On the Doorstep of Europe. Heath Cabot

      Figure 3. Asylum seekers waiting to be allowed to lodge an asylum application, July 2008. Photo credit Salvatore Poier.

      This account of the pink card and its bureaucratic apparatuses reflects how, through the police, regulatory, “law-preserving” (Benjamin 1999) violence becomes entwined with the terror, unpredictability, and also indeterminacy of state power. The unpredictable, even nightmarish “magic” of the state (Das 2004; Hoag 2010; Taussig 1997) also vitalizes the instruments of regulatory authority with phantasmal dimensions (Nuijten 2003). While policing practices were formally aimed toward increasing control and legibility over asylum seekers, these activities themselves appeared anything but legible or rational (see Herzfeld 1992); the arbitrary, even mysterious qualities of procedures at Allodhapon increased the anxiety and fear among those waiting, who came back week after week in the hopes (but never the certainty) of acquiring the pink card.

      Asylum Division, Allodhapon, July 2011

      It is summer 2011, and I have returned to Athens for just ten days of follow up fieldwork, in order to examine the reforms currently being instituted in the asylum procedure. Through a kind of miracle, the person in charge of the asylum division at the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection has granted me permission to spend three days with the police, observing first instance asylum applications. Those I tell about my lucky break describe it as a product of the new culture of openness and transparency surrounding the reform of asylum in Greece.

      At around 6 a.m., I get a ride to Allodhapon with Dora and Elektra, two acquaintances who now work for the UNHCR overseeing first instance asylum interviews. Dora flashes her badge, and following a cordial nod by the officer outside, we pass through the gates, around to the back of the main building, and down a ramp to a basement garage for employees. After picking up three surprisingly decent espressos (which cost about 50 cents each) at a café above the garage, we enter the main building through a side door, and I find myself in the “interview room” of the asylum department. I note how the informality and ease of our entrance contrasts with my earlier experiences at Allodhapon.

      In addition to my 2008 participation among those waiting in the lines outside, for years I have heard from ARS workers and asylum seekers about the disorganized, corrupt, and chaotic world of the asylum division, and its entrenched disregard for procedural matters. I have been told that interpreters, not asylum officers, conducted the interviews, flagrantly mischaracterizing their content. I have heard repeatedly of the notorious near-zero percent acceptance rate at the first instance of the asylum procedure. But this was before the new asylum law and the transitional measures that have been put in place at Allodhapon.

      Dora and Elektra have both prepared me by asserting that the police are not as difficult as they expected, and some of them are in fact “very good.” Though when they first took on their positions it was hard to establish trust, relationships are now generally very friendly. Indeed, an aura of vibrant, bustling sociability greets the beginning of the workday in the asylum division. Police officers, interpreters, and UNHCR representatives mill around, smoking, drinking coffee, chatting, and arranging files for the day’s series of interviews. Since there is not a uniform in sight, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the officers from the UNHCR employees. A few lawyers drop by to check on cases that are up for review today, including Fani, the wife of my longtime interlocutor Dimitris, a former ARS lawyer who now works as an adjudicator on the appeals board; Fani, with many years of experience in real estate law, is now representing asylum seekers. Many of the interpreters are dressed neatly in gray, collared t-shirts reading METAdrasi [METAδραση], a play on the Greek words for translation (metafrasi [μετάφραση]) and action (drasi [δράση]), an NGO that, among its activities, trains interpreters and contracts them out to the asylum division. Among them I recognize a young Afghan, a former ARS client whom I had last seen in 2008, and he greets me warmly. He too comments on how he has been surprised by his positive experience at the police: he used to hate them, but now that he has seen how some of them conduct their work he wants to say “thank you.” I poke my head out into the main hallway at the waiting area immediately outside the interview hall, packed with those awaiting asylum interviews. I have been told that the lines outside the building have diminished, but that there are still people waiting.

      Elektra and Dora suggest that I circulate among the different officers, as they do, to see the different interview styles of the various police. Generally, the UNHCR representatives try to keep moving so as not to get too tired (or bored or overwhelmed) and to distribute evenly the “good” and “bad” officers so no one gets stuck with one for too long. Among the more problematic officers, some representatives gossip, is one who uses the pink card as a kind of bargaining chip: when he interviews persons who he believes are not legitimate asylum seekers, he offers to give them additional time on their pink cards if they agree to say they are in Greece for “economic reasons.” He offers even more time if they get their friends to do the same. For the UNHCR overseers, such practices serve as a reminder of the ad hoc and arbitrary police work they are trying to eradicate.

      Elektra, however, sits in with one of the younger officers, who she emphasizes is “very good.” I accompany her into an office cubicle, recently constructed to meet demands for privacy (before, all interviews were conducted in the same room). A young man in jeans and a t-shirt greets me warmly, gesturing to a chair; this is the asylum officer. Next to him behind a computer screen sits the “secretary,” a muscled young man in a tight t-shirt—also a police officer—who takes down notes during the interview directly onto the computer. The asylum officer tells me he was recently hired through the transitional procedure, and has worked in the asylum division for just a few months. He has gone through the specialized training but has never worked in asylum related issues before. From the north of Greece, he applied for this job in Athens because it is compulsory that police officers spend time in the capital. But he claims to enjoy his work, in particular the contact with asylum seekers, though he finds it difficult at times. He agonizes over some of the cases, taking files home and working well into the night doing his own internet research. It turns out that there is no internet at Allodhapon, though the UNHCR reps have laptops and mobile internet devices which allow them to do on-the-spot research to assist the police.

      During the interviews I observe, I am struck by this young officer’s enthusiastic and crisp professionalism combined with an almost jovial warmth: well-placed jokes, which alleviate the tensions of the interview process and put the applicants at ease. The first interviewee, from Egypt, is currently in detention. At the end of the interview, the officer issues him a pink card, asking him whether he has ever had a pink card and, if so, where he received it. The interviewee answers that he received a pink card at a different location [from Allodhapon], but does not say where. The officer explains that with his new pink card no one will arrest him, but adds that it is good only for a few months, and in the meantime, his case will be under examination. Indeed, with the reform process, the six-month renewal process is no longer a given, since the decisions are now coming much faster. The asylum seeker asks the friendly officer if he can do anything about the pink card (issue it for longer), or if a lawyer can do anything. The officer is firm, however: he must await the decision on his claim.

      Interestingly, this young officer is the one who will be issuing the decision, and it is he who decides the amount of time granted on the pink card. Yet unlike his colleague, who apparently (if gossip serves) relies on ad hoc and arbitrary methods, this officer of the new generation invokes a hidden, impersonal bureaucratic apparatus that produces pink cards and decisions. After hours, he feels very personally the weight of the process, as he ponders and researches decisions. In his contact with asylum seekers,