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

2019冠状病毒病的爆发在学术和公共话语中引发了一场跨领域辩论，从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。这种激烈的辩论在爱琴海东部岛屿上升级，这些岛屿通过不同的立法行为颁布了两级公共卫生政策；针对一般人群的间歇性措施，以及针对热点居民的平行措施，迄今无缝延长，限制条件波动。对于成千上万的寻求庇护者来说，自2016年3月欧盟-土耳其协议实施以来，新冠肺炎遏制措施加剧了现有的流动限制。现有的低生活水平引发了广泛的谴责，而对热点居民采取的不适当和歧视性措施的反应也支持了这一点。欧盟和希腊国家在大流行病期间对难民/移民的立场既不是不可预见的，也不是在关于欧洲自由秩序内人权平衡的横向合法性论述中受到限制的。在希腊出台应对COVID-19措施的背景下，寻求庇护者的流动在公共话语中被视为一种“不对称威胁”，为暂时停止获得领土和庇护司法铺平了道路。当当局在陆地边界与极右翼组织主动提供的援助对抗寻求庇护者时，抵达爱琴海东部的小艇数量下降，希腊海岸警卫队击退难民的第一次谴责曝光。在爱琴海岛屿上，当地人反对建设新热点的抗议活动，反映了与努力团结一致并行的仇外心理。几个月前，有争议的L. 4636/2019号法律（重新）塑造了接待和庇护程序，阻碍了2020年之前抵达的难民，加剧了被驱回的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，研究2019冠状病毒病大流行时期东爱琴海流动/移民管理中的权利话语。主要目标是分析关于热点及其物质背景的大流行规律的推理基础。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、谁对这些义务负有责任以及如何以及在何处执行相关规定。将希腊/欧盟边境视为“国际劳动力运动竞争和减速的动态区域”，该项目的中心假设是，与covid相关的立法总体上在流动性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。对一些人来说最晦涩的Samos热点是一个指示性的案例研究，因为它比希腊任何其他热点运行的次数都要多，这加剧了任何问题。热点附近非官方临时建筑的“丛林”被发现是离岛屿首都最近的地方，为边界的表现提供了一个独特的领域，仍然不在学者的关注范围之内。

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.