Wednesday, November 15, 2017 // The Statement
6B
From Skaramagas Dock
F
rom the center of Greece’s largest
refugee camp, you’re surrounded
by hundreds of temporary housing
units. The white, rectangular metal
boxes are in precise rows, creating a grid that
projects a sense of order. Many of the boxes
are adorned with rooftop solar water heaters
and television dishes. The United Nations, Save
the Children and other international donor
logos abound. Here, Syrian families wait for
resettlement in northern Europe.
By noon the center of the camp at Skaramagas
Dock, on the outskirts of Athens, is lively.
Young children chase one another around the
boxes. Teenagers kick a soccer ball. Parents
bring children to the library, or to the Red
Cross Red Crescent health clinic. Volunteers
— Europeans — traverse the cement-covered,
unshaded center in colored vests that identify
their organizations.
As you progress through the camp, you catch
glimpses of a radiant blue sea to your right — the
Mediterranean. Hidden behind rows of white
housing units, it’s striking.
The view to your left, above the rows of one-
story camp dwellings, leaves an even greater
impression: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
steel shipping containers stacked six or seven
containers high, waiting to be loaded onto
vessels bound for ports across the globe.
They’re labeled with the names of South
Korean, Chinese, German and Greek shipping
companies.
--
I visited the refugee camp in March,
alongside other graduate students from the
University of Michigan. We saw the boxes, the
sea and the shipping containers through the
windows of our van as we were arriving. While
those sights weren’t immediately distressing, or
emotionally taxing, a brief encounter minutes
later altered my perception of what I saw that
morning, and of Europe’s refugee crisis.
With my back turned to our guide, I stood in
front of a young girl, likely no older than four.
She was alone, staring at me — an outsider.
I stared at her. Moments before, I’d seen her
chasing friends around a nearby box.
She was dressed and acted like many young
children across the world. And yet I couldn’t
avoid thinking that she might be different. I
asked myself: How would being displaced affect
her? How would her life be different than those
of Greek children in nearby neighborhoods? I
wanted more questions answered, too. Where
and when would her family move? Would she
ever return to Syria?
I knew almost nothing about her, but in the
moments she happily chased her friends, and
stared at me, I saw glimpses of her life. I also
began to feel my own inadequacy.
It doesn’t matter that Skaramagas Dock
is orderly and well-run. (I’d been told before
visiting that, because of this, officials typically
take visitors there and not to more deprived
sites.) It doesn’t matter that volunteers ensure
it is clean and safe. It doesn’t matter that living
conditions seem to be improving, with a new
library and sewing workshop.
Placing people in boxes in camps, for months
if not years, is a tragedy. We box up goods —
olives, olive oil and feta cheese from Greece —
in shipping containers and send them around
the world. We’ve sheltered tens of thousands of
refugees in similar boxes (and much worse, in
tents during winter storms), leaving them thus
incapacitated for months, or more typically,
years.
This contrast, and the consequences, is
clear. One makes people richer; the other leaves
refugees— including children like the girl I saw
— stuck in time, in between places.
--
Earlier in the week I’d heard from prominent
NGOs, politicians and researchers about how
politics in the United States and Europe have
failed. Skaramagas Dock is certainly evidence
of that.
I’d heard how our foreign policy has failed to
address the conflicts in the “origin countries” —
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — that have forced
millions up against, and through, Europe’s
deadly borders and seas. I’d read, and now seen
at Skaramagas Dock, how thousands have been
left waiting in camps and “jungles,” amid the
shadows of Europe’s “receiving countries.”
Experts from the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, politicians and
foreign policy advisers convincingly argued
how outdated regulations, austerity and
nationalistic voters in receiving countries have
extended the crisis and impoverished our
world. These conversations led me to think
that my government’s policy response has
failed, contributing to my sense of inadequacy.
The refugees affected by politics and policy
in Europe, and by the immigration ban I’d
protested at the airport only weeks before, now
had images and names in my mind.
Seeing the similarity between the shipping
containers and refugee shelters, and knowing
how differently we treat their contents, made
me question our economic practices and public
policy as well.
Shipping containers are one of the most
visible symbols of our global economy today.
