Abstract
This chapter summarises the findings that were made during field research in Germany, Greece, Italy and Bulgaria. After discussing research methodology, the experiences of irregular migrants are discussed in several stages that relate to the categories developed in Chap. 4. As the EU’s border regime has become ever more restrictive, irregular migrants often have no choice but to resort to the services provided by human smugglers. This experience has been linked with the concept of reification. Upon first reception by European or national authorities, irregular migrants are screened, biometrically scanned, quarantined and vaccinated – they are thus exposed to biopolitics. Accommodation centres are perpetually operating beyond their capacity in a permanent state of exception. The lack of regular means of immigration has facilitated the emergence of an irregular labour market for clandestinos. The subaltern state of irregular migrants and their visible manifestation of material insecurity have triggered waves of xenophobia throughout the continent which has become a significant aspect of these migrants’ everyday lives. Finally, in line with Gramsci’s emancipatory agenda, the chapter discusses the obstacles standing in the way of overcoming irregular migrants’ subalternity.
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Notes
- 1.
Unofficial survey data exists that confirms that the overwhelming majority of migrants in Greece wants to move on to other EU member states.
- 2.
While this argument is my own deduction, it is inspired by Agamben (1998), whose work was consulted when I began to ground my conceptualisations as part of the retroductive process of this dissertation. I later discarded direct references to Agamben due to the incompatibility between his work and critical realism. Nevertheless, the notion of the state of exception comes from his work.
- 3.
In 2014 the city of Leipzig maintained the policy that large accommodation centres should be shut down and replaced by small centres (decentralised accommodation).
- 4.
See Chap. 4 for an explanation of reification and commodification. While commodification will always be accompanied by reification, reification can occur without commodification. One example of this is transaction in a supermarket, where the consumer is reified but not commodified.
- 5.
The European organic label is thus no guarantee that a product has been produced using only regular workers. It may very well be that a fruit has been grown organically with the help of an exploited worker, which calls for the introduction of a fair trade label within the EU.
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Köpping Athanasopoulos, H. (2020). Being Spillover – Undocumented Migrants’ Experience of European Integration. In: EU Migration Management and the Social Purpose of European Integration. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42040-6_7
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