The black holes of Lesbos: life and death at Moria camp : Border violence, asylum, and racisms at the edge of postcolonial Europe

Edgar Córdova Morales

doi:10.17356/ieejsp.v7i2.895

Edgar Córdova Morales

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v7i2.895

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Abstract

The EU-Turkey Deal of 2016 led to the enactment of a restrictive and specific asylum process for the Greek island of Lesbos, making the former Moria camp a detention center for thousands of migrants who failed to access international protection. Based on ethnographic evidence, I analyze and propose that the asylum process in Lesbos—a postcolonial border space under EU interference and control—derives from the colonial system of white supremacy. Based on historical and re-actualized racializations of migrant populations from different countries of the global south, the aim of the Greek asylum process has been to subject migrant populations in Moria to various processes of control, detention, illegalization and ultimately exposure to premature socio-physical death as in black holes: historical spaces of anti-black racism and humanitarian abandonment in the most hidden layers of Moria.

Highlights

The multiple fires that broke out and destroyed the former Moria camp—on the Greek island of Lesbos—the night of 8 September 2020 left 13,000 people in a situation of utter destitution for several weeks
This article is based on a three-month research period between September and December 2016 in Lesbos where I conducted ethnography-volunteering in a small humanitarian organization in the family and vulnerables’ refugee camp ‘Kara Tepe’, five kilometers away from the former Moria camp
My interest in finding out the reasons why migrant populations of certain nationalities and races were surviving in Moria under conditions of prolonged detention, without humanitarian aid and without gaining access to the asylum process in Lesbos led me to leave ‘Kara Tepe’ to come into contact with them in the streets, public squares, and ports of Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, and later in the depths of the Moria camp

Summary

Introduction

The multiple fires that broke out and destroyed the former Moria camp—on the Greek island of Lesbos—the night of 8 September 2020 left 13,000 people in a situation of utter destitution for several weeks.

Results

Conclusion