Protection in a Hostile Environment: An on-the-ground study into protection practices in Lesvos and Athens

This report covers continuities and discontinuities in the provision of protection on Lesvos and Athens with a specific focus on access to legal protection, healthcare and accommodation. Continuities discussed include the incorporation of protection practices in border control and wider migration governance. Meanwhile discontinuities include increasing levels of control and the systematic move towards carceral policies and practices in the governing of displaced populations in need of protection. The report details the current, active implementation of harmful policies.

However what the report also finds is that despite a number of continued attempts to ‘offshore’ the management of arrivals and asylum to the Aegean Islands since 2016, effective separation is impossible. In this report we show how in practice ‘offshore’ and ‘onshore’ spaces exist in mutually dependent relationships. This relationship is due to weaknesses in the protection regime that require the use of the mainland or the ‘onshore’ as an ‘overspill’ or pressure release space and vice versa when the protection regime is unable to address specific challenges in situ, such as overcrowding.