Abstract
With the arrival of the refugees from the Middle East, especially since 2015, Europe has become a xenophobic hotbed. Discourses, practices, and policies promoting and supporting xenophobia have become reality. In this article, we seek to present stories of those who have arrived to Europea via the Balkan Route, in a qualitative research fashion, concentrating on several narratives collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] personnel via interviews of refugees within the Balkans. The article further stresses the intersectional nature of discrimination, as well as a narrative analysis way in combating it.
In his seminal work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper wrote about what he called the “paradox of tolerance,” a contradiction within contemporary society, that nowadays, with the increase in potency of the Right Wing on a global scale, resounds more loudly than ever, as “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them,” thus “we should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law’ (Popper, 1945, p. 360). Yet there is another paradox, one that we shall dub the “paradox of discrimination,” seen in the ubiquitousness of discriminatory discourses, practices, and policies throughout the modern world. It is difficult even to enumerate the objects and areas of discrimination; homophobia will concentrate on excluding the homosexual outside of society, sexism will concentrate on the overemphasized differences in sex and gender to discriminate; xenophobia will peg the tag of the “Other” on the RASIM, that is, refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers (Khosravinik, 2009, p. 478). Being queer will land the person into a concentration camp (Georgia), or get them beaten on the streets just for daring to exist (Russia), or even be a simple reason for death penalty (several Arab states). Being a person of color might get you shot in the United States. Being poor will separate you from society almost entirely. Truly, discrimination does not discriminate against whom and in what manner it will discriminate. Discrimination is, thus, indescriminate in finding its object, as a true paradox of discrimination within its intersectional nature.
Qualitative research, in such a world, must not keep silent, for “as qualitative researchers, we are called to action. If our research does not promote some modicum of positive social change, we are at best “navel gazing” and at worst perpetuating injustice’ (Phillips, 2015, p. 112). We have thus come to the realization that “there is a pressing need to show how practices of qualitative research can help change the world in positive ways” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. x), being that “qualitative researchers are called to directly engage with political or social circumstances that work to oppress, marginalize, and/or otherwise dismantle people groups” (Phillips, 2015, p. 112).
In Sara Marino’s words, “the recent waves of immigration towards Europe are questioning our capacity to embrace Otherness, despite the well-acclaimed multiculturalism and hybridisation upon which Western societies have been built” (Marino, 2015, p. 1), indicating that multiculturalism itself is, in a sense, under attack by the ongoing wave of xenophobia. With the arrival of the refugees from the Middle East, the European ideas of melting pots and salad bowls have started to crumble in a sweeping wave of xenophobia that seems to be taking over, as a “tormented wave of anti-establishment populism is sweeping through Europe, partly as a result of the drift to the right in the European political discourse, largely driven by short-term views of single issues such as the fear of religious/cultural diversity, the distrust of ‘alien’ values and the perception of injustice towards residents and nationals of a country” (Marino, 2015, pp. 2-3). We have entered the age of a “politics of fear” (Wodak, 2015), in which different races, cultures, religions, sexualities, financial standing—all those that go against normative instances prescribed by dominant discourses—are being rhetorically, politically, policy-wise and in action, stifled, in an attempt to re-establish discursive boundaries and hierarchical social norms by instilling fear into society. This is largely due to the “drift to the right in European political discourse concerning issues of immigration and the supposed failure of multicultural societies, and partly the consequence of a massive level of unease in many Western countries, where trust in institutions and politics is at a record low, alongside crises of confidence and of political representation” (Marino, 2015, p. 5). As a result, we are witnessing a “decline in the state’s desire and ability to protect vulnerable populations at the same time that the state’s executive powers are on the rise in many nations resulting in oppressive forms of population management” (Shome, 2016, p. 1), where one of the many modes of discrimination—xenophobia—steps into the limelight. There is a neocolonial attitude in which “non-western nations, in western imaginaries, become seen as a site of barbarism in relation to which western modernity and civility are upheld” (Shome, 2016, p. 2). In other words, members of the RASIM group are in their entirety “non-Western.” Thus, a neocolonial attitude was simply waiting to be put forth. Yet another paradox comes to mind: After centuries of colonial exploitation of the East by the West, these people of the East are now forced to come to the West, receiving the same or similar treatment as their ancestors did. They did not have a choice within colonialism, they do not have a choice within postcolonialism. It would not be a wide stretch to say that contemporary xenophobia—at least in its rhetorical pathos—has its roots in neocolonialism.
