Introduction

In the years of the refugee crisis (2015 and onwards), more than 1.8 million refugees and migrants (UNCHR, 2021) arrived in Europe fleeing waraffected countries and persecution. Migration to Europe is not a new and sudden phenomenon, yet its policies have been historically anti-migratory and repressive, driven by ‘securitanianism’ and exclusion (Vitus and Lidén, 2010; Teloni et al, 2020). This has resulted in catastrophic human casualties – 16,668 people dying or gone missing so far in the Mediterranean Sea (UNCHR, 2021).

The context that refugees face upon arrival involves a further brutal reality by being detained in overcrowded camps such as Calais (France) and the Aegean islands (Greece), with inhumane conditions and limited resources to respond to peoples’ needs (Kourachanis, 2018, 2019; GNCHR, 2019). Commenting on the cruel conditions of ‘slow death’ at the Calais camp, Davies et al (2017) concluded that the brutality that refugees suffer becomes a ‘necropolitical experience’: structural dehumanisation, where suffering is normalised through a deliberate and violent series of (in)actions by the European and national institutions. Similar ‘necropolitical’ experiences have been discussed for the Scottish context (Farmer, 2020) where notions of ‘illegality’ exclude refugees from public resources and support.

In contrast, numerous anti-racist and solidarity initiatives flourished across Europe during the refugee crisis. In Greece, while the country was already seven years into deep recession, a movement mobilised to respond to the immediate refugee needs (that is, rescues from the sea, provision of food and dry clothes, medical help, shelter, access to phones). In addition, there was resistance and challenges to institutions and legal frameworks through collective action and engaging in advocacy for refugee rights, campaigns and demonstrations (Teloni and Mantanika, 2015; Oikonomakis, 2018; Dedotsi et al, 2019).

In this contradictory context of structural repression and grassroots solidarity, social workers are among the key professionals in the frontline responding to refugee needs. Considering the limited resources for refugees and the anti-immigration policies, social workers have been found to struggle between being agents of control2 and protecting service users (Humphries, 2004; Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani, 2011; Masocha, 2014; Robinson, 2014; Hagues et al, 2021). The instrumentalisation of bureaucratic and repressive migratory frameworks by professionals has been characterised as ‘everyday bordering’, where othering takes place in multi-layered professional practices (that is, assessments) for entitlement to rights and access to services between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ populations (Cassidy, 2019; Yuval-Davis et al, 2019).