Of land and sea.“Interested solidarities” and the migration industry from below

This paper explores economic interactions between displaced people, local societies and spatial dimensions of migration management and border controls, most notably camps, focusing on the northeast Aegean islands of Chios and Lesvos. It explores the diverse activities, practices, transactions and relations developing in, around and in relation to migrant camps, the array of economic actors involved, and the multiple spatialities operating at different scales. These actors intersect in various ways and occasionally interact in overlapping networks, stimulating “developmental” processes in fields of economic activities within but also beyond the migration industries. Building primarily on fieldwork conducted on the two islands in 2020, as well as on secondary data and desk research, the paper argues that reception policies create value and mobilise resources in ways that may deepen existing inequalities or even produce new ones, capitalizing on the presence of the migrants them-selves.