
crosser from Eritrea, remarked during his interview. Playing with words “Iceland-island”,
he commented on the problem of winterisation, which a week before I met him had killed
the three men. Morteza, another border crosser from Afghanistan, stated,
Each refugee is distributed with two blankets, and I think two blankets with
this weather are not enough especially when refugees sleep in the tents. Even
inside the house, you cannot sleep with two blankets, how then can you sleep
inside the tents? Moria camp is colder than [the city of] Mytilene.
Vulnerability is both inclusive and exclusive, it “risks sustaining the very exclusion and
inequality it aims to redress” (Peroni & Timmer, 2013, p. 1057). “Single men” are excluded
from the vulnerability criterion, and they do not experience equal treatment within Moria
camp. They must endure long queues in order to use the lavatories or to receive food.
They are obliged to sleep inside summer tents even during winter, just because they do
not count as vulnerable. Structural violence, which is manifested in multiple ways, is a
common phenomenon within detention, the camp and the Prison Island, turning all
border crossers into the vulnerable by also exposing them to death. Vulnerability is a
problematic concept in terms of “how it captures and expresses the complexities,
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