Overview

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, Greece has shouldered a heavy burden struggling with internal political and financial insecurity as well as hosting enormous numbers of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by land and sea. In On the Doorstep of Europe, Heath Cabot presents an ethnographic study of the asylum system in Greece, tracing the ways asylum seekers, bureaucrats, and service providers attempt to navigate the dilemmas of governance, ethics, knowledge, and social relations that emerge through this legal process. Centering on the work of an asylum advocacy NGO in Athens, Cabot explores how workers and clients grapple with predicaments endemic to Europeanization and rights-based protection. Drawing inspiration from classical Greek tragedy to highlight both the transformative potential and violence of law, Cabot charts the structural violence effected through European governance, rights frameworks, and humanitarian intervention while also exploring how Greek society is being remade from the inside out. She shows how, in contemporary Greece, relationships between insiders and outsiders are radically reconfigured through legal, political, and economic crises. Now updated with a preface reflecting on the critical stakes of the book's exploration of refuge in light of events that have transpired in and beyond Europe since its initial publication, On the Doorstep of Europe highlights how border crossers and residents in countries of arrival navigate legal and political violence. Cabot's on-the-ground account of asylum and immigration in Europe's borderlands, based on fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2011, shows how the difficulties encountered by asylum seekers in an earlier time remain relevant and revealing in the face of ongoing crises and challenges today.

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9781512825213

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""On the Doorsteps of Europe is a pleasure to read and think with because of Heath Cabot's refreshingly thick ethnography, theoretical imagination, lively jargon-free writing, and ingenious structure . . . [Cabot] provides an original and refreshing analysis of the politics of difference in Europe. It is an ethnographic tour-de-force that combines anthropological theory with Greek tragedy to illuminate the practical ethics of contemporary citizenship."" * <i>PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review</i> * ""This book is an excellent contribution to an overlooked, yet extremely important, aspect of the asylum system, the humanitarian aspect, which deserves to be widely read by scholars, advocates, students, and researchers. . . . A joy to read"" * <i>International Journal of Refugee Studies</i> * ""[Cabot's book] contributes significantly to the international literature on asylum seekers and refugees and the impact of policies on them as well as on the societies that receive them. . . . Cabot, through detailed narration and extended analysis, highlights the stories, field notes, and participant observation material that she has collected from her interviews in a way that brings the reader into the life events of the refugees and NGO professionals."" * <i>Journal of Modern Greek Studies</i> * ""A 'good read' for anyone interested in this topic but also for anyone interested in exploring further alternative approaches to research (as demonstrated through ethnography) and for those with a particular interest in modern Greek dilemmas and responses."" * <i>European Journal of Social Work</i> * ""On the Doorstep of Europe is particularly timely, as the international community weighs what are sometimes seen as competing interests of rights and security and as asylum regimes are themselves threatened. Importantly, Heath Cabot's work illustrates ways that protections can fall short in that the systems that are set up to ensure that persecuted individuals receive safe haven can become unworkable for the very individuals they are designed to serve."" * Susan Bibler Coutin, University of California, Irvine * ""Original, vividly written, and ethnographically rich, On the Doorstep of Europe breaks new ground as a contribution to the anthropology of law, globalization studies, and the ethnography of the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, it illuminates the increasingly complex dynamics of a country newly confronting cultural diversity and rapid urbanization."" * Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University *"

Author Information

Heath Cabot is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen.

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