Unruly Subjects: Migration, Solidarity and Resistance in Greece

Unruly Subjects unravels how everyday solidarity, resistance, and violent abandonment intersect at Europe’s borders. Through long-term ethnographic research in Greece, it explores the creative, yet ambivalent solidarities between ‘illegalised’ migrants incarcerated in camps and the grassroots volunteers who support them. Unruly subjects offers an intimate account of everyday solidarity and resistance at Europe’s increasingly hostile borders. Set in Greece, it traces the struggles of ‘illegalised’ migrants warehoused in camps, alongside thousands of grassroots volunteers who have created vital infrastructures of support.At the heart of the book lie the creative, if precarious and ambivalent, solidarities between two central figures—undesirable non-citizens and citizen-humanitarians—as they navigate and bear witness to daily indignities and injustices. Grounded in long-term ethnographic research, it interrogates how they unsettle racialised boundaries and carceral logics of control, in defiance of state-sanctioned violence, criminalisation and abandonment.Told through their testimonies, frustrations and hopes, this important study makes a compelling case for recognising these lived experiments in solidarity—however fragile or fraught—as vital political interventions. With urgency and clarity, it reveals what is at stake for all who seek to carve out more just and hopeful futures.‘Unruly subjects offers a rigorous and nuanced ethnographic account of grassroots humanitarianism. Through attention to everyday practices of care, solidarity, and resistance, the book exposes the tensions, limits, and possibilities of bottom-up humanitarian action to disrupt the operation of supposedly orderly border regimes.’ Katerina Rozakou, Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences‘A richly grounded account of how migrants and non-migrants forge practices of solidarity, resistance, and hope in the Greek archipelago. An important and timely contribution to scholarship on migration, borders, and humanitarianism.’ Shahram Khosravi, Professor of Anthropology, Stockholm University Unruly Subjects takes readers to the heart of Europe’s escalating border struggles: the Aegean islands, where thousands of ‘undesirable’ migrants have been confined and abandoned in EU-funded camps. Drawing on nearly a decade of research, Ludek Stavinoha reveals the hidden spaces where resistance forms and solidarity grows, tracing migrants’ daily efforts to claim dignity and rights alongside grassroots volunteers who have built essential support networks. Central to the book are the creative, precarious, and often ambivalent solidarities forged between volunteers and refugees, citizens and non-citizens, as they challenge racialised boundaries and state-sanctioned control. Urgent and compelling, Unruly Subjects shows how people navigate and subvert Europe’s increasingly hostile border regime and highlights the alternative imaginaries of justice and possibility that emerge from their struggles.

Pagina's: 216, Hardcover, Manchester University Press