3. Opening and Closing Borders: Capitalism Is Speeding Up

In Agamben’s words: “[…] no longer either to make die or to make live, but to make survive. The decisive activity of biopower in our time consists in the production not of life or death, but rather of a mutable and virtually infinite survival” (1999: 155; emphasis in the original).

In fact, the question is if there could be any form of “unconditional hospitality”, given that any kind of hospitality does presuppose and involve a degree of hostility in juxtaposition with the sentiment of hospitality that supposedly inheres at the heart of any act of hospitality. Derrida, following Benveniste’s etymology, remarks that the word “hospitalité” originates from the Latin word “hostis” that means the foreigner who can be welcomed as either enemy or guest (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000). Nonetheless, even though “unconditional hospitality” may appear as an almost impossible act, this does, in no way, imply, for Derrida, that we should resign from it; on the contrary, from an ethical viewpoint, we should try for the impossible.

Of course, these references to refugees as skilled, specialised labour are, in no case, arbitrary or coincidental. Quite indicative has been a survey by UNHCR, published in June 2015. According to the survey’s findings, covering the period 1 April 2015–31 May 2015, in a total of 670 refugees from Syria, who answered the questionnaire—on the whole, during this period 18,257 Syrian refugees arrived at the Greek borders—39.7% (266 persons) had a university degree and 45.67% (306 persons) a high-school diploma, having considerable professional skills and qualifications (UNHCR 2015).

It is quite indicative that the 2015 percentage of female migrants internationally was 48.2% (United Nations 2015). Even though it is an important parameter, a detailed discussion of the gender dimension is beyond the scope of this book. For two interesting approaches, see Brah (1996); Kofman et al. (2000).

According to the Council Directive 2009/50/EC of 25 May 2009, the EU Blue Card Directive defines the conditions of entry, residence and work of high-skilled non EU-citizens in any EU country, except the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland. Non-EU citizens can apply for a work permit that can be renewed. The target of the Directive is “to contribute to achieving these goals and addressing labour shortages by fostering the admission and mobility—for the purposes of highly qualified employment—of third-country nationals for stays of more than three months, in order to make the Community more attractive to such workers from around the world and sustain its competitiveness and economic growth” (European Union 2009: 17; emphasis added).

A very characteristic example had been the Bracero Program, signed between the USA and Mexico in 1942, to deal with a severe labour shortage in the United States, especially in agriculture. The Bracero Program, which lasted until December 1964, led to the generation of a flow of “illegal migrants”. One of the main reasons was that many employers preferred to hire undocumented workers, since they were less cumbersome and not as expensive as “braceros” (Inda 2006).

Greece had received over €1 billion between 2015 and the beginning of 2017, being “the biggest recipient of EU home affairs funding” (European Commission 2017c). And, on 27 July 2017, the European Commission announced a new wave of emergency support worth €209 million to help refugees in Greece. This includes the launch of the “Emergency Support To Integration & Accommodation” (ESTIA) programme, aiming at helping refugees and their families rent urban accommodation and providing them with cash assistance (European Commission 2017d).

For example, in autumn 2015, Norway and Denmark offered to male migrants language lessons, but also lessons of sexual behaviour, since, according to the dominant Western view, their cultural origins are rendering them a priori dangerous regarding their relationships with women. H.K. Rohde, a former head of the violent crime section of the Oslo Police Department, stated that “[t]here are lots of men who haven’t learned that women have value […] it is a cultural problem”. Accordingly, Per Isdal, clinical psychologist, underlined that many refugees “come from cultures that are not gender equal and where women are the property of men. We have to help them adapt to their new culture” (cited in Higgins 2015; emphasis added). In December 2015, the Finnish government announced its decision to require asylum seekers to work for free and acknowledge a “national curriculum” on Finnish culture and society, attempting to launch a series of measures to tighten its migration policy. According to Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, these measures will not only “tighten our practices and erase possible attractiveness factors”, but also boost migrants’ self-esteem, since any kind of meaningful action, such as work, will help them relieve their frustration from idleness ... (REUTERS 2015).