The Narratives
Gramsci wrote how the subaltern have no history (Green, 2002), at least in the sense of not being ascribed one, not needing one, being that they are barely considered to be human; they are the Other instead, and “the Others are depicted with a sequence of ‘nots’: they do not speak the same language, they do not have a culture, they do not have the same habits and they do not have a clear humanity” (Marino, 2015, p. 4); they also do not have histories, they do not have stories. At least not stories that many would want to hear.
Yet reality runs counter to discriminative, biased opinions. As Appadurai wrote, “the landscapes of group identity—the ethnoscapes around the world—are no longer tightly territorialized, spatially bounded, historically unselfconscious, or culturally homogeneous” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 48), yet they are presented as such more often than not. This is why it is of high importance to engage in “telling stories you can’t tell” (Adams & Holman Jones, 2011, p. 109), stories that many would ignore. Thus, in this article, we shall concentrate on the stories told by refugees on the Balkan Route, assembled by UNHCR activists in what is, essentially, a narrative analysis approach, which “refers to a family of approaches to diverse kinds of texts, which have in common a storied form” (Riessman, 1993, p. 1), and has been widely used within the human sciences (Cortazzi, 2014; Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004; Feldman, Sköldberg, Brown, & Horner, 2004; Frank, 2002; Labov & Waletzky, 1997). We ask ourselves, “And what of the stories we are not ready or willing to tell? What of the stories that blink and waver on the threshold of thought, speech, and intelligibility? . . . Does not telling these stories, or telling a story about all we can’t tell, do something in the world?” (Adams & Holman Jones, 2011, p. 109). In other words, are those not exactly the stories we should tell (Clair, 1998)? By concentrating on the narratives of the dispossessed, by which we see “bodies literally affecting one another: human bodies, discursive bodies, bodies of thought” (Stewart, 2007, p. 174), we understand that they “represent actual experiences, epiphanies, misfortune, pleasures—to capture those experiences in such a way that others can experience them and feel them” (Richardson, 1993, p. 12) should be an imperative. The narrative-based approach attempts to understand the experience of others by concentrating on the stories they tell (Riessman, 2008), in a cross-case narrative analysis, where subplots are identified at the end of the study. These are what georgakopoulou dubbed “small stories,” which paint a larger picture, and should not be ignored (Georgakopoulou, 2006). The stories that we have chosen are those that most vividly represent the experiences of the Balkan Route refugees; those that speak to us the most. With each passing month, more refugee stories can be found, and a selection had to be made due to the restrictions of a standardized research article, indicating avenues for further research for those narratives that could not fit.
We have here concentrated on RASIM group members on the so-called Balkan Route, a designation that used to be known for its connection to criminal routes, human and drug trafficking (Cilluffo & Salmoiraghi, 1999; Prezelj & Gaber, 2005; Von Lampe, 2008), yet has recently established a new semiotic connection, designating one of the most common and most often used passageways for the refugees from the Middle East on their way toward Europe (Anderson et al., 2016; Dustmann, Fasani, Frattini, Minale, & Schönberg, 2016; Escobio, Echevarria, Rubaki, & Viniczai, 2015). These refugees are escaping the conflict in the Middle East, and to enter Europe, they are forced to often take boats via the Mediterranean to reach their destinations. They most commonly arrive in Greece, continuing north via Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson, Adrian Edwards, there are seven factors that explain the movement of Syrian refugees to Europe:
loss of hope,
high cost of living/deepening poverty,
limited livelihood opportunities,
aid shortfalls,
hurdles to renew legal residency in the host country,
scant education opportunities, and
feeling unsafe. (UNHCR, 2015)
Nevertheless, even though there is some public awareness of the problem, “despite the extensive engagement of Western media with the 2015 migrant crisis, we saw little of migrants’ and refugees’ own personal stories and images” (Chouliaraki, 2017, p. 78). Having that in mind, we thus intend to start filling this gap.
