ABSTRACT
This chapter examines everyday acts of refusal among refugees and migrants in Slovakia as understated yet meaningful forms of political engagement. Drawing on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in NGOs and municipal initiatives, it analyses how migrants’ omissions – missing appointments, declining invitations and withholding participation – disrupt expected scripts of gratitude, compliance and self-improvement. While these refusals rarely assume explicit confrontational intent and often appear self-defeating, they nonetheless expose structural inequalities and challenge the paternalistic dynamics shaping NGO–migrant relations. Through three case studies, the chapter shows how abstention, silence and hesitation function as situated critiques within a context that denies migrants full political subjecthood. It argues that such minimal, makeshift practices constitute a marginal yet consequential form of activism, generating affective atmospheres of grievance that may cumulatively foster future transformative change.
