Smile and wave at tourists. Frown and wave off refugees.

The European Refugee Crisis — Writing from Athens

Tourists: Our struggle is not your entertainment

Tourists not welcome

F*ck Airbnb

I’ve now spent two weeks in Athens, and these are some of the more colorful messages directed toward tourists that I’ve seen. Would they make you feel uncomfortable? Unwelcome? Diminished?

Picture taken in Exarchia

Would they make you unwilling to come to Athens?

It might surprise you that messages like these have made my experience the opposite as intended — rich and deep and complicated, and I want to represent just a tiny bit of that in this piece.

As trivial as graffitied messages inscribed on sidewalks and support beams and fences may seem, true to form, they tug at the political foundation of Greek society. They reveal the cracks in the pro-tourist, anti-refugee rhetoric that has become deified in government.

Get comfortable - we’re about to explore some of these frames.

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Four years ago, the now-prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party ran a campaign to secure Parliament that relied, in part, on tougher laws against asylum. The previous PM of the party, Antonis Samaras, clearly wasn’t satisfied with their progress, a few months into the new administration:

“The Greek government’s tough stance on migration doesn’t go far enough for conservatives in the ruling New Democracy party like ex-Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is goading his successor to crack down on what he calls an “invasion by illegals” who are “colonizing” Greece.”

Dehumanizing rhetoric as a gateway for dehumanizing policy regarding asylum seekers and refugees isn’t anything new. I wrote about it two months ago, back in North Carolina. Specifically in Greece, the social construction of migrants has been pointedly negative for three decades, when the country experienced a large wave of immigrants. Worries about employment, cultural heritage, and security drown out all other discourse.

In intentionally characterizing refugees and asylum seekers as “smuggled immigrants,” the New Democracy party lays the groundwork for all three of these frames. Their metaphorical choices are not incidental, either.

Today . . Greece is swarming with illegal smuggled immigrants

Flood the country with smuggled immigrants

Waves of smuggled immigrants

Greece is overflowing with smuggled immigrants

These metaphors exploit our implicit claustrophobia. They point toward an implicit premise that immigrants are not welcome — that they are taking up too much space.

This isn’t to mention the countless warlike rhetorical choices (“invasion” is a classic) that we are all too familiar with in the United States.

Don’t let anyone tell you that political rhetoric is discrete from policymaking — to do so is to give too little blame to the party in power, and their strategists.

Greece has been scrutinized for allowing refugees to go hungry and not providing them with enough physical space to live any sort of decent (human) qualify of life. This second one fits right in line with the aforementioned rhetoric.

As a secondary strategy, the Greek government has, in the past, pointed to the slowing rate of refugee inflow and increased investment in refugees services as sufficient and necessary evidence to declare the migration crisis to be over. This, of course, leaves out the well-documented practice of pushing refugees back (basically telling refugees to go back to sea) and other workarounds to these statistics that add a bit of distasteful color to the picture being painted.

So, we have rhetoric that undersells the humanity of refugees and asylum seekers, as well as rhetoric that undersells the severity of their crises.

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I began to suspect, as I was reading articles online about Greece’s refugee situation (inspired by a really great conversation with a local a few days ago), that the insincere assessments of the crisis and alarming rhetoric around refugees had a relationship with tourism — that the anti-tourist signs proxied as a frustration around the treatment of refugees.

Greece is incredibly reliant on tourism, as it supports 17% of Gross National Product, worth 34 billion euros of influx into the economy. Tourists can’t come to Greece expecting the eyesore of beautiful island views and instead have to open their eyes to the long encampments of refugees, can they?

“‘It is very sad. It goes through my heart for those people and the children who are hungry,” said Dutch tourist Marianna Kuipers. “On the other hand, it’s my vacation and that’s not nice to see.’”

Yes this sounds ridiculous, and yes this exactly was the concern. A research study found that between 2015 and 2016 (the height of the Syrian refugee crisis), the hospitality industry experienced a significant downturn in business. Those interviewed pointed their fingers at refugees.

Or how about this article, discussing environmental damage in Greece, which created worries about tourism, an industry that relies on a vibrant beach atmosphere and environment? The journalists pointed their fingers at refugees.

This article points its fingers at refugees. This one too. And this one.

