Description
Moria, the notorious refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos had been described by many as a ‘living hell’. In September 2020 a fire burnt the camp to the ground leaving asylum seekers homeless for days. For the thousands of asylum seekers who lived in Moria, the camp was both a convivial place of belonging and a state of exception where hope and suffering clashed on a daily basis. This paper will draw on Jessica Auchter’s politics of haunting and will take the reader on a walk through Moria’s burnt remnants. Drawing on a combination of documentary photography and photojournalism this paper will reflect on Moria before the fire, in its immediate aftermath and on what has been left behind. The Ghosts of Moria will argue that the refugee camp can be approached as a liminal space of mortality where a refugee’s life and death become political in their absence.
