Informal volunteering in Greece's discriminatory migrant regime: practices in inclusivity

This thesis explores the relationship between international informal volunteers, aid workers, and government actors engaging with border crossers in Greece. It sheds light on the failings of large organizations and government bodies, whose bureaucratic structures are slow to respond to border crosser’s needs and which largely follow an exclusionary asylum regime that implements a hierarchy of deservingness. The ethnographic research and analysis exposes tensions within the humanitarian landscape of Greece; it also shows that there is space for informal volunteers to enact solidarity and new forms of humanitarianism that subvert state-sanctioned aid and challenge the status quo of the border regime. This research also contributes to new ways of engaging with cross-sector collaborations; importantly, it highlights that actors in the informal sector in Greece are major players in providing aid, advocating for rights, and bearing witness to human rights abuses and unlawful treatment of border crossers.