The refugees determined to pay their own way
▶ Anna Zacharias meets the resourceful residents setting up their own businesses at the Ritsona refugee camp in Greece
In some respects, Gold Cafe is like any other coffee and shisha place. Two caged canaries fill it with song as young men gather there in the afternoons and older men chat around tables in the evenings.
But this is no ordinary cafe. It is one of the informal businesses at the Ritsona refugee camp, an hour north of Athens, Greece. Ritsona is a temporary home to about 750 refugees from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan who are awaiting asylum in Europe.
Businesses bring routine and community to those who have made the journey to Greece, fleeing persecution and war.
“This coffee shop brings forth humanity and ethics,” says Ismail Hussein, 47, its owner. “Work is the jewel of man. I cannot sit at home.
“I want to change the way time passes and at the same time I benefit. I have a family of six and if I don’t work and I stay at home, what will I do?”
His shop is a financial and psychological investment.
Mr Hussein, who was born with walking difficulties, hiked with his wife and children from Damascus to Greece, sometimes carried by his children. Two years ago, they crossed at the land border and made it to safety in Thessaloniki.
He inherited Gold Cafe from a fellow Syrian who was placed in Germany.
Profits are meagre. There is shisha, fresh orange juice and Mr Hussein’s own Greek-style iced coffee. Workers from non-government organisations pay €1 (Dh4.25) for an espresso. Residents order less often.
“People in the camp have no money,” Mr Hussein says.
Registered refugees and asylum seekers receive a stipend from the European Commission, ranging from €90 for a single person in catered accommodation to €550 for a family of seven or more in self-catered accommodation.
Ritsona’s entrepreneurs reinvest this. Gold Cafe is opposite a falafel cafe and cigarette stalls. The camp has a hair salon and several supermarkets.
Informal markets are typical in camps where refugees may stay for years, often unable to work or move freely in their host country.
Refugees face immense business barriers. They usually lack financial and social capital, often cannot speak the local language, cannot access credit and do not have contacts in the local markets.
But research shows that they are more entrepreneurial and economically diverse.
In Jordan’s Zaatari camp, entrepreneurs sew wedding dresses, bake cakes and sell perfume at the camp’s market, Champs-Elysees.
In Uganda, where refugees have the right to establish businesses and have significant freedom of movement, they created a thriving business environment.
A 2014 paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, found that 40 per cent of those employed by refugees in the capital of Kampala were native Ugandans.
“Existing economic work on refugees tends to focus narrowly on refugee livelihoods or on the impact on host states,” writes Alexander Betts, the director of the Centre’s Humanitarian Innovation Project, which undertook the project.
“Yet understanding these economic systems may hold the key to rethinking our approach to refugee assistance.”
The research has implications for how migrant crises can be managed in Europe.
Greece is under severe economic strain and exited an eight-year bailout in August. It shoulders disproportionate responsibility for refugees after a March 2016 agreement between the EU and Turkey.
Other countries in Europe have closed their borders and it takes years before refugees are moved out of Greek camps.
Part of the political opposition to refugees is concern that they will be an economic burden and displace native workers in the labour force.
Yet evidence indicates that even large refugee arrivals can bring financial gains to host communities in the long term, particularly when they are quickly integrated into the labour market.
Entrepreneurs such as Mr Hussein connect settlements with their host communities. The supermarket beside Gold Cafe averaged €500 a month profit when it opened. Success breeds replication and profits dropped after shops opened around it.
Its manager, Syrian Obaid Burour, can be found every afternoon beside a cooler of Cornettos waiting for his next customer. Ice cream is his best-selling product.
“Business causes a change in someone’s life,” says Mr Burour, 57. “It is better than staying in a caravan feeling bored. If you stay in a caravan without doing anything you get sick or feel depressed.”
He paid smugglers to take his family of four to Greece two years ago. They stayed seven months at a camp on Samos before arriving at Ritsona.
Mr Burour was hired by the supermarket’s previous owner because of his experience on Al Hamra Street, a well-known Damascus shopping district.
“Work is important to every single person,” says Mr Burour, who keeps the shop open 12 hours a day. “It is a way to pass time with others and opens the mind. Work is life.”
Daily structure is particularly important for young men such as Yaqoob Fatayer, 23, who works at Umm Adnan Grocery. Mr Fatayer blasts pop music from the corrugated iron grocery, drawing in friends to talk.
He expects a long wait for placement. Families take priority and he has been in Greece for 18 months, including a year on the island of Lesbos.
Mr Fatayer was born in Syria to Palestinian refugees but left Syria two and a half years ago with his brother. In Syria, young men face the greatest risk of violence.
“If you ask young men, they’ll tell you there isn’t life here for them,” he says. “There’s no sports here for us, no work. There’s nothing for young men. It’s no life. It’s not a little boring, it’s very boring.”
At Ritsona, young people have support through Lighthouse Relief, a charity that organises activities for those aged between 12 and 25.
They include language skills, work training and the production of a magazine that chronicles life for young people in the camp through stories, photos, art and poetry. The anxiety of waiting is a common theme.
Mr Fatayer tries to avoid this by working from 9am until 12am. Every Wednesday he takes the camp bus to Athens to buy stock.
His employer is Fida Mohammed of Damascus, who grew the business from a vegetable stall into a sizeable supermarket. Ms Mohammed, 35, has lived in Greece for three years and half of that time has been in Ritsona. The shop brings in money for her toddler. “It’s tiring,” she says. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s easy.”
Shops give atmosphere to the camps. Mr Hussein has decorated Gold Cafe with a
Christmas tree, a Greek flag and paintings by his friend, Riad Dawood.
“In my view daily life isn’t good – not in the islands and not in the camp,” says Mr Dawood, 45, a Kurd from Syria’s Hasaka region who worked in Abu Dhabi for four years. “My thoughts are always about my children.”
His family have been in Greece for two years. His wife has struggled to cope. He spends his mornings at Gold Cafe to escape the boredom of a caravan.
“Ismail is a good and decent human,” he says. “He comes to sit with me here, from morning until night.”
Mr Hussein nods. “We chat together about the old days, about everything.”
“Yes, exactly,” Mr Dawood says. “Even if you feel frustrated, you come, hear good conversation and forget your frustrations.”