Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the ways in which crises produce disposable subjects and superfluous populations forced to live in conditions of hyper-precarity. Austerity measures and refugee reception structures- can be seen as regimes of managing difference that produce economies of alterity and dependence.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the ways in which crises produce disposable subjects and superfluous populations forced to live in conditions of hyper-precarity. Through a parallel ethnography of refugee reception structures and the impact of austerity measures in Greece, I focus on policies and discourses that affected asylum seekers, but also local Greek citizens during the period 2014-2017. I claim that neoliberal 'structural adjustments' imposed on Greek people during the financial crisis revealed a precariat almost-ready to hegemonically accept the superiority of the cultural project of global capitalism. Similarly, a number of asylum-seekers who arrived in Greece during the 2015-2016 period, portrayed and imagined Germany (and Europe at large) as the land of opportunity, for the sake of which they were prepared to endure a condition of partial citizenship. Ultimately, both kinds of contexts -austerity measures and refugee reception structures- can be seen as regimes of managing difference that produce economies of alterity and dependence.