Paper short abstract:

The paper studies the experiences of Syrian refugees currently in Greece on their way elsewhere to Europe. It traces the changes that shape the lives of Muslim refugees who flee the war-torn Middle East only to find themselves stigmatised as Muslims and thus potential enemies of their reluctant saviours

Paper long abstract:

The organisation Islamic State has been portrayed as the deadliest form of Islamism destroying the Middle East. In the process, through exporting terrorist violence, enticing European youth, Muslim but often converts, and forcing caravans of migrants to flee the region, the IS appears to threaten the socio-political stability of Europe itself.

While at the institutional level the EU hovers between humanistic declarations and an endless redrawing of desperate containment policies, in practice we observe the slow but unmistaken articulation of a securitisation discourse whose obvious victims are two: European public liberties and the refugees themselves. The almost naturalised distinction between migrants and refugees, which ostensibly concerned mainly the economy, is further complicated not only by the fear of jihadi infiltration but increasingly so by the very Muslim identity of the refugees themselves.

The paper studies the experiences of mainly Syrian refugees who are currently in Greece on their way elsewhere to Europe with the assistance of a faith-related NGO. This is a work in progress which traces the rapid and as a rule unexpected changes that shape the lives of Muslim refugees who flee the war-torn Middle East only to find themselves stigmatised as Muslims and thus as potential enemies of their reluctant saviours. Often ignorant of the socio-political situation in Greece and in Europe in general, which in all cases appears as quicksand rather than solid ground and traps all parties concerned, the refugees discuss their first taste of a Paradise whose nakedness reveals itself at their every step.