Narrative 1
Upon leaving on 22 August the Army began shelling. I tried to hide in a house, and suddenly, I saw my arm being torn away from the rest of my body. My friends used wire to tie the wound of my amputated arm to stop hemorrhage. I took my arm on the bus. I was hoping I could have it reattached through surgery. We reached Kastellorizo after an hour and 20 minutes. We lit a fire to dry up and turned ourselves over to the police. They wouldn’t believe us! They kept searching for the dingy and the smugger. We received a 6-month “suspension of removal.” I did not want to submit an asylum claim in Greece because it would not secure me a prosthetic limb or the bare necessities for a normal life. My dream is to be able to start a new life in safety, to work, to get married, to live. —Marwan, Greece, 21 (Kehayioylou, 2014)
It is of small wonder that these narratives are largely ignored by the European society (with a notable and noble exception of some individuals, activists, academicians, and institutions). The image of a person who witnessed a part of his own body leaving him, thus, in a split second, going from able-bodied to dis-abled (yet another category ripe for discrimination) is an easy one to turn your head away from. It is a matter of debate which image is more striking, though, the one in which a man witnesses the destruction, the maiming of their body, or the hopeful, sorrowful attempts to pick up his own hand for a slight chance of reattachment via surgery. However, “undocumented migrants and asylum seekers often suffer discrimination and lack of access to healthcare” (Pottie et al., 2015); Marwan did not have his arm reattached, receiving a prosthesis instead. Having in mind that one of the UNHCR’s seven factors prompting the refugees to come to Europe is (4) aid shortfalls, Marwan’s case can be seen as a poor substitute.
Narrative 2
For more than 2 years, my wife, our four children, and I survived the Syrian civil war in Aleppo until one evening militia tanks rolled into our Palestinian Refugee Camp and snipers took positions on the rooftops. Our family was forced to flee at once. We were only able to take our identity cards. The camp was wiped off from the face of the Earth. We lost 60 men and women only to the snipers. Our home was destroyed, and my electrical appliance shop burned down I heard Bulgaria was receiving refugees from Syria, and it wasn’t difficult to find a guide to take us there. We paid 500 USD each to get across the border starting by car in Edirne until we reached a forest. The smuggler ordered us to get off and only showed us the way through the trees with his hand. We walked for nine hours, reaching the first Bulgarian village across the border on foot. A family there took us in, while we waited for the police. They gave us coffee and tea, and fed the children. My first memory of Bulgaria is the kindness of this family. However, just a few hours later, we would be forced to sleep on the floor in an overcrowded gymnasium at the police precinct in Elhovo. Then, every 4 days, we would be sent to a different center each full of people, without much food, very dirty and freezing cold. —Mohamad, Bulgaria (Cheshirkov, 2014)
The story above is a story of smuggling. From a relatively standardized discursive perspective, “the dichotomist script of smugglers as predators and migrants and asylum seekers as victims that dominates narratives of clandestine migration has often obscured the perspectives of those who rely on smugglers for their mobility” (Sanchez, 2017, p. 10). Even though “there is in fact an abundance of graphic and tragic representations of the experiences of migrants and asylum seekers in transit at the hands of smugglers which provides a particularly alarming portrayal of the dangers present in clandestine migration” (Sanchez, 2017, p. 12), it is also known that “migrant-smuggling groups tend to be constituted primarily by groups of friends and family members” (Sanchez, 2017, p. 13), and that a majority of those who have used the services of migrant smugglers actually have a positive experience, such as the above story of Mohamad.
