ABSTRACT
The idea of a ‘refugee crisis’ over a few million refugees for a continent of 500 million is an exaggeration, particularly when compared to refugees in Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey. This chapter addresses the processes that made the asylum issue into the European ‘refugee crisis’. It examines how, since 2015, the making of the current ‘refugee crisis’ in the European Union was a radical recast of the ‘migration issue’. The chapter explores the continuities and ruptures in the factors which have cumulatively produced an explosive situation. It provides an instance of a bordering process at the Greek island hotspot, as a manifestation of ‘the asylum crisis’, the regimes of exception and derogation of rights producing the asylum dissensus. As a creature of the 20th century, the new international regime bore the marks of a special category of protection, an exceptional system that necessitated, specific and individualised rules of group rights within the broader regimes of migration which became increasingly restrictive.
