People swim. They lounge on the beach. They shower with their tops off. They paddle about in the sea. They watch other people doing the same thing. Jörg Brüggemann’s series of photographs from the Greek island of Kos is titled Tourists V Refugees, but in most of the images it’s difficult to tell the difference.

The paddlers could be holidaymakers – or they might be Syrians coming from Turkey. The ferry might hold tourists or, as is actually the case, hundreds of refugees waiting for their paperwork to be processed so they can proceed to mainland Greece. A submerged dinghy might belong to kids on their summer break. But what if it was steered all the way from Bodrum by Iraqis? Similarly, the lifejackets that appear, discarded, in many of the pictures – it’s likely they each saved a refugee’s life as he or she made the night-time journey from the Turkish coast. But it’s just as plausible that they simply fell off a jetski.

Approximately 200,000 refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have arrived on islands such as Kos so far this year, taking flimsy inflatable boats through the darkness from the Turkish coast. This week, photographs of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach sparked horror and fierce political debate, after the dinghy in which he, his mother and brother were travelling capsized soon after they set out to reach Kos. This summer much press coverage has focused on the creation of a supposedly unbridgeable chasm between refugees and unsuspecting tourists in places like Kos. The title of Brüggemann’s series certainly sets up this adversarial relationship: tourists versus refugees; good foreigners versus bad ones. But as the pictures show, the reality is not so clearcut.

As part of my reporting on the European migration crisis for the Guardian, I visited the islands of Kos and Lesbos earlier this summer. I expected to find an insurmountable culture clash. Certainly, these islands are witnessing a refugee crisis. The cash-strapped Greek government, unable to contain its own economic crisis, cannot respond effectively to a migration one. It cannot feed, house or provide paperwork in a timely fashion to the refugees (and that is the fairest description, since these arrivals come mostly from refugee-producing countries). As a result, thousands are stuck in limbo, unable to leave the islands until they’re given a particular document by the Greek police. Many sleep on the streets or in tents. Just west of Kos town, the abandoned hotel Captain Elias has become a makeshift shelter for hundreds of migrants: men, women and children who have no electricity and, until recently, no running water or toilets. In a nearby hotel, a similar number of tourists lie on sun loungers or splash in the pool.

There have been confrontations. In mid-August, Syrians rioted after they were locked inside an old, dilapidated stadium in Kos town without access to water, toilets or shelter from the heat. Just next door to the stadium stood an open-air cinema where film-goers carried on watching Pierce Brosnan’s latest offering. You could hear the soundtrack over the wall.

A dinghy abandoned after making the journey from Turkey. Photograph: Jörg Brüggemann//Ostkreuz

Yet many tourists who had been staying on the island throughout the period said they had barely been aware of the clash. “It hasn’t really affected us,” Val Turewicz, a 34-year-old Polish pharmaceutical executive, told me. “We’ve had no problems.” Across the road, a queue of Afghans and Pakistanis waited outside the police station for documentation.

In fact, watching tourists as they cycled along the bike path that lines the shore, most seemed oblivious to what was going on around them. Brüggemann captures this dynamic well, with his photograph of a young westerner in a white T-shirt, carrying a selfie stick as he walks past some refugees. He looks as if he hasn’t even noticed them; his holiday continues. To some, such an image might represent a wider lack of compassion for people fleeing unimaginable hardship. Personally, I see something more hopeful. We are told that this wave of migration will shake the foundations of Europe, but myopic tourists suggest something different: they tell us that life goes on.

In fact, some tourists have actively tried to help. The Dutch tourist pictured here used his two-week holiday in Kos to help distribute food to refugees at the Captain Elias hotel. He joined a group led by hotel owner Reinhilde Michalakopoulos, pictured here delivering peaches. A German who moved to Kos in 1989 to join her Greek husband, Michalakopoulos runs the Kos Palace hotel with her son. In between organising Greek dancing nights and handing out shots of ouzo to guests, she distributes bread from her hotel kitchens and peaches bought from the market to the refugees. Many tourists who stay at her hotel leave behind money, clothes and toiletries, to be redistributed with their blessing.

Hers is just one of a number of similar groups on Kos and Lesbos. In the south of Lesbos, Greek volunteers run a makeshift camp called the Village of Altogether. In the north, an Australian, Melinda McRostie, serves fish to tourists at the front of her restaurant; at the back, she runs a camp for refugees, handing out food that is often donated and distributed by tourists. Sabine Fischer, a German nurse, told me she wasn’t aware of the refugee influx before arriving on the island, but decided to help McRostie once she saw the situation. “I’m here, I don’t have to do any work,” said Fischer. “I can help.”

Video: The tiny Greek island sinking under Europe’s refugee crisis

There’s another kind of crossover in places such as Kos and Lesbos. Many Syrians sleep in the streets of Kos, a supposed blight on its tourism industry. But the wealthier ones are staying in its hotels, helping to prop them up. A Syrian I met in northern Greece summed up this irony: he had just walked from the last hotel before the Macedonian border, a place that was on the verge of closure before Syrians started coming this way late last summer. “We bring foreign money into Greece,” said Hamza, an English literature graduate from Damascus. “Every day a thousand people arrive from Syria and Iraq, and they all probably spend $200 here in total – and that’s a lot of money.”

For the hotel owners, this kind of money means little if tourists stop coming. The mayor of Kