Human Mobility, Control and Power Hierarchies

On April 22nd I read an article a the Greek newspaper Kathimerini regarding the delays in the examination of the immigrants applications for their legalization in the country.

The article eloquently was describing the vice circle within which both the civil servants and the immigrants find themselves in the Bureau of Aliens and Immigration, part of the newly reformed, according to the new law of the Greek administration,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Periphery of Athens.Due to the financial recession the only 30 civil servants are expected to review almost 120,000 applications per year. The results is the 3,4-4 hour-waiting of the immigrants in the smαll alley of Petrou Ralli in Athens During the waiting the immigrants are under the surveillance of police officers because the Greek State treats everydbody as a potential suspect and criminal.

Last February there was a circulation by the Home Office in all the Bureaus of ALiens and Immigration which were appointed in charge of new duties like the issuing the new electronic card of the immigrant (with biometric information). However, it is a common secret that the electronic systems of the public sector have become quite unreliable (or rather have become even more unreliable) because of the economic crisis. In this ways, few underpaid educated and sometimes overeducated civil servants are expected to deal with thousands of applications of the overburdened with problems immigrants from whom the state expects to pay quite high price in order to remain legal depsite the hight unemployment in the country.In this way, both sides seem to have become hostages of the same economic, political and social crisis which, nevertheless, expects professional efficiency from the former, deprives the dignity of the latter and never holds accounable itself.

Today, another piece of new was highlighted in the morning newspapers. Margot Malstrom, the Sweddish Commissioner o Home Affairs, announced that it is possible to reinstate border control within Schengen in case of certified lack of ability of a meber state to control its own borders. This proposal is considered highly supported by Italy and France whereas its affects in particular Greece , but also the other countries of the European South. Strong reactions came form the European Socialists and the Liberals who argued that the proposal goes against the principle of free mobility of citizens.

It should be underlined that the massive concetration of undocumented migrants at the border of Greece and the fear for new waves due to the political unrest in Middle East, the war in Libya and the fragiel situaiton in Syria.

Globalizaiton might have not created the global democracy it evangelized, but the transformation in the circualtion of the capital and the interconnections in the labour markets and the formation of a supranational governmentality, especially in the framewok of the EU contributed to the conext-sensitive interpretation fo the categories legal/illegal. The latter seem to become highly shifting categories in terms of of their attribution, based on capital distribution and political alliances and power hiearchies.

The changes that the Greeks had to undetake in their passports so that the latter could show biometric information of their holders and through wich they could enjoy the free circulaiton in the Schegen zone might now, due to the economic crisis seem to become under suspencion in a parellel way in which the dreams of thousands of immigratns living and working in Greece seem to be living in limbo.

The two case,despie the diffences, make a loud reminder of the degree that the European principle of free circulation remianed hinghly divided and hierachised, something that seem to become even sharper because of the economic current economic recession.