Season 05 - Episode 02: What Was Moria and What Comes Next?
This episode features a conversation between Dr. Yannis Hamilakis and Dr. Naor Ben-Yehohada about Moria, once the largest refugee camp in Europe until it was completely destroyed by a fire in September 2020. Dr. Hamilakis had been researching, experiencing, and witnessing the materiality of contemporary migration on Lesvos, the Greek island where Moria was located, since 2016. And, in the aftermath of its destruction, he convened a cohort of archaeologists, social anthropologists, activists, teachers, and authors with direct connections to and experiences of Moria to reflect on what the place meant to them and possible directions for the future. These contributions came together in the form of a multimodal portfolio, “What Was Moria and What Comes Next?” comprising research and photo essays, ethnographic fiction, first-person accounts, lyrical prose, illustration, and more. Dr. Hamilakis’s introduction to the collection, was published in the February 2022 issue of American Anthropologist and the entirety of the collection is available open-access on the journal’s website. To round out the multimodal scope of this project, this episode contributes an oral and aural dimension to the reflections to “What Moria and What Comes Next?”
Dr. Yannis Hamilakis is the Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Modern Greek Studies at Brown University.
Dr. Naor Ben-Yehoyada is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.
TRANSCRIPT:
SPEAKERS
Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Anar Parikh, Yannis Hamilakis, Music, Field Recording
Music 00:02
Vertigo feat. Sponty by Krav Boca
Anar Parikh 00:17
Hi y’all, thanks for joining us for another episode of Anthropological Airwaves, the official podcast of the journal, American Anthropologist. This is Season Five – Episode Two: What Was Moria and What Comes Next? My name is Anar Parikh, I’m the Associate Editor of the Podcast at American Anthropologist and the Executive Producer of this show. I’m joined by Dr. Naor H. Ben-Yehoyada, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and Dr. Yannis Hamilakis, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern Greek Studies at Brown University. Today’s episode is about Moria, once the largest refugee camp in Europe until it was completely destroyed by a fire in September 2020. Dr. Hamilakis had been researching, experiencing, and witnessing the materiality of contemporary migration on Lesvos, the Greek island where Moria was located, since 2016. And, in the aftermath of its destruction, he convened a cohort of archaeologists, social anthropologists, activists, teachers, and authors with direct connections to and experiences of Moria to reflect on what the place meant to them and possible directions for the future. These contributions came together in the form of a multimodal portfolio, “What Was Moria and What Comes Next?” comprising research and photo essays, ethnographic fiction, first-person accounts, lyrical prose, illustration, and more. Dr. Hamilakis’s introduction to the collection, was published in the February 2022 issue of American Anthropologist and the entirety of the collection is available open-access on the journal’s website. To round out the multimodal scope of this project, this episode contributes an oral and aural dimension to the reflections to “What Moria and What Comes Next?” So, with that, I will hand it over to Drs. Hamilakis and Ben-Yehoyada. Can you Both start by introducing yourselves?
Yannis Hamilakis 02:19
Thank you very much, Anar and Hi Naor, and, hello, everybody. Uh, my name is Yannis Hamilakis, um as Anar said, I teach archeology and Modern Greek studies at Brown University.I'm an archaeolgist of the Mediterranean. I've been working in Greece, um researching and writing about Greek prehistory, the prehistoric um times, like Neolithic, Lithic, and n the Bronze Age. Um, I have been working in Moria for many year, now since 2016, as an archaeologist uh of the present as a contemporary archaeologist, but also as somebody who has done in, on on other sites, on other more conventional archaeological sites, what we call archaeological ethnography, which is a combination of, um, social, anthropological and archaeological methods to produce a new phase of research, a new space of doing fieldwork, a new space of writing. Um, I just want to also say something in relation to the connection of some of uh the work on Moria to my previous work. And that's to do with my work on nationalism. As we know, nationalism is very often about the border, about the border, not only as a physical entity, but also as a process, as an apparatus and as a way of, of creating realities. So Moria, as we will discuss today, is situated at the border, physically at the border between Greece and Turkey, which is also a border between the Global South and the Global North. So you could see, I hope, work connections between my previous work on nationalism, nationalization, and the work on the contemporary moment and on migration, the border and Moria.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 02:23
My name is Naor Ben-Yehoyada , uh, thank you, Anar, and thank you Yannis for for inviting me to participate in this, uh, in this podcast episode. I'm, uh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. I work mainly in the central and the eastern Mediterranean, in the central Mediterranean. I work on uh fisheries and maritime uh relationships. I, I work a bit, um, on on the maritime and the underwater aspects of the materiality of, of forced and irregular migration, which is how I got to know and, and, and really appreciate Yannis's work over, over the years. Uh there are a couple of differences maybe that that can set the conversation. One of them is that I work in, in, at sea and uh not on land, and the other one is that I work in that part of Southern Europe, in the Mediterranean that has, um, a longer stretch of water, that kind of invites, uh, more attention just because it takes longer to cross. Uh, I'm not saying it's more dangerous to cross, but it takes longer to cross and therefore the vessels, the social relations that set up those vessels, can look, look, look a bit differently. I hope these kinds of differences will uh enable us to, to, to think together about uh about your research and your work over over the years in in Moria, with the people of Moria.
