The Political Culture of Securitization of Migration in Greece 2015-2019: A Case Study Analysis in Mytilene, Lesvos

In 2015 the Greek island of Lesvos and particularly its capital, Mytilene, became the focus of international attention due to the vast migrants’/refugees’ flows that reached its shores. Indeed, according to international surveys, in the year 2015 more than one million migrants/refugees crossed the Greek territories in order to find better living conditions, out of which, the overwhelming majority used the city of Mytilene, Lesvos, as its entry point. The response of Greek government officials and more importantly of local political elites in the island, pertaining to the management of these unprecedented migrant/refugee flows, both in terms of public rhetoric as well as of practices, suggests that migrants as well as refugees have been securitized in Greece and especially in Lesvos. Securitization of migration of Greece is not a new phenomenon. Rather, it is an evolving process that has marked all Greek administrations, ever since the 90s, which have used economic, national and societal security assertions as a pretext to implement emergency measures for the management of migration. Yet, what is the political culture of securitization of migration in Greece and particularly in Lesvos? What is of particular interest is that preliminary analysis of the findings of a research conducted in the island in 2019, suggests that the political culture of securitization of the migrants and refugees in the island of Lesvos, is deeply embedded in societal security concerns, that are inextricably linked with fears of otherness in a Schmitian logic. Therefore the object of this paper is twofold. It initially aims to study securitization patterns in Levos, Mytilene, under the prism of the societal sector of security and then to analyze findings and explore the political culture of securitization, with an emphasis on the issue of otherness. The methodology used is qualitative. In particular, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with political elites (150 market actors) at the island of Lesvos. Discourse analysis is conducted for the identification of securitizing speech acts.