Description
This paper reflects on the experiences of scholars and activists engaging with questions of displacement and border crossing in Greece. We recognise the role that scholarship and activism can play in defining people as being vulnerable and in establishing hierarchies and power relations. Not intentionally, but because the language of charity can lead to unintentional ‘othering’.
First, we engage critically with our own experiences. As an activist-academic from a British University engaging with a ‘crisis’ taking place on the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Kos and in the cities and Athens and Thessaloniki, and as an activist from Switzerland setting up an organisation and providing resources in Athens and on the islands of Lesvos and Samos. We reflect on our own practice, our own choices, our own experiences within the field and how these could contribute to establishing racialised hierarchies within the field of refugee support, and what we can do to overcome, or to challenge these effects.
Secondly, we draw on these experiences to propose an alternative approach to refugee support, both in academia and the NGO sector. We propose a system based on solidarity, that challenges the notion of charity, of ‘othering’ and of helplessness that often sits at the heart of NGO work. We ask, what questions should we be raising as academics, what support is desired by NGOs and how can we draw on solidarity, rather than charity to support people in meeting their own needs and having their own experiences heard.