Field Recording 05:43
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 06:11
So, uh, to start, Dr. Hamilakis, uh can you tell us what was Moria and why it was, and continues to be, important?
Yannis Hamilakis 06:18
Yes, uhm Moria, uh first of all, is the name of the village, the name of the village on the island of Lesbos, which is a border island between Greece and Turkey. Um, there is a locality very close to the village of Moria, which has been, um, the focus of attention and work on migration because it was used as a locality to create, construct and operate, perhaps the largest refugee camp in Europe--what was known and still known as the camp of Moria, or the center of Moria, the processing center, uh, of Moria. Now, the name of Moria, if you if you Google Moria at the moment, you'll find thousands and thousands of thousands of news items, and links, that is to do with, you know, the phenomenon of migration in the Mediterranean. And more recently, uh, Moria has been done, I guess, a metaphor for what's wrong about migration and a regime of migration in Europe--especially the policies of the European Union, and of the Greek government, but primarily the European Union, in relation to migration. For example, after the fire that destroyed Moria, in September 2020, European officials came out and said, "No more Moria," in the plural, "No more Morians," sending the message that from now on, they're going to adopt a new policy, a new policy about--so-called processing migrants and your policy about camps--that would be very different from what Moria embodied and signified. Um, so this is some thoughts, about, I hope uh give our our audience the um, the sense of what Moria has been. In terms of its physical, physical configuration. Moriah was, uh, first of all, a wall compound--a compound that was built first as a conscript training center for the Greek army, um, a fairly small facility that housed I guess, a thousand or a couple of thousand people. But since 2003, that center, that conscript center, had closed down and the facility had been used for, as I said, processing--that's the language that the European Union and others use--processing migrants, or people on the move, which is my preferred term for them, to cross into Lesbos from Turkey thus, enter the European Union. Now, that facility, if you were to visit until its fire, presented the usual uh materiality of an enclosed and militarized and securitized space. So, high cement walls, barbed wire, and razor wire, and lots of facilities inside that connect to, to indictments and to and to centers to house people in large numbers. So, um, containers that look like maritime containers, but they are shipping containers, but they are what migrants called, "ISO boxes," that's the code name that people use because they have the International Standardization Organization logo them. So big, wide--very often wide kind of boxes, box like accommodation--but also other structures that were constructed with European Union funding to facilitate the operations of Moria.
