Refugees preparing food at No Borders Kitchen, Samos. Photo by author, all rights reserved.
The term ‘the system’ is one we have come across many times when talking with refugees and with poor people in many places and in various countries. It refers to the ways in which people understand the world and their place in it. It is also a description of the world in which they live under the gaze of teachers, police, social workers, border guards, prison officers, NGOs, bosses and supervisors and so on. It is the system that watches and humiliates and as one young Syrian refugee told us, it celebrates and feeds on wars. “Always war”, he said. “If it is not shooting you in your body, it is trying to destroy your brain and always shoots at our pockets”.
“We are used and abused by the system. The same system that has corrupted north Africa and so many other countries as well, and made it impossible to stay there with any life and freedom as is here in Europe. I feel like there are lots of people and organisations living off my back as a refugee. I am being used all the time to make money by big organisations. I know that they get money to look after us. But where does it go? Why don’t we see it?”
