By: Gracyn Elizabeth McGathy
Every evening at 6:35 p.m., the iron bars of Diavata Refugee Camp glow orange. The sun sets fiercely over its weed-covered fields, illuminating a collection of discarded goods: a worn shoe, crushed soda cans, and ripped plastic. The bus to the nearest city, Thessaloniki, will have come and gone by now, completing its second of only two stops it does each day in Diavata.
The only piece of evidence left to prove that help was once there lies rotting by the side of the road. With faded letters barely legible now, a scrap of once-white tarp labeled “United Nations.” The 2015 refugee crisis, a consequence of the Syrian Civil War, drew many major humanitarian organizations to the desolate expanse of Diavata. Casa Base, a small local NGO, housed in a rusting warehouse adjacent to the camp. The only organization left of its kind, forced to be the main organization responsible for providing critical humanitarian aid to the refugees of Diavata.
Greece’s geographical proximity to many of the world’s top refugee-producing countries has made it a significant point of entry for many individuals fleeing conflict, violence, and persecution. In 2023 alone, 48,721 refugees and migrants arrived in Greece, with the overwhelming majority arriving by boat across the Mediterranean Sea. Camps like Diavata were erected in response to the developing refugee and migrant crisis originating in the Middle East and North Africa since 2015. During my time volunteering as a humanitarian aid worker with Casa Base in the Spring of 2024, I had the pleasure of meeting many of them.
Aid volunteers were not allowed beyond the security checkpoint – a result of Greece’s increasingly hardline immigration policies and the transition of refugee camps into “closed detention centers,” only accessible by the Greek military. Most recently, Greece’s new Migration Minister announced that migrants whose asylum claims are rejected now face at least two years in prison if they do not leave within 14 days. At first glance, the law feels simple: leave, or face punishment. But leave to go where? It’s no secret that the Greek immigration system is rife with error, influenced heavily by Europe’s growing appetite for deterrence. Many asylum seekers have lived in Greece for years, their children enrolled in local schools, their communities rooted in the only place they have known since fleeing war. With a single administrative decision, they become “irregular migrants” overnight, left to navigate a system that treats them simultaneously as unwanted and unable to be returned.
At Diavata, a rejected asylum claim revoked a migrant’s access to food in the camp, to government services and minimal financial support, and cut the individual loose into a society where they bore no right to work, to learn, or to rent housing. In Greece, thousands of asylum seekers remain effectively stranded, their legal status rejected.
Behind these bureaucratic decisions were real people: men, women, and children whose stories made the cruelty of the system unmistakably clear. Many of the refugees I met during my time in Diavata had made harrowing aquatic journeys across the Mediterranean. Many had lost children in the process. Many had been forced to leave behind loved ones in war-torn Syria, or the Taliban-occupied Afghanistan. One refugee spoke of crossing an active minefield in Libya on foot with her three-year-old strapped to her back. Against all odds, and with such sacrifice, she had successfully fled active war zones,and survived a 500 mile trek across the ocean, only to slowly starve in a refugee camp in Greece. It was law that protected Diavata’s refugees – providing them asylum status should they qualify – and it was law that let them starve, restricted their access to education, to work, and most importantly: to stay.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 123.2 million people were currently displaced worldwide at the end of 2024, reaching the highest number of displaced persons ever recorded. While urbanization and economic opportunity has resulted in a higher number of refugees living within cities, camps like Diavata continue to service those “left behind” in the migration of refugees to urban centers. On the Greek mainland, there are a total of 27 camps operated by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum. Each camp reflects a different facet of Europe’s asylum apparatus, but all share the same underlying purpose: containment rather than integration.
As a scholar of international refugee law, I’ve spent the better part of my educational career believing that the laws of protection existed for the benefit of those fleeing persecution. However, as days passed inside the gates of Diavata, and winter turned to spring, it became abundantly clear that such laws would never favor those without power, a home, or a nationality. I’m no longer confident that law is the best mechanism for making decisions which inherently govern the life or death of an individual. Rather, fields such as religion, philosophy, anthropology – even art and literature – make room for the inextricable humanity of displacement and asylum.
Even as my understanding shifted, the camp remained the same. In the space of limbo, life went on: children were born within its iron gates, weddings celebrated with fresh bolani in the dirt courtyard. Still, nothing truly moved forward. Like clockwork, the sun still sets at 6:35pm everyday. The endless stretch of plains glow a familiar red, and fade to a muted pink, before disappearing altogether into the night.