ˆNow, as I say in the article published in the American Anthropologist, it's perhaps, uh, an incorrect way to describe this as a refugee or migrant camp, because it was much more than a camp. Encampment acommodation was one of its functions, but it had multiple other functions that were to do with, uh, the need of the authorities, primarily European Union authorities, but also other authorities, Greek authorities, for example, to register people, to capture information, to store information, and to decide on what to do with the border crossers who arrived on the island. So, the capture of information was fundamental, the storing information, the processing of people, the decisions uh about the asylum status or not, you know, for many years, the main facility and operation of the asylum service--both the European Union asylum service and the Greek one--was housed inside the compound of Moria. There was also another weird building, perhaps one of the most frightful buildings in, in the whole operation, called--I'm translating here--"predeparture," "predeparture center for the detention of aliens." So it was a euphemistically mystically called building because in fact, it was a high security prison. It was a prison where people who were, their processing um their application for asylum was denied or or imprisoned until they were deported. Now, in addition to those people, I realize to my huge surprise, and to my astonishment, that there were also other people who had arrived on the island, and they were imprisoned upon arrival, because the chances of getting asylum status were very low. In addition, they were judged by authorities, especially the Greek police, as people prone to criminality and were [indecipherable]. So, that building was a kind of facility that, in many ways operated on the kind of the verge of legality and illegality. It was not, that that kind of decision of the Greek police and of the border authorities to imprison people upon arrival, had no legal grounding. So these are some of the functions of these centers. So it is, as I said, we talk about it as a camp, as a kind of as a refugee, um, refugee camp, but it was much more than that. So that was the center, the kind of the walled compound. In recent years, because there were so many people that could not be housed inside, they walled compoun, the settlement expanded on the surrounding hills. And at one point in the last year of the life of the site, in 2020, the number of people in the walled compound and the surrounding hills actually exceeded twenty thousand, twenty thousand people. Now that's a that's an astonishing number, especially if we compare the fact that um, with the fact, compared with the fact that the capacity of this center, according to official figures, was about two thousand, or two thousand and a half, or three thousand, maximum. So you can get the sense of the scale. And of course, you have to bear in mind that this was a, a kind of transit center, in the sense of people who would, would spend time and then move on to the mainland and on to other countries. Um, so you can get a sense of kind of the scale of the number of people who actually uh at one moment of their life lived there, on the camp of Moria.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 13:39
At the end of the your, your piece in the American Anthropologist, one of the characterizations you give to the place is, "it was an institution, institution of schooling in the bodily pedagogy of submission, yet protests and demonstrations were frequent." So with that, that kind of description of the various descriptions you just gave, and the idea that none of these descriptions uh suffices. Maybe, maybe you can tell us, what is it that that that made Moria different from other refugee or immigrant camps around the world, not just in the Euro-bound uh routes?
Yannis Hamilakis 14:14
Yes, I mean, uh, first of all, most of us, uh when we hear "refugee camps" or "migrant camps" in the present, the present moment in the world, we have in mind, uh regions like the Middle East, East Africa, or generally countries that we classify, as we said, countries in the Global South. It has been um unusual for us to imagine refugee camps or facilities connected to refugees to be more precise, in the Global North, and especially in the European soil in the European countries. So that's one one one key difference to keep in mind. And of course, the second difference is that we're talking about a facility that is part of what I call "the assemblage of the border." So we have to imagine that facility and connect it to all other entities that are to do with the border as an institution beyond its physical manifestation and reality. So I have in mind, for example, the Frontex ships that patrol the passage between Turkey and Greece--between Lesvos and the Anatolian, the Turkish coast. I have in mind, all the facilities on the island as a whole, including the very large number of humanitarian and NGO organizations that set camp on the island of Lesvos, since Lesvos became such a focal point for migration--especially since 2015, since the what we call the, "Syrian Exodus," moment. So, Moria was one node--one one very, very important entity--within that border assemblage. So it was the second difference. I guess, the s-third difference is that, as I said, it was a very complex organization. Um very often you hear uh more you hear being called a hotspot. That's an interesting term in many ways, and it relates to what the European um Union called in 2015, a "hotspot approach" to migration. By that they meant is that they wanted to do some sort of streamlining of what they saw as the migration problem, the migration crisis, they wanted to create facilities that would actually combine many different functions, and become according to their own kind of terms and terminology an efficient way of deciding and moving forwards or sending back or processing people. It was a part of that broader policy, that European Union called "hotspot." I guess another major difference compared to more conventional camps is to do with capturing of information, um of surveillance, of biometrics, um of an attempt to map people and store information into multiple uh databases, some of them local, many of them, and most of them Europeans. I guess, these are some of the features that make this place so different from other refugee camps.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 17:13
Having in mind, the, you know, the the project in its entirety that your piece was, was the introduction to, I wonder if one of the, you know, how do these differences, these things that make Moria different from other places around the world also contributed or interacted with, the way Moria became a cocelebre , you know, the way that it picked up? It became famous? What is the discursive uniqueness of Moria, as it grew?
