Unruly subjects : Migration, solidarity and resistance in Greece

Unruly Subjects unravels how everyday solidarity, resistance, and violent abandonment intersect at Europe’s borders. Through long-term ethnographic research in Greece, it explores the creative, yet ambivalent solidarities between ‘illegalised’ migrants incarcerated in camps and the grassroots volunteers who support them. -- .

Unruly Subjects takes readers to the heart of Europe’s escalating border struggles: the Aegean islands, where thousands of ‘undesirable’ migrants have been confined and abandoned in EU-funded camps. Drawing on nearly a decade of research, Ludek Stavinoha reveals the hidden spaces where resistance forms and solidarity grows, tracing migrants’ daily efforts to claim dignity and rights alongside grassroots volunteers who have built essential support networks. Central to the book are the creative, precarious, and often ambivalent solidarities forged between volunteers and refugees, citizens and non-citizens, as they challenge racialised boundaries and state-sanctioned control. Urgent and compelling, Unruly Subjects shows how people navigate and subvert Europe’s increasingly hostile border regime and highlights the alternative imaginaries of justice and possibility that emerge from their struggles. -- .