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.