Yannis Hamilakis 17:38
I think your, I mean your question Naor, reminds me of another, another role and another kind of function, another position in Moria in the global uh media escape, and that's its role as a stage. This is something I write in the piece as well. I talked a lot about surveillance and capturing information. But perhaps the other important role of this entity is its role as as a spectacle, as a stage where many different performances were performed. And as something that became prominent in the global media, the prominence was linked to many different factors. It was linked to, as I said, again, the Syria moment when the islands and you know, the crossing between Turkey and Greece actually became a focal point for the whole world, in the media world, because the numbers then were phenomenon for a small island like Lesvos. People talk about half a million people crossing that year--2016 and '16. So many media, uh many media outlets, you know, either moved to Lesvos, or came to Lesvos, to record that moment, but it also has to do with prominent visits. Moria attracted a number of luminaries, a number of personalities, from the Pope, to Hollywood celebrities, to Prime Minister's, to princes. Everybody wanted to appear on the stage of Moria. And that's, that's a facet that actually deserves its own exploration, its own, its own investigation. I think it was also a spectacle from the point of view of the European Union regime. People already have been talking about in the literature, of Moria being a spectacle of deterrence--a spectacle that the European Union deliberately wanted to project out to the world, especially to would-be border crossers; to people in countries like Afghanistan, the Middle East in general, or other countries in Africa or countries in Africa, that actually had contemplated crossing into the European Union through the Greek islands. So the message then, according to this argument, was that "if you are to do so, and come on the island of Lesvos, Moria, this Moria this facility," the facility has been called Hell, or Guantanamo, or the worst camp in in in the Word that certain kinds of phrases that you intended the media, "awaits you." It's not the paradise. It's not the European Union of welcoming uh people and of democracy. It's this militarized facility with high walls with the razor wire and with the squalid conditions that very often were projected in the media.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 20:22
How can you know your, your, your a composite approach? How can archaeological ethnography or contemporary archaeology of the camp, of Moria, how can they help us understand the camp and its context?
Yannis Hamilakis 20:35
Yeah, as I'm saying in the uh American Anthropologist, piece. There are many, many scholars, many colleagues who have been to Lesvos who currently work migration based on Lesvos. Um, social anthropologists, political scientists, human geographers, artists and many others, and all of them I'm sure contributes to to, the understanding of Moria as a phenomenon and of migration in in general. I felt that an approach that foregrounds materiality and an approach that actually pays specific and close attention to the materiality of the phenomenon was missing from the previous attempts and from the previous disciplinary attempts at understanding um the camp and the site. Archeological ethnography, and the archaeology of the present or contemporary ecology, or two strands that actually foreground materiality are central in our investigation or interrogation of the phenomenon; our attempt to understand. And materiality uh takes different forms, takes different shapes. It is the materiality of the border regime, with the various camps as well as the other apparatuses that construct the assemblage of the border, but don't since the materiality of refugee or migrant experience, it's the kind of experiential attempts to construct shelter, to provide for foods, to deal with the situation there while waiting--while waiting for the application to be processed, while waiting for them to be allowed to travel on into the mainland and to further on into Central or west, um, the west of Europe. So both, both ends: both the materiality of the border regime and the materiality produced by migrants extremely important for us to understand. Let's remember that many of the other disciplinary efforts in understanding migration, are grounded on discourses, are grounded on on interviews, uh are grounded on participant observation, of course, but increasingly on interviewing people--either officials or migrants or both. In my attempt in conducting archaeological ethnography and um archaeology of the contemporary. While, of course, I spoke to people, both officials and migrants, more important for me was to center and focus and pay specific and detailed attention and [indecipherable] the materiality of the phenomena, the materiality, and its the temporal dimensions, as well. It's transformation over time and it's evocation of different times. People that I met on Lesvos, were very often tired of talking, tired of narrating the self, tired of appearing in front of officials, asylum officers and others, and telling the story--telling the story of the erm movement, the story of their crossing, seeing the story of their trauma, the story of their persecution, all these things that we know are linked to to migration. Whereas if you were to say, "Okay, we are not doing that right now, we are actually trying to understand together how you materially experience this place, how you construct your shelter, how you provide for your food, how you actually engage in artistic, and other practices, while your waiting here?" provides another another way of understanding phenomena. It's a detailed and sustained attention to the materiality of the phenomenon in its transition. It's changed and it's kind of continuous transformation that makes, I think, this project of interest and hopefully of importance and significance as we understand the broader phenomenon.
Field Recording 24:11
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 27:03
So, how do you say, if we keep, uh keep our attention to the, that multiple and complex materiality, can you tell us more about the methodology that you deployed? So, for example, how do you decide what to collect and what what not to collect? And, and, you know, a question that's related to that, how do you say, how can archaeological ethnography or contemporary archaeology open up a space for foregrounding the non-scholarly voices, especially of the people who lived in Moria, you know, the people on the move?
