Graduate Journal of Social Science, Volume 15, Issue 1
Safar, a border crosser from Afghanistan whom I interviewed in Lesvos, told me about a
similar experience to Sams in 2014.
Safar came to Lesvos in 2006 as an unaccompanied minor in order to seek international
protection. With his asylum claim pending for more than six years, Safar left Greece
irregularly in order to seek international protection in Germany, where he was granted
refugee status. In 2014 he decided to travel back to Lesvos, as a tourist this time, to visit
his friends. Disappointingly, when the ship from Athens reached the port of Mytilene, he
was arrested by the port police, because he “looked like” a migrant. Although he
possessed a passport and the refugee identification card, the authorities did not believe
him and detained him for several hours in a container located at the port police station.
Safar was interrogated by the port police officers; he was forced to give the names and
addresses of the people he was visiting, while the bona fide of his passport was
questioned:
Port police did not want to believe that my passport is a genuine one. They
were looking at it and checking it over and over again, whilst they were
constantly repeating: “How can this be possible? There is no way this
document to be genuine.” Greek authorities did not want to believe that there
are also migrants who can travel legally. For them, we all are and will always
be illegal.
While the port police officers were searching Safar’s bag, they discovered brochures from
an activist group supporting refugees. “You arsehole! Are you involved in these things?”
one of the officers shouted at him. “Since when is illegal to distribute information
leaflets”, Safar asked, only to receive the port police officer’s abusive answer, “Shut up
you fucking arsehole!” The everyday disbelief of the genuineness of “papers” during the
“transactions” with the authorities intimidate border crossers, and further evoke and
inflict traumas, horror, anxiety, psychological harms and precariousness. Moreover, this
also turns the official documents -and thus the refugee status - into “make-believe” and
“ephemeral” (Navaro-Yashin, 2007).
Within the context of the severe securitisation and migration controls at and within the
borders and border zones, massive expulsions, arrests, deportations and violence are
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