Paper short abstract:

This paper examines unrealised hopes in experiences of forced migration in Samos, Greece. The role of hope is explored in leading interlocutors to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossings, and in navigating unanticipated and devastating material and social hardships upon arrival in Samos.

Paper long abstract:

What happens when one stakes her life and the lives of others on hope? And what happens when that hope does not materialise in ways that are imagined, nor desired? This paper looks at experiences of forced migration as it exists in the Aegean Sea, where people take great risks crossing from Turkey to Greece in a smuggler’s boat and upon arrival, commonly express disappointment and despair at conditions and processes of asylum on the Aegean islands. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Samos, Greece, this paper explores hope as an orientation to deeply held values and the fallout of hopeful actions that do not result in desired outcomes. Specifically, this paper focuses on how ideas of ‘Europe’ as symbolic of a good and safe life led interlocutors to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossings and how hope is [re]evaluated in light of devastating material and socio-political hardships in Samos. Explorations of daily life in Samos while awaiting asylum decisions illuminate the ways in which unrealised values continuously exist in hope as it is navigated, altered, and maintained in both ordinary and extraordinary actions. This paper thus examines unrealised aspirations in social and temporal extremes, through a lens of hope in the everyday of protracted temporariness, violence, and material hardships of forced migration.