Seeing them next to Skaramagas Dock
suggested the crisis has had little impact on our
economic world order or individual economic
decisions. The containers should have been
comforting evidence that Greece was finally
recovering from a decade-long, severe economic
depression. Instead, the sight of cranes
shuffling containers around the port, and onto
ships, imparted a disconcerting impression of
normalcy — that the refugee crisis had had little
impact on economic and business decisions.
It’s human nature that when something
bad happens to others, you stop what you’re
doing and help. It’s in law, too; when a ship is
in distress, neighboring sailors must come to
the rescue. Economists and businesses seem
to behave differently. There are more refugees
today than any time since the 1940s, but
businesses haven’t altered what they’re doing,
even when those in need are just next door.
I felt inadequate because I study economics
and public policy, two disciplines that clearly
haven’t done enough to solve the crisis to
get refugees out of the camp at Skaramagas
Dock. Economists and policy analysts have
failed to persuade the public of the benefits
of immigration and of welcoming refugees.
Perhaps more damning is that both disciplines
have contributed to the business-as-usual
attitudes seen next door to the camp. Economists
and policy makers may have tempered their
enthusiasm for neoliberalism since the years
of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, or
even Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but ideas like
societies as markets and individuals as profit-
maximizers still affect how we act and justify
narrow-minded decisions.
I haven’t abandoned my belief in economics
as a systematic approach that can lead
individuals, and ultimately societies, to the best
outcomes. Why? Economics tells us to make
decisions using a set of rules — by thinking
on the margin, by considering “opportunity
costs” (the next best alternative to a choice) and
by weighing costs against benefits. Together
these rules explain how we (should) respond to
incentives, whether social, legal or financial. But
in the absence of public policy, using this recipe
to dictate your behavior, without thinking
seriously about how others are affected, can
lead us all to undesirable outcomes. Isn’t it crazy
to make decisions in a narrow-minded, cost-
benefit calculating way when your neighbors
are refugees (as in Greece), or living on $2 a day
(as in much of the United States)? And yet many
people and businesses regularly do this.
--
Our response to the crisis could be different.
Before visiting the camp that morning, we met
with Nadina Christopoulou of the Melissa
Network.
The Melissa Network is a community
organization
led
by
immigrant
women,
including former refugees, for migrant women.
From the first two floors of an apartment
building in Athens’s Victoria Square, the
Melissa Network provides classes, counseling
and community for women in need. Artists and
activists stop by each day. Several MacArthur
fellows, including A.E. Stallings and Michigan’s
Khaled Mattawa, have read and taught poetry
there.
I left deeply impressed that morning.
The
community
exudes
generosity
and
empowerment. When introducing a teacher
there, Christopoulou made sure we heard
the teacher’s story: she was born in a refugee
camp. And now as a young woman, that she
has created and taught a hundred lessons to
younger, newer refugees. The introduction
was a small act, yet was visibly empowering;
the young teacher spoke confidently to us.
The Melissa Network is growing a diaspora of
empowered refugees — throughout Athens,
and as they are resettled, Europe. Many of them
were once not much different than the girl I
stood in front of at Skaramagas Dock.
Throughout the week in Athens, I had heard
repeatedly that we must address the root causes
of the crisis — the conditions and conflict in
the origin countries. One foreign diplomat
described “deep pools of suffering” in Syria,
Iraq and Afghanistan. While this is certainly
true, doing so may take decades.
In a lecture to the Ford School of Public Policy
last month, Christopoulou proffered a different
solution, one that can have an immediate
impact, in the United States and Europe.
We should work to build more integrated
communities, connected by what we have
in common and supported by small, healing
gestures. Melissa’s approach is a noneconomic
solution in a policy environment defined
by economic ideas like austerity, efficient
public management and entrepreneurial
philanthropy. Instead of weighing the costs
and benefits of serving those who have just
joined their community, the Melissa Network
welcomes them. And it’s clear that her
approach is working — empowering young
migrants, eradicating extremism and bringing
the Athens community together.
Visiting Athens in March led me to see the
ways our government, and my disciplines,
have failed. The Melissa Network shows what
is possible.
by Anthony Cozart, Public Policy graduate student
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTHONY COZART