Yannis Hamilakis 27:32
Yeah, first of all, we may have to say something about um ethnography and archaeology, because I think many of our, you know, people who may have our listeners may have been aware of attempts by archaeologists to, to do ethnography. And I guess the tradition that has been dominant in the field of archaeology for many, many years is a tradition of ethno-archaeology, when archaeologists conduct interviews, or conduct ethnography more generally, to understand the past, to actually use the present in some ways, as an analog in interpreting archaeological phenomena, whether it's material culture, or practices or techniques. Now, I have said several times over the past few years that I have fundamental problems with this method. And I am not the only one having problems in that because I believe that in that methodology, and of course, it's changed [indecipherable] over the years--it starts 1970s, today ethnoarchaeology is every different. But fundamentally at the center of this approach, is the idea of using present-day people as proxies for the past. For me that is fundamentally ethically wrong, and as well as having other methodological and interpretive problems in addition to the ethical issues that actually brings forward. So archaeological ethnography is not ethno-archaeology. I'm not there to record migration, in order to understand prehistory history or the archaeological past, I'm there to engage in a dialogue, on the present and for the present, and with the people who live today, uh, and engage with this kind of phenomena of migration. Archaeological ethnography produces a middle space, produces a space of multiple encounters--encounters between scholars, and other people who live there as migrants, but also people of different backgrounds, and different cultures--it is a transdisciplinary and transcultural attempt, it's not the methodology, uh, it's more as I said, the production of a shared space of encounters. So that's the broader definition. Within that, there are of course different methodologies, broadly defined that one can, can use there is no prescription there is no uh standard blueprint of how to do it, and more so in the very difficult context of the border, of the migration.
So for me, as for all anthropologically minded scholars, the first thought, of course, is the obligation to people we are interacting with--our interlocutors, our collaborators--and in a niche, in a context, which is actually context of very often the violence of securitization of militarization, research, as in extracting information or recording information takes very often second place to the first and the most important feature, which is witnessing, being there, and witnessing the border in its multiplicity, in its kind of material expression, in its, in its complexity. Being there when the journalists have gone, been there when the celebrities and the luminaries have gone, being not only on the front of Moria, the front stage, but also on the back stage, on the facets and places and the kind of the corners of this facility in this camp that are not really recorded, are not photographed or not filmed by the, by the different different camps. So observation, of course, but at the same time experience as a multi-sensorial modality--experiencing the place and it's in its kind of mode, sensorial richness, and vibrancy has been central. I conducted extensively photography, of course, but then again, you are always kind of reminded of the um ethical issues of photography brings up so photography has been kind of, um, a way of coming to terms with that facility, witnessing the facility bringing into the fore, for example, facets that are not normally discussed in relation to migration, for example, the agency of people, um, the actions of people, that speak of their initiative, speak of their ability to transform the place to make it a different place from the one that the authorities were actually working towards, showing people on the move as political agents and as autonomous individuals who actually are engaging in the process of remaking themselves is also important the process of photography. But also, of course, keeping notes as everybody does, and working with the in some cases, on projects that have engaging with, have been engaging with it needs to be supported, and need to be need to be kind of foregrounded for others also, to see and support. To give you an example, I was working for many years, with an NGO that was actually put together by Afghani people themselves--a bottom up, mutual aid organization that clashed very often with the big established NGOs on the camp. And that organization was trying to create certain structures for making people's lives more livable in that condition, these conditions, for example, creating schools, and asking the people who are there, and who were teachers back in Afghanistan to resume their role as teachers and teach youth, but also constructing a small library and and building an art studio for their painters who were there. These were projects that I felt they were worth supporting and helping and I was helping to the best of my abilities to actually put together and produce successfully. So these are some of the kind of, I guess, activities I was engaging with.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 33:52
So this gives us uh, uh, how do you say, a broad array of examples of how archeological ethnography and contemporary archaeology allowed uh and enabled studying and experiencing uh Moria. Could you say a bit more about how, how that kind of study, the contemporary archaeology, permits a, how do you say, a perspective that other modes of scholarly inquiry do not permit?
