In current years Greece has fallen victim to both a financial and a refugee crisis. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a crisis is a time of intense difficulty or danger (online). A financial crisis, then, is a time when an individual or group (company, country or region) experiences a time of financial loss, instability and constraint. Alternately, the current refugee crisis refers to the increasing numbers of migrants coming from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe due to political and economic unrest in their nations. This phenomenon, is considered a crisis to European states as it has brought on a time of difficulty filled with analytical, ethical and political challenges.
Crisis is an underlying term that is found throughout all the readings concerning Greece given as they address the effects the financial crisis that started in 2009 has had on the nation. They also address the role Greece has played in the Refugee Crisis as the entry point for many refugees and illegal immigrants who await refugee status. In Bodies of Silence and Resilience: Writing Marginality , Natalie Zervou questions whether dance can give a voice to the marginalized groups in Greece particularly in this time of extreme nationalism and racism. She credits these issues to the change in perception of Greeks to both the Economic and Refugee Crises which she says causes a shift in perception of people’s past and sense of self.
I thought the concept of crisis important because of two reasons. Firstly, after reading the definition of crisis in the dictionary I realized that it was such a simplified way to express such a complex issue. I had to look more in depth for definitions of financial crisis and refugee crisis. While financial crisis was easy enough to define seeing as it is simply put a danger to a country’s economy, the term ‘refugee crisis’ did not have a clear meaning. It brought to my attention how loosely we have tied the word crisis to the situation of the refugee influx even though the situation was far more intricate than the word crisis reveals. Yet with allow this simplicity it is loaded in a way that it inherently gives a negative connotation. The word difficult and danger already give a xenophobic approach to the situation in my opinion making it a problem that threatens rather than a challenge that can and must be overcome. To me the influx of refugees has never been a problem but merely a symptom of larger issues of war politics and economy. The moment we begin treating the symptom as the problem we become stuck in a continuum never truly getting to the root which is the case with the refugees as I see it today. Additionally, crisis seemed fitting for today’s keyword because as we head to Greece, it is vital to note that the country is not experiencing one but two crises making its situation more complex and precarious than most other European countries.
Albahari, Maurizio. 2015. "Europe's Refugee Crisis." "Europe's Refugee Crisis." Anthropology Today 31. no. 5: 1-2. Financial Dictionary Accessed 9 Jan 2018. http://www.financialdictionary.net/define/Financial+Crisis/. Oxford Dictionaries Accessed 9 Jan 2018. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crisis. Zervou, Natalie. "Bodies of Silence and Resistance: Writing Marginality." Congress on Research on Dance Conference Proceedings 2015. Accessed 9 Jan 2018.
Hi Gabi,
This is quite a profound post. What you point to here is that the “crisis” is modified for the effect of the difficulty and not the true cause. The civil war in Syria “causes” people to flee the violence and resettle elsewhere. But Europe isn’t prioritizing the resolution of genocide and violence in Syria. Instead, what is the crisis for them is the effects of the Syrian war. And the effect only make their own “financial crisis” more apparent to them. So there are causes and symptoms and effects, all in an intersectional matrix. And what you don’t point out is that a crisis is supposed to be short term – but Agamben tells us that this “state of exception” which is indicated by the term crisis is, instead, the new normal — it is an enduring irresolvable problem that just grows. Simple explanations then are sometimes very attractive – like those offered by the right-wing hate groups. It’s easier to blame a material being – a refugee – who represents a complex problem that is irresolvable. Everyone needs a scapegoat to release their frustration. But you’re absolutely correct. The discursive term “crisis’ doesn’t begin to account for the complexities of the situation or where to productively apply our energies to ameliorate one portion of the issue. And emotionally – the term crisis keeps us all in a state of anxiety and anticipation of its end. But it is never ending when the root causes – nationalism, ethnic hatred – aren’t addressed globally.