The “Bulgarian experience” for many RASIM member groups is not seldom significantly worse than Mohamad’s. Bulgaria is, namely, home to so-called “migrant hunters” who, taking law into their own hands, engage in manhunts for migrants, such as one Dinko Valev, who “became famous overnight . . . when national television news carried a report labelling him a ‘superhero’ and detailing a violent encounter with a group of Syrians near the border as he was out riding on his quad bike. The presenter praised Valev for subduing the group of 12 Syrian men, three women and a child ‘with his bare hands’” (Brunwasser, 2016). Yet another known case (as it is unknown how many of such people operate) is the one of Petar Nizamov, who “hunts through the Strandja mountains on an autumn afternoon. But he is not searching for animals. He is looking for refugees” (Barker, 2016). He is “a self-proclaimed ‘migrant hunter,’ Nizamov believes he is carrying out a noble mission by finding those who are trying to enter Bulgaria irregularly via Turkey, and persuading them to turn back around. He claims that authorities support his endeavours” (Barker, 2016), with a very loose definition of “persuasion.” Nevertheless, we still do not have stories of those who have suffered through the ordeals brought to them by such individuals. Fascinatingly enough, the “migrant hunter” phenomenon has not seen its day in scholarship at all; not a single article or monograph has been produced so far.
Narrative 3
Like so many others, 34-year-old Jihan was willing to risk everything in order to escape war-torn Syria and find safety for her family. Unlike most, she is blind. Today, Jihan still waits to be reunited with her husband, who has since been granted asylum in Denmark. The single room she shares with her two sons, Ahmed, 5, and Mohammad, 7, is tiny, and she worries about their education. Without an urgent, highly complex corneal transplant, her left eye will close forever. “We came here for a better life and to find people who might better understand our situation,” she says. “I am so upset when I see how little they do [understand].”‘ —Jihan, 34, Greece (UNHCR, 2014b)
Not being able-bodied, included with being a refugee, as well as a woman—such as the case of Jihan above—puts the person in a rather precarious position. Discrimination stacks, it could be said. Thus, the brusque, to-the-point explanation of Jihan’s fear: I am so upset when I see how little they do [understand]. This lack of understanding serves as an additional deterrent, an omnipresent sword of Damocles—knowing that no matter what you do, you shall not be understood, you shall be a pariah of the “Brave New World.”
Narrative 4
My name is Hussein. Before the war in Syria, I had a normal life, living with my family. I was a university student and had many friends. My country and my life changed radically when the war broke out. I watched relatives and friends leave Syria while I and many others stayed behind, fearing for our lives every day. I didn’t want to leave my country. I heard stories about those who fled and how difficult their journey to Europe was. They didn’t know what to expect in other countries and how people would treat them. These thoughts scared me. I had heard stories about other Syrians who got lost or risked their life at sea on their way to find refuge in Europe. Women, children, and men on an overcrowded unseaworthy boat—on a journey of hope with an unknown destination and uncertain future. But I knew, I didn’t have a choice. I had to leave and follow the same road. I cannot understand, not even today, how I got myself into this situation. Before leaving, I remember thinking that I might die on a boat on my way to Europe. But I refused to die. I convinced myself that I could make it through and reach Europe safe. Then I made a tattoo on my chest, I wrote “I refuse to sink.” I wanted to declare my perseverance and strong will to get through this journey, to be lucky. —Hussein, Greece (UNHCR, 2014a)
In the case of the eponymous story, we are confronted with a young man’s will to live. His narrative, first of all, confronts hierarchical narratives of a xenophobic provenance, where refugees are depicted as madmen, terrorists, criminals. Instead, Hussein’s story is a story of a student, “living a normal life with family.” His story can thus be understood as a counter-narrative. The other part refers to his thoughts and feelings about the dreaded boat trip, for which it is know that “while merely dramatic to the observer, voyages by boat are often arduous, frightening, tragic, and often fatal for those who seek refuge far from home” (Reale, 2015, p. 30). The media are already flooded with stories in which we are told how “deaths of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean so far this year have hit a record high . . . Expressing alarm at the situation, UNHCR reported that 3,740 lives had been lost so far in 2016, just short of the 3,771 reported for the whole of 2015” (UNHCR, 2016). This was in 2016; 2017 topped the record, as “from January 1 to March 9, at least 521 people drowned while attempting to cross the treacherous sea compared with 471 in the same period a year ago. At least another four refugees died on Friday, bringing the 2017 death toll to 525 people” (Safdar, 2017). Hussein chose not to become part of a grim statistic, showing strength of will in a short, succint utterance: I refuse to sink.