Yannis Hamilakis 34:13
Yeah, um, I think we may have to jump back to the fundamental concept of materiality, to the more fundamental concept that's to deal with materiality, both in its um physical dimensions, materials, techniques, and processes that transform a place. And when I say that, I mean that that, in, in the kind of work I do, is actually um something that needs detailed attention. So, to talk about the building, let's say of the walled compound in its its general shape is not enough. To analyze how its it shapes human movement, how it shapes human experience, how it transforms people's lives is what's needed. At the same time, to talk about the shelters that were built in the hills around in its generic shape is not enough, to talk about the specific materials that they will use talk about how, for example, plastic bottles--which is perhaps the ubiquitous and the most abandoned objects in the camp,was because of the lack of running water because of the lack of proper facilities--to see to record and observe and talk about the many different ways plastic water bottles were transformed into platforms, transformed into structures, transformed into kind of small objects that can be used--filled up with uh with ash, or with soil and used as,as weights for training. All these things recorded in detail and talked about and for granted, are extremely important for the archaeological ethnography and the archaeology of every migration. And through that, you can actually understand much better what life meant for people to give that texture in those details is, is quite, quite fundamental. I want to say something else in relation which for me is important. In addition to the epistemic value of this work, there is extremely important affective value. That's to do with the, the affectivity that objects and materials, actually foregrounds. To bring out an object from that world and bring it to another world, let's say into the classroom, or to the museum,or to another [indecipherable] environment provides a direct material connection, a direct way for people to understand and feel and engage a little bit with what life meant for people living there. So it's not just a matter of knowledge, not just a matter of gaining conclusions about what migration meant, or Lesvos, or what border crossing or camps meant. But it's also a way of creating affective bonds and affective connections between the people who were there acrossing as border crossers, and other people in other contexts--in, let's say in Greece, in other parts of Europe, or in the US.
And I've done that quite a lot in recent years with some of the objects I brought back from Lesvos. We also held an exhibition at uh Brown University called "Transit Matter", uh which is also online, and people can go and see it that actually made for many people, let's say on our campus, and more generally, to actually understand materially what it meant to be there as a migrant--something which wasn't that easy when people were just reading either news reports, or studies or essays done by, by other colleagues, other researchers. And I want to say one thing that you asked me now in the previous question, I didn't last and uh didn't respond to that was about collection. What do we collect? This is a fundamental issue. This is an issue that has been uh in my mind over the years, and one that I'm ambivalent about colleagues who work on migration in other parts of the world, including the Mexico-U.S. border, have different views on what to do with the objects what to do with with artifacts. There are some colleagues who favor a total collection: to gather everything, to collect everything as as if it was a normal, conventional archaeological site, and then take it away and store it in the lab and analyze it and then, you know, donate it to museums or do something with it. Other colleagues are in favor of uh minimum and selective collection. They say, for example, that when border crossers cross the border, for example, in the Sonora desert, they leave things on the ground that become part of a specific landscape. And for certain people, especially people on the border, who are uh solidarity workers and others or local people who are positively predisposed toward border crossers, want to curate landscape, want to keep it as an active, rich landscape that speaks of the phenomenon of migration. Now, in my own work, even if I wanted to do extensive collection, that would be impossible, because the masses and masses and masses of material that is left on the ground would make it beyond possible to actually um gather everything, and store it, and catalog it and process it as archaeological site, but I don't want to do that either. I do believe that only selective collection is the most appropriate ethical and epistemic um solution to this dilemma. And of course, always with the understanding that I'm not not the owner of these things, I'm not somebody who would actually acquire these things and then acces, accession them into, into museum collections or into other institutions. I'm the temporary steward of these small things I've collected.They belong to people who created them, they belong to people who left them on the ground. And I always say that if people will come back to me and claim even the small collection, I have actually gathered, I will be the first one to actually send them back to them. But I believe that there is a value both epistemic,ethical, and effective value, as I said, in collecting selectively, only small number of objects and reenergize them, reactivate them in other contexts, be it the museum context or school, class complex or another environment where people are interested to hear about migration.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 40:55
Thank you. And you know, that that selective approach to collection brings us to the question of, you know, what, what we might be able to glean about borders more globally, coming out of the particular approach that you followed in Moria. Out of the specific relationship, it seems between, you know, maybe it's a represent-, representative relation between the things that you bring with you, that you are custodian of is, as you said, and what remains behind. So, what do you think we might be able to glean about borders more globally, uh if we think about those other places, whether these, you know, border spaces like the US, Mexico one, or regarding the agency of of people on the move who inhabit comes in borders the world over? What might be able to glean about them, if we take what you, what you've developed, coming out of that specific approach that, as you say, depends on the particular setting and the particular materiality of Moria? Right, that the fact that you basically, as you say, in the piece, you you conducted an ethnographic archaeology of a living, if arrested city? Collecting everything in a living space like that is, as you say is impossible, but that forces you to create affective and epistemic stances. And what can we learn from these?
