Escape to the island: International volunteer engagement on Lesvos during the refugee crisis

As hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants haphazardly crossed the strait between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesvos on their way to safety in Europe in 2015, thousands of citizens from all over Europe temporarily abandoned their day jobs to be of some sort of assistance for the refugees as they arrived on the beaches of Lesvos. We analyze the process and the relationships between the various stakeholders who were involved in the refugee crisis between April 2015 and January 2018, arguing that there is a need to find new ways of managing this type of spontaneous volunteerism without on the one hand strangling flexible and innovative volunteering initiatives, and on the other hand without compromising knowledge-based humanitarian responses.