Closing the Borders to End Human Trafficking: Moral Panic and the New Official State Politics on the Refugee Crisis in Greece

Abstract

This article traces the incident on the Greece–Turkey border in spring 2020 as a turning point in asylum seeker flow management in Greece. It argues that the handling of the event can be approached using moral panic theory, and it explains why the government has chosen its tough stance against these people. It further explores the government’s rhetoric during this event and the consequences of this shift both on the asylum policies leading to pushbacks and on the legitimization of these policies within the Greek society, which could be claimed to have made the Pylos shipwreck acceptable, as examined in its last section.