Here is a great lesson in the profound impact of rhetorical framing. The decision to smile and wave at tourists, and frown and wave off refugees seems morally questionable until we decide that refugees are defined by their illegality, not by their forced displacement. When they are defined by the space they take up in their new environment, and not the space stolen from them in their old one.

We can even ignore the moral alarm bells ringing in our heads and just consider the practical — the characterization of refugees as bad for society and tourists as good is not as simple as it seems.

Take a look at this UNHCR proposal from 2022, for instance:

“Many refugees in Greece are in the 18-39 age group. The skills mapping by UNHCR of a representative sample shows that most have completed some level of formal education outside Greece. A significant percentage, close to 30% in some age groups, have completed post-secondary or higher education in their country. In relation to their previous professional experience, there is an almost symmetrical matching between the sample profiles and the gaps in the Greek labour market: construction, agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality, food industry, customer service, sales, personal care, mastered skilled trades. Of course, the sample also includes refugees with highly specialized skills, such as lawyers, doctors and other medical professionals, academics and ICT professionals.”

Refugees ask of us our humanity. In return, they make our societies and economies better. But principally speaking, this shouldn’t have to be a transaction.

Meanwhile, tourism, for all its economic benefits, has many a downside. It is well-known to be environmentally harmful (which makes the reading of article blaming the refugee crisis for environment degradation especially ironic). Yes, tourism will probably end up killing off tourism.

As cheap as Greek food feels to tourists, it is exactly rising food prices as a result of rich tourist inflow that price the average Greek out of society. And we’re not just talking food — we’re talking about housing too.

The rising economic tide that tourism inspires leaves many behind instead of bringing all. It threatens cultural heritage by flooding hotspots with foreign tourists and colorful double-decker tour buses. Do these frames sound familiar? (hint: they’re used against refugees)

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For the government, what are the likely factors that tip preferences toward tourists and not refugees?

1. Inertia. We know that refugees will help the economy, but it’s just a hypothetical. We know tourism will hurt the environment, but that feels like a hypothetical. Meanwhile, we can say for certain that a good plurality of Greeks hold occupations grounded in tourism, right now. Frames that reflect our reality are more persuasive than frames that reflect our speculation, because the former is baked into our everyday lived experience.

2. I can’t help but discuss race here. Greece was pretty welcoming of Ukrainian refugees after the Russian invasion early last year. Many Syrian refugees did not receive the same treatment — both escaping war in their home countries (the article I’m linking has more detail). Cultural heritage is an easier excuse to make when appearances differ.

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Now let’s widen the frame. Is the Greek government just filled with a bunch of migrant-hating racists? Not necessarily. Their positionality is two-fold.

First, the height of the refugee crisis (2015-2016) corresponded with a period of economic instability in Greece. A mindset of scarcity, for politicians looking to keep their jobs, can explain (but doesn’t justify) dismissive attitudes to migrants.

Second, a similar rise in anti-refugee sentiment across Europe has rendered Greece a prisoner of its own geography, tasked with the burden of acting as the first point of contact for many refugees looking to stay in Europe (which ends up meaning, staying in Greece or Italy):

“38,000 refugees are living on the Greek mainland, the majority in urban settings. Most have been traumatized by war and require psychosocial support and counseling, medical aid and other humanitarian assistance. Greece and Italy cannot be expected to bear this responsibility on their own.”

This issue is complicated. Our more narrow frames seem to allocate blame in Greece’s direction, and our wider frame allocates blame away from it. Both are reasonable and both are true at the same time. Greece should not have to deal with Europe’s mess, and Greece should not be dehumanizing refugees just because others have.

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I am grateful to have spent two weeks in Athens, because it’s allowed me to do things that regular tourists don’t get the chance to do.

I saw an election. I witnessed protests. I spent a Sunday doing nothing but walking around the local park, journaling, listening to music, and eating gyros at the local spot.

I don’t take the anti-tourist messages personally. They speak to a frustration that writing this piece has allowed me to empathize with, a plea to the government to not rest easy on the laurels of its ancient history and the tourism it continues to create, thousands of years later.

To stop living in the past.

I came to Greece excited to explore its past, and I leave it grateful to share the experience of its present and all its beauty and complexity, the beauty and complexity of a population willing to make its government uncomfortable on the altar of democracy.