Narrative 5
In Mogadishu, Somalia there is no freedom, because there is no safety. When you go into the town to the market, you do not know whether you will come back alive or not. Al Shabab militia kill indiscriminately. We have lost contact with our grandmother, grandfather, and other members of the family long before we fled Mogadishu. We still do not know where they are, because telecommunication does not work and visiting them is too dangerous. —Fatma, 17, Slovenia (Kromar, 2017)
To most Europeans, walking the streets alone, going to the market, is something taken for granted. Being in contact with members of family as well. Yet not to Fatma from Mogadishu, who has traversed half the world to find a better place for herself, from a nation “at a crossroads of extreme poverty, conflict and neglected tropical diseases” (Jaffer & Hotez, 2016), a country where female genital mutilation is a reality (McNeely & Jong, 2016), to Slovenia, where a border fence has been erected to “protect” the citizens from the Other. Fatma’s narrative tells us that by many countries’ asylum laws, she should be able to enter Europe as an asylum seeker, yet nothing might happen due to the sheer number of refugees and the failing bureaucratic and legal system that tends to hinder, rather than help, more increasingly, as the years go by.
Narrative 6
That day, I survived just by chance, because I had closed my clinic half an hour earlier. Like in a traditional Kurdish legend, I received three golden eggs which grant me three wishes. The first one saved me from the bombing, and the second helped me to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan. In January 2013, after passing 20 different checkpoints, I managed to enter Iraq, along with my wife and two children. My house and the big library still exist. But my brother Nouri did not survive. One and a half years ago, he was killed during his military service. For many months, I imagined the shots rattling into Nouri’s head. I had already left Syria, so I wasn’t able to take a last glance at his body. At the beginning of April 2014, I left from Iraq to Istanbul, Turkey, where I made a deal with a smuggler for 2,200 Euro. My wife and children stayed there, to be spared the dangerous journey On 3 July, along with other 11 Syrians, I took a bus to Bodrum. There, in a hostel, we hastily wrapped our documents with tape and hid them inside our underwear. We received a call from friends, who told us how the smuggler had forced them at knife point to board a rickety boat. I only had one golden egg left, and it broke it without hesitation: Once on board, the first time our fiber glass vessel was hit by the waves, it started to wreck. At 2:30 in the morning, the engine suddenly stopped. The deadly silence around us was creating a funeral atmosphere . . . The sea was terrifying. Terrifying and blue—more blue than it should be. At 5 a.m., we managed to call the Greek coastguard, which took us to Kalimnos. Three days later, we were released with a 6 months permit. —Mouhamad, 40, Greece (Akkash, 2014)
Mouhammad stressed “20 checkpoints” he needed to cross to reach first Turkey, then Europe. With the increasing promotion of xenophobic discourse and corresponding policy, some researchers have already dubbed the problem “a world of checkpoints” (Heide-Jørgensen, 2014), where it is often stressed how dramatic the increase in Turkish border policy has been during the last several years (Imai, 2016). The refugees’ life has become a life of checkpoints, from one to the other, never being able to plan more than a couple of days in advance (if at all): At any point, they can be stopped, and their journey might be over. What type and/or length of permits to stay is an additional boundary to RASIM, having in mind that they have never known how long they will be able to stay (if at all) at a particular “checkpoint,” an issue that is prone to change rapidly due to changing governments and policies, indicating yet another avenue for further research, though from a political and legal point of view. An additional instance seen above is the fear of possible, imminent death, as the overseas routes have shown to be the most dangerous of them all.
