Insecurity and contradictions: a philosophical reflection

Honourable Rector,

Honourable President of the Union of Occupied Municipalities and Mayor of Kythrea,

Esteemed colleagues,

Distinguished Guests,

Allow me to perform a 180 degree turn, and instead of talking about migrants, talk about the security of Cypriots and their care for it through specific structures. No, this is not a reversal of the priorities of the conference, but a reflection on what we call the "dominant subject", and on the contradictions produced by the dominant logic and worldview.

I begin by sketching some contradictions, going from the simpler to the more complex, and then suggesting the interpretation that contradictions are produced because of a partial worldview and a distorted desire for security. A worldview that forgets that all structures and concepts such as "sovereignty", "nation", "borders", "identity", "autonomy", "citizenship", "belonging", and so on, when absolutised lead to contradictions and more insecurity and instability than security and stability.

Contradiction 1: Refugee VS Internally Displaced Person

The first contradiction concerns the unequal way in which the status of "refugee" is attributed to Cypriots and foreigners. If we faithfully apply the UN definitions, then the Greek Cypriots expelled from the occupied territories do not meet the criteria to be called "refugees" but "internally displaced persons". Yet, many countries have welcomed Cypriots as refugees, and in the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) they are also correctly called refugees. When it comes to foreign refugees in Cyprus, there is a demand for exhaustion of protocols, and the status of "refugee" is avoided and the word "migrant" (or even "illegal immigrant") is widely used, inviting scepticism and doubt about their claims.

Contradiction 2: The Turks send them to us! VS The Turks take them from us!

Since the beginning of the migration crisis, the theory of "hybrid warfare" has dominated the public sphere, where the instrumentalization of migrants from Turkey is presented as being done for the purpose of demographic alteration and destabilization of the RoC. The explanation offered is that "the Turks are sending them to us", which "justifies" pushbacks. However, when the RoC is faced with the opposite reality, where Turks are rescuing migrants in waters where the RoC is in sovereignty and where the RoC should normally do the rescue, then the "Turks are sending them to us" is reversed and it becomes "the Turks are taking them from us"! 

Contradiction 3: Turkey is a safe third country VS Turkey is a dangerous country

As I mentioned before, Turkey is presented as instrumentalizing migrants. But instrumentalization implies the violation of their human rights, which implies that Turkey cannot be considered a safe third country for them. At the same time, however, Greece and Cyprus present Turkey as a “safe third country” to justify pushbacks (Cyprus) or expedited returns (Greece). Turkey is presented as both unsafe and safe at the same time. We now move on to more complex contradictions.

Contradiction 4: Nation-subject VS nation-object

Often the analysis of migration flows is done in instrumental terms, where migrants are analysed as if they are hybrids: on the one hand subjects, on the other hand tools that passively serve Turkish interests, i.e. people used as utilities. The instrumentalist analysis aims to defend the “demographic character of the nation” and the “autonomy of the nation“. In this respect, the nation is the subject under attack and is defined in opposition to the “instrument” it faces: the migrant-instruments. But the nation-subject that they are trying to defend is conceived in terms of an object: as a self-subsistent entity, as a geographical area with specific borders, and a population with fixed characteristics. So instead of a subject with the potential to enter into relations and with the potential for transformation, we have a thing with properties, an object outside of social and dialectical relations. The very analysis, then, which is supposed to defend the autonomy of the nation, deconstructs it. The subject (nation), conceived in terms of reification, has already been identified as an object that does not actively participate in processes, but is merely a product.

Contradiction 5: Realism VS Dialectic

It has recently emerged in the public sphere that immigrant rights activists are partly to blame for the rise of the far right. The argument is as follows: activists misrecognise (underestimate) the problems created by immigration, with the result that society turns to far-right formations because they recognise the problem as real and propose real solutions (pushbacks at sea, exclusions, etc.). In other words, the thesis is that there is an objective, realistic, dimension which the activists ignore but which the far-right formations recognise.

What is the contradiction here? The contradiction is this.

This position assumes, on the one hand, that geopolitical and social reality is objective, consisting of immutable facts, and that those who see this reality are neutral observers and realists. Let us call this position the "realist position". According to this position, activists fail to recognise objective reality. For example, they fail to recognise that the increase in crime is a real, objective feature of immigration.

