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The Samos Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) opened in September 2021 as the first EU-funded facility in what was proposed as a more “humane” approach to “accommodating” people on the Greek hotspot islands. The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, stated in March earlier that year that these facilities would not be closed, would have areas for families and vulnerable people, would ensure children attend school, and were “designed to make the process fair and efficient, including for those who are not allowed to stay”. Not only was Johansson’s promise that these EU-funded facilities would not be “closed” contradicted when the sites opened a CCACs, the situation unfolding in the CCACs has fallen drastically short of Johansson’s other March 2021 commitments.
Ellen Allde is a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar at Queen Mary University of London and former Legal Caseworker at I Have Rights
In February 2023, Samos-based civil society organization I Have Rights (IHR) published a report demonstrating that the Samos CCAC is a site of unlawful de facto detention of people on the move. The report argued that the CCAC constitutes a systemic breach of the right to liberty and amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of articles 3 and 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The following paper returns to the findings of IHR’s report — published only nine months ago — to reflect on recent developments in the Samos CCAC. The continuously changing dynamics within the CCAC may provide insight into the broader situation for accessing protection and support. This paper highlights how the inconsistent decision-making and enforced waiting by the authorities in the CCAC contribute to and exacerbate the undignified and dehumanizing conditions of the de facto detention shown in IHR’s report.
IHR has observed and received testimony from individuals regarding the new temporary accommodation space in the former quarantine zone, suspension of interpretation services, restrictions to food provision, and extensive delays for police registration and substantive asylum interviews. Since August 2023, the number of arrivals to Samos has sharply increased, and in October 2023 the CCAC’s population exceeded capacity by 250%. In response, a new wave of unofficial changes were brought in, exacerbating the measures and conditions of detention. Where the authorities may dismiss this as the CCAC being further overwhelmed; this paper argues that the authorities were rather strategically ignorant of their preparedness.
Moreover, these changes are not simply responsive decisions, but part of a practice that reinforces control over the rights of people on the move while displacing responsibility.
In the first section, this paper borrows postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak’s concept of “sanctioned ignorance” to address the Greek and EU authorities’ inconsistent decision-making, and what Glenda Garelli and Martina Tazzioli called “governing by nongoverning” in camps. Spivak’s concept originally referred to how the Western literary canon is tainted by imperialist assumptions that is nonetheless ignorant and widely sanctioned by scholars.
This paper develops her critique of sanctioned ignorance as epistemic violence into sanctioned ignorance as a material violence, helping to constitute the CCAC as a space of detention. The authorities in the CCAC simultaneously weaponize their own ignorance, and project an ignorance onto those who are detained. Developing Spivak’s concept provides a useful way to reattribute agency to those managing and operating the CCAC — a space constructed to suspend racialized mobilities — without necessarily diagnosing the intent of the authorities. Rather, there is power in the ignorance of decision-making or failure to take decisions, while simultaneously perpetuating an image of their benevolence or “humanitarianism”.
The second section describes the infrastructure, key changes, and legal basis that already make the CCAC a detention space contrary to European law. This transitions the paper to the central discussion in sections three and four on how ignorance together with changing detention practices and enforced waiting, contribute to and exacerbate detention. These practices undermine suggestions by the Greek and EU authorities that they are simply responding to an overwhelming situation, but rather they are strategically ignorant towards their preparedness and thus produce their own failings. This paper concludes that the changing circumstances make the space and practices of detention more difficult to challenge. Revealing a third aspect of ignorance, wherein legal NGOs and lawyers are themselves mediating ignorance.
Ultimately, changes to practices, standards and conditions cannot reconcile with the arbitrary and unlawful detention of people on the move that the CCAC represents. Reiterating statements made in IHR’s report, this paper does not find any form of detention of people seeking international protection permissible, regardless of the “sophisticated language” and appeals to benevolent intentions.