Refugees’ (In)dependency Conundrum: Obstructed Social Reproduction Activities and Unpaid Labour in Refugee Camps

Abstract

This article uses the analytical lens of (in)dependency conundrum to highlight how asylum seekers in refugee camps are pushed to be self-reliant while, however, their autonomous social reproduction activities and spaces of liveability are hindered. Focusing on Greece, it intertwines critical migration scholarship with feminist geography literature on unpaid labour to investigate refugees’ obstructed social reproduction activities. It moves on by exploring the (in)dependency conundrum that refugees face in Greece from a condition of protracted carcerality enforced beyond detention. In the third section it highlights the continuum between social reproduction activities and other unpaid labours done by asylum seekers in camps, as a result of humanitarianism’ s subtle coercion. In the last section it draws attention to refugees’ collective mobilisations in Greek refugee camps: raising punctual demands about food and accommodation, they articulated expansive claims about their right to autonomous social reproduction activities and to build infrastructures of liveability.