Defenders of the realist position place themselves on the side of objectivity, assuming that they themselves do not participate in shaping this reality, since reality is “not socially constructed”. On the other hand, however, and here is the contradiction, they simultaneously adopt relational terms and place both themselves and the migrants within a dialectical process. For example, they talk about “pull factors” and “push factors”, suggesting measures to make Cyprus an unattractive destination, thus recognising the dialectical nature of geopolitical and social reality, and thus acknowledging that both themselves and the migrants are part of the process. Also, while supposedly defending “realism” by putting themselves on the side of objectivity, they simultaneously explain their own move towards “realism” and towards the far right as a reaction to the activists' positions, and thus dialectically.

On the one hand, then, they define socio-political reality in terms of objective substance with inherent properties and characteristics (realism). On the other hand, they define the same reality dialectically, i.e. as historically shaped, part of a social process of relations.

Where do these contradictions come from?

All narratives are structures organised around logic. The "migration issue" too is organised around ideas, concepts, desires, as well as actions, practices and behaviours. What happens when a contradiction arises? Well, what happens is that the structure gives way under the weight of the pressure it self-generates, i.e. it cannot withstand the pressures of reality as it has interpreted it.

Let me be more specific. The reason why contradictions are observed has to do with the fact that the structures and the measures they impose have been built on an illusory worldview and desire for security on the wrong foundation.

They overlook how the structures themselves, co-constitute what is perceived as an "external threat" that comes to put pressure on the structures themselves. The structures themselves co-constitute the "inside" and the "outside" from which they are pressured. At the same time, they obscure this formative participation by embracing supposed absolute truths, ignoring that the structures they defend are a part of a whole that are constituted historically and in a larger system, and are therefore characterised by relativity and finitude.

And what do you suggest in return, one might ask me. I am not proposing the abolition of structures, but their transformation through recognition of their limits. What I am saying is that we must remember the big picture, and that all structures and concepts such as "sovereignty", "nation", "borders", "identity", "autonomy", "citizenship", "belonging", and so on, when absolutised lead to contradictions and more insecurity and instability than security and stability.

No one can preserve absolute sovereignty or absolute autonomy without the participation of the foreign within. Anyone who tries to do so fails tragically.

No one can structure and maintain a nation-state without internal and historical differentiations, and without the foreign within.

No one can absolutise or naturalise borders. As Kant said, borders are not natural, they are constructed, and "initially no one has more right than another to be in a part of the earth."

No one can absolutise citizenship. Citizenships are granted, they do not exist of themselves. No one is born a native, one becomes a native. Every newborn, in fact, does not have citizenship; it is granted it by an administrative act of a state body, which itself was established in time and out of what it was not.

No one belongs somewhere to an absolute degree. Alienation is always there and is a “constituent” of all relationships. No place offers absolute familiarity, so that we feel that we belong completely to a place and we own the place absolutely, and so that the indigenous person is considered “homely” and the immigrant is considered to be “unhomely”. The reason why we can feel at home in a place is because the unfamiliar is simultaneously implicated - familiarity is born from the unfamiliar, which it always contains and in which it is contained. Even Greek Cypriots are strangers to each other. Many times the ex-pat interprets their nostalgia for homeland as proof that homeland means homeliness. However, often the one who returns home feels nostalgia for what was once the foreign land. And he or she who has never left the homeland feels nostalgia for a country that exists in their memory or as they imagine it. The uncanny and nostalgia are always there. As Novalis says, nostalgia is "an impulse to feel at home everywhere", and it shows the way in which all humans are caught between the local and the global, between the homely and the unhomely, desiring to feel each place as home. And think about what science shows us: The reality described by quantum physics shows a world that is terrifyingly unhomely. 

It would be useful if we did not forget Lucian's vision of the perfect city (a similar vision to the one the greatest Cypriot philosopher, Zeno of Citium, had), if we at least kept it as a reference point to which we often return, because it is not just a vision, but captures an aspect of reality that we systematically deny and suppress: A city where "all citizens are immigrants and foreigners and no one native," and where everyone is accepted.

Thank you.

[Translated from Greek.]