Yannis Hamilakis 42:12
Yeah, I believe that there is a lot to be learned from studying a context like Moria and the border as a whole--the border of, you know, Lesvos as an island, the border between Greece and Turkey. As I said, it's not just a national border, it's kind of a, a global border. And something that we uh need to be reminded is that on the island of Lesvos, you encounter, I have encountered people from many different parts of the world. Very often we think, people who haven't been there, think that only border crossers from Syria or Afghanistan are to be found on Lesbos, because they are the ones who actually attempt to cross to the European Union. That's actually wrong. There are people from dozens and dozens of countries of Asia and of Africa that attempt to tend to cross through Lesvos and through the Greek islands. And that's because many people, especially many people from Africa, um travel from their country, to Istanbul, which has become a, kind of a global center in the movement of people around the world, and then travel down the kind of Anatolian coast and then cross into the Greek islands. So I've met people from East Africa, I've met people from West Africa, or Central Africa, and many, many countries from Asia. And some people have told me, although I haven't met a lot , even people from Mesoamerica, or Latin America, sometimes attempt to--instead of doing the U.S.-Mexico route-- attempt to process into the European Union, through the Greek islands. So we're talking about the global border. So what can we learn from it about the world? First of all, as I said, the immediate kind of understanding of what's happening in the world right now, in terms of global movements. But we can also learn about um the different ways that we border facets and different kinds of shapes that the border takes. First, the border as assemblage the border, as a configuration of different modalities that cohere, and cofunction to produce the border effect. We have to understand that there are many very different entities that cohere to produce and reproduce the border. The authorities, the European Union, national states, police, the army are some of them, but there are many others, that we haven't been associated with the border effect, but they are in fact are crucial in in facilitating the function of the border effect. For example, NGOs: NGOs very often facilitate the whole border effect, and I saw in Moria, what scholars have already spoken about the, the meshing and the kind of the merging of humanitarianism with militarization, how the two in fact can function together. I saw young people from the US walking inside the camp of Moria, and guarding different sectors of the camp and asking people to produce papers to enter from one sector to the next. So that's a function that normally we see it with guards, or with, you know, police, or the military. Here we have humanitarian workers doing that. So, you could see how the two can actually cohere and function together. So first, the border as assemblage.
The second is, the border as method, something that scholars like me Mezzandra and Nielsen have written about in their famous book. And by that I mean, is that the border mobilizes a whole series of other processes, for example, the generation of the circulation of capital, in terms of the amount of money that goes into the operation of the border. And of course, a whole series of other process with production of labor that has been submitted these processes of bodily regulation and bodily submission, and also the process of waiting. Let's think about the waiting as method, as an analogy that produce specific subjects, a specific individual, for example, devalues their labor, their time, and lastly, they labor so even if they're allowed to work after they've been waiting for years at the border, their time has been already devalued, that process of waiting in these conditions. So, border assemblage, border as method. The third is border as a mechanism of pathologizing people and of racializiation. The categorization of people, the people who come there primarily to be as I said, processed, categorized, um not only fingerprinted, but also having all their biometrics extracted, and at the same time, you see that process of racialization, which I described earlier, when some people are deemed as already people who are going to be rejected, and that some of them are actually put into prison without having committed any crime. That's because some authorities believe that they are not going to get asylum status, and also they're deemed by the authorities as prone to criminality. So racialization is something that I see being produced and reproduced at the border, and especially at Moria.
But finally, my fourth point is more positive, and has do of the border as a ground of hope. Let's recall that not only the, the agency, I talked about--not only the work that went into transforming a place like Moria by migrants--but also of the alliances that have been created at the border, of the various connections are being made. Having people from all over the world meeting at a place like Moria, at the border, exchanging information: exchaning information about movements too, about how to continue the journey, and making connections about also further kind of attempts to reproduce themselves and continue kind of living and continue kind of transforming their existenc, is something that I think is extremely important. At the same time I see I have seen how a town like Mitilini, the biggest town on the island of Lesvos, nine kilometres away from Moria, has been shaped and reshaped by migration. I've seen how the town itself has become a space of multiple encounters, encounters of people from many different parts of the world, I've seen how the uh town has become a space where you can find restaurants operated by migrants with cuisine and that you can find many other parts of the country and Europe. I've seen how musical or how music has been produced in Moria, any Mitilini. I've seen how art has been produced by people of many different parts. So you can see the border not only as a space of militarization,as method, or the production of subjugated individuals, but also as the grounds of hope.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 49:15
To close, in the spirit of intervention and interaction, can can you leave our listeners with some insights on how you think this work on materiality of the border can, perhaps at the intersection of research and activism, intervening in public debates on migration and on the border?
