Policy Paper: Recruiting Refugees to Deport Other Refugees

Concerns and Policy Reflections from the Aegean Sea

Available in English:

Ali, M. (2026). Recruiting Refugees to Deport Other Refugees. Concerns and Policy Reflections from the Aegean Sea. Policy Paper No. 6, BMFTR-Network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict, Freiburg. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20365901

AEGEAN SEA, BORDERS, DEPORTATION, REFUGEES, EU

About this policy paper:

This policy paper collects and analyzes refugee testimonies as a way of engaging pressing political debates on contemporary EU border governance. Rather than offering a conventional catalogue of policy recommendations for decision-makers, it seeks to contribute empirically grounded reflections on how coercion, border violence, and displacement have become increasingly embedded within European migration management practices. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted across the Aegean context, the paper examines how refugees themselves are incorporated into coercive enforcement structures through the practices described here as the “Shadow Army.” In doing so, it engages broader debates on border externalization, securitization, refugee agency, peacebuilding, and the erosion of legal accountability within the EU’s border regime. The document aims to contribute to policy discussions and informed public debate at a moment marked by intensifying geopolitical instability, growing displacement, and mounting pressures on international protection systems. It is directed toward policymakers, researchers, civil society actors, journalists, and readers interested in understanding how contemporary border governance is reshaping not only migration policy, but also the normative foundations and contradictions of EU foreign policy making as a whole.

Mahitab Ali

Mahitab Ali is a postgraduate researcher and teaching assistant at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. She is also a promotion researcher and former lecturer at Philipps University Marburg. She holds a Master’s degree in Democratic Governance and Civil Society from the University of Osnabrück. Her research engages critically with decolonial scholarship and interrogates dominant epistemic hierarchies in the study of refugee and migration studies, mobility and diaspora studies, surveillance and technology in border governance, securocratic systems, resistance and rupture, transnationalism, geopolitics, and coloniality.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sümeyye, a Turkish mother living near one of the temporary refugee shelters where many deported refugees remain stranded, for facilitating my access to the shelter and mediating with its staff, enabling me to speak safely and freely with deported refugees. Without her support, conducting these conversations would have been extremely difficult. I am deeply grateful to the individuals whose voices are at the centre of this policy paper, as without them I would not have been able to navigate many challenges of the past few years. Despite enduring and profoundly traumatic experiences, they generously shared their time, memories, and trust with me, a complete stranger. Their willingness to speak openly made this paper possible. I also thank the border activists and journalists who engaged in long and genuine conversations driven by a commitment to uncovering and revealing the truth. I am also deeply grateful to Dr. Fabricio Rodríguez and Laura Martelo Falla (Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace & Conflict, ABI Freiburg) for their insightful comments, which significantly contributed to reshaping and refining the paper into its current form and scope.