The geopolitics of asylum from the part of those seeking it: Refugee subjects and freedom as possibility

Abstract The European Union (EU)’s politics of asylum is a form of geopolitics with clear and bounded geographical rules. Apart from the top-down EU geopolitics of asylum, there is also the politics of asylum of member states. These politics become revealed through the reception policies that member states implement in their territories. This article is based on in-depth interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation with Syrian asylum seekers residing in a reception facility in Western Peloponnese, Greece. Most informants sought refugee status in Greece and subsequently aimed to relocate to other EU countries to reapply for asylum. Apart from the official EU geopolitics of asylum, a form of bottom-up refugee geopolitics was enacted on the ground. It was practised by refugee subjects, who exercised their freedom against the power of the Common European Asylum System and Greek reception policies. However, this freedom was enacted as a form of possibility without knowing the outcomes of such actions. Freedom as possibility may represent a further step towards a more nuanced understanding of refugee agency, helping to avoid simplifications, particularly in an era marked by the EU and its member states’ increasingly restrictive and inhumane forms of humanitarian–migration governance.