Yannis Hamilakis 49:32
Yeah, um, I think this, um, this specific work, as I said, and I may have to repeat myself now, but I think it's important to emphasize, this specific work puts, you know, object and its specificity physicality, affective powers, and sensorial impact, at the center of our conversation, at the center of our kind of thinking about migration about the border. It actuall uh allows specific objects and artifacts to become mediators between people from different contexts,--between people who may have heard of migrants as these people who may be, you know, dangerous, we often hear in xenophobic discourses and in the media about, you know, how migrants threaten the way of life, how migrants kind of uh may destabilize countries, all these things are the negative stereotypes that are often been projected in the media--can in fact, be dispelled or at least undermined by a work that shows in specific material [indecipherable] the uh ability of people to not only transform themselves, but also transform the world as they transform themselves and as they as they transform the board. And the best way to do that is by showing specific examples of that transformation. And myway of doing that is to actually bring forward material objects, bring forward artifacts that have been made by them, but also showing in specific material terms, again, how the policies of entities like the European Union, or entities like the US government, for example, since we are here, in this context, shape the life of those people in very problematic and difficult ways and often in militarized and securitized kinds of ways. How facilities, for example, shape bodily subjects in a specific way, how the building in which they live while they're waiting for their asylum, or the process of um distributing food, and the process of waiting, and all these kinds of bodily processes that we see everyday in the camps can actually shape individuals in a specific ways. So both the top-down attempts by authorities to regulate um migrant movement, migrant life and the bottom-up, attempts by border crossers, and people on the move, to reshape that life to reshape even camps through materiality, through specific agency , through taking initiative, through taking, taking the kind of their lives in their own hands, can actually show that potential in agents in specific ways. And I saw that in Moria, in very concrete terms, especially in the last years before the fire, when the number of people had actually exploded, and it was clear that the authorities could not deal with that number any longe; could not really provide food, shelter, or basic things. I saw how silently, but very energetically, and very powerfully people took over, people reshaped the camp. They started taking initiatives, having even, you know, shops set up inside the camp, or, as I said, um schools and other facilities to actually continue their life. When that organic development happens, you could feel hopeful about the whole phenomena, but also record that and bring examples from that material examples, photographic uh objects, and others, to people in other contexts, to people in other parts of the world who have no direct experience of that phenomenon, and show how in those camps is reality, and how in fact, the more, an understanding and a more kind of um, and different, different attitudes that foregrounds solidarity and an attempt to come to terms with the experiential and affective nature of migration can be a much more, much more appropriate way of of understanding the phenomenon.
Naor Ben-Yehoyada 50:17
Dr. Hamilakis. Thank you very much.
Yannis Hamilakis 53:39
Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Anar Parikh 53:43
Thanks for listening to another episode of Anthropological Airwaves. Thank you Dr. Hamilakis and Dr. Ben-Yehoyada for their generative and insightful conversation about Moria, materiality, migration, and borders This episode features the song “Vertigo” by Krav Boca ft. Sponty. The episode also includes audio from Dr. Hamilakis’ field recordings at Moria. As always, a closed caption version of all of Anthropological Airwaves episodes, including this one, will be available on our YouTube channel and a full transcription on the episode page on the American Anthropologist website. Links to both are included in the show notes. You can find the full “What Was Moria and What Comes Next” open access on the American Anthropologist website. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Anthropological Airwaves wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, don’t forget to rate and review us while you’re there. A five-star review in particular can help other listeners find the show! We would also love to hear from you in general. If you have feedback, recommendations, or thoughts on recent episodes, send an email to amanthpodcast@gmail.com. You can also reach out to us on our Facebook page or on Twitter with the handle @AnthroAirwaves. Find links to all of our contact information in the show notes and on the Anthropological Airwaves section of the American Anthropologist website. Take it easy! We’ll be back next month with more great anthro audio.