Pandemic law and border regime of Eastern Aegean: The case of Samos

新冠肺炎的爆发在学术和公共话语中引发了一场贯穿各领域的辩论，从这些措施的必要性和相称性，到基于阶级、种族、性别和公民身份的公共卫生不平等的视角。这场激烈的辩论在东爱琴海岛屿上升级，那里通过不同的立法颁布了两级公共卫生政策；针对普通民众的间歇性措施，以及针对热点居民的平行措施，一直无缝地延长到目前为止，限制措施不断波动。对于数千名寻求庇护者来说，COVID 19遏制措施加剧了自2016年3月欧盟-土耳其协议实施以来实施的现有流动限制。现有的生活水平低下，引发了广泛的谴责，得到了对热点居民采取不适当和歧视性措施的反应的支持。欧盟和希腊国家在大流行期间对难民/移民的立场既不是不可预见的，也不应被限制在关于欧洲自由秩序内人权平衡的横向合法性论述中。在希腊推出新冠肺炎举措的背景下，寻求庇护者的涌入在公共话语中被视为一种“不对称的威胁”，为暂时停止进入领土和伸张正义庇护铺平了道路。当当局在极右翼团体的主动协助下，在陆地边境与寻求庇护者对峙时，抵达爱琴海东部的小艇减少了，希腊海岸警卫队的第一批谴责也浮出水面。在艰难团结的同时，仇外情绪也反映在爱琴海群岛当地人反对建设新热点的抗议活动中。几个月前，有争议的L.4636/2019号文件(重新)改变了接待和庇护程序，阻碍了2020年前抵达的难民，增加了驱回风险和国际保护需求评估不足。本项目旨在以边境制度分析概念为出发点，考察爱琴海东部新冠肺炎大流行时代流动/移民管理中的权利话语。主要目的是就热点及其与其物质背景的相互作用分析大流行法律所依据的理由。因此，重点将放在是否以及如何解释生命权和健康权，谁的权利受到保护，谁是这些义务的责任人，以及如何和在哪里执行相关规定。该项目的中心假设是，将希腊/欧盟边界视为“国际劳动力流动的动态竞争和减速区域”，与COVID相关的立法整体上在流动政策中发挥了独特的作用，并与当前希腊和欧盟范例的种族和阶级调解保持一致。对一些人来说最鲜为人知的萨莫斯热点是一个指示性的案例研究，因为它比希腊其他任何热点地区超负荷运营的次数都要多，这加剧了任何问题。毗邻热点的非官方临时建筑的丛林被发现是距离岛屿首府最近的地方，为接壤的表现提供了一个独特的境界，仍然不在学者的聚光灯下。

The outbreak of COVID-19 gave rise to a cross-cutting debate in academic and public discourse ranging from the necessity and proportionality of the measures to the lens of public health inequalities based on class, race, gender and citizenship. This heated debate has escalated on the Eastern Aegean islands, where two-tier public health policies have been enacted through distinct legislative acts; intermittent measures for the general population, and, parallel measures targeting hotspot residents, prolonged seamlessly to date with fluctuating restrictions. For thousands of asylum seekers, COVID 19 containment measures compound existing mobility restrictions, in place since the implementation of EU-Turkey deal in March 2016. Existing sub-standards of living, triggering widespread condemnation, were backed by reactions of inappropriate and discriminative measures against hotspot residents. The EU and Greek State's stance on refugees/migrants amid the pandemic was neither unforeseen, nor to be circumscribed in the horizontal legitimacy discourse on human rights' balancing within the European liberal order. COVID-19 measures were introduced in Greece in a context where flows of asylum seekers have been framed as an 'asymmetrical threat' in public discourse, paving the way for the temporary suspension of access to territory and asylum justice. While authorities confronted asylum seekers at the land borders with the unsolicited assistance of far-right groups, dinghy arrivals in Eastern Aegean dropped and the first denouncements of Hellenic Coastguard pushbacks came to light. Xenophobia, parallel to the struggling solidarity, was reflected in locals' protests in the Aegean islands against the construction of new hotspots. Several months earlier, reception and asylum procedures had been (re)shaped by the contested L. 4636/2019, bottlenecking pre-2020 arrivals and heightening the risk of refoulement and inadequate international protection needs assessment. This project aims to examine the rights' discourse in the COVID-19 pandemic era in Eastern Aegean mobility/migration management with the border regime analytical concept as the point of departure. The main objective is analysing the reasoning underpinning pandemic law with regard to hotspots and its interaction with their material background. Hence, the focus will be on if and how the rights to life and health are interpreted, whose rights are protected, who is the incumbent to these obligations, and how and where the relevant provisions are to be implemented. Viewing the Greek/EU border as a 'dynamic area of contest and deceleration of the international labour power movement', the central hypothesis of the project is that COVID-related legislation has in its entirety played a distinct role in the policies over mobility and is aligned with the racial and class mediation of the current Greek and EU paradigm. Samos hotspot, the most obscure for some, is an indicative case study, since it operates more times above its capacity than any other hotspot in Greece, exacerbating any issue. The 'jungle' of unofficial makeshift structures adjacent to the hotspot is found the nearest to an island's capital town, providing a characteristic realm for manifestations of bordering, and is still outside scholars' spotlight.