Narrative 7
The past 10 days were the most agonizing days of my life. On 10 July, along with my mother Fatme and my sister Shokoufeh, we sailed off in a 12 m boat after having paid 9,000 Euro for the three of us. It was overcrowded as the smugglers had crammed around 40 men, women, and children on that little boat. After several hours at sea, the captain informed us that he was no longer in command of the boat which suddenly started taking in water. Among terrified screams, I tried to elbow myself to reach the small cabin where my mother and sister were, but I was hurled overboard by panicking passengers. I was very desperate. In the sea, the currents were so strong that I could hardly swim. It was only until several hours later, namely, on Friday 11 July at noon, that I along with another, almost unconscious passenger, were spotted by an Italian sailing boat and were transferred to Chios Island. As for my missing mother and sister, another passenger who left the boat after me told me that they were not trapped in the cabin. Since they had very good life jackets, they must have survived. I am sure they are alive. I will not abandon the search. I expect and hope for good news. But even if the news were bad I still want to know! —Hossein, 52, Greece (Kehayioylou, 2014)
Hossein’s is a narrative of survival, fear, but also hope, within and after a disastrous boat travel to Greece. Refugees arriving via boats are in the media commonly seen simply as “boat people” (Bradimore & Bauder, 2011; Pugh, 2000), as if their humanity seemed to be removed/ignored by the simple fact that they have chosen to travel by boat, known to be one of the most pernicious ways of travel for refugees (Strik, 2012). Already by the middle of 2017, refugee deaths in the Mediterranean has reached a staggering number of 2,361 (MissingMigrants, 2017). The 52-year-old has lost both his mother (an old woman) and sister, yet he remained hopeful that they might have survived. His account of the “terrified screams” reminds us of the humanity of the refugees, that humanity that is either ignored or directly negated by European media and the Right Wing.
Conclusion
Several repeating subplots have emerged in the short narratives of the RASIM given above, the easiest to identify being bodily injury/disability (N1, N3, N4), death versus survival (N1, N4, N6, N7), difficult travel (N2, N4, N6, N7), and fear (N2, N4, N5, N6, N7). However, one staggering instance has also crept into the analysis, and that is omission. What is highly noticeable is the lack of complaining about the ways in which the refugees were treated, as well as the lack of bemoaning their ill fate. Complaining, in social psychology, is a “pervasive and important form of social communication” (Alicke et al., 1992, p. 286), and would be expected in cases such as the above presented. The scholarly debate about “whether and with what effects stigmatized people attribute negative events to discrimination” (Kaiser & Miller, 2001, p. 254) has been productive (Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, & Major, 1991; Ruggiero & Taylor, 1995), yet research has shown that “despite the advantages gained from attributing failure to discrimination, there is evidence to suggest that stigmatized people often are reluctant to make discrimination attributions” (Kaiser & Miller, 2001, p. 254). Complaints, in the narratives presented above, are few (“they do not understand us”), and even if they are present, they do not accuse the European society of being mistreated. Hope prevails in the narratives. Yet there is another instance relevant, and that is the “fear of the consequences of confronting discriminators may keep stigmatized people from publicly acting on their dissatisfaction” (Kaiser & Miller, 2001, p. 256), drawing on Swim & Hyers (1999) study in women’s response to sexism (Swim & Hyers, 1999), in which the researchers have shown that “perceived costs of confronting discrimination, such as violations of norms governing polite behavior and fear of retaliation, are responsible for the lack of confrontation toward perpetrators of discrimination” (Kaiser & Miller, 2001, p. 256). Although it might not be possible to corroborate at this point, it may be stipulated that RASIM group members choose not to complain as not to illicit a negative response from the community to which they have arrived. Furthermore, the xenophobic pathos of this day and age tends to stress “incompatible cultural differences” between Europe and the refugees, yet RASIM members have not once complained about coming to a “different culture.”
The six short narratives presented in this work are but part of a bigger picture. There are millions of refugees fleeing the death and destruction in the Middle East; Europe has been accepting them with fear and hatred, finding yet another scapegoat, when blaming homosexuals or George Soros fails. Truly, discrimination does not discriminate whom it will discriminate against. Presenting and analyzing their stories, their narratives, is but one of the approaches that can, and should, be taken. Understanding the plight of millions needs to take precedence, and qualitative researchers should be on the forefront.
We have seen narratives not only of fear and death but also of hope. To quote Marino, “At the beginning of every ‘embracing culture’ rests the knowledge of who we are and a very specific empathy towards Others, as it is more difficult to demonise immigrants if we know them” (Marino, 2015). Understanding other people’s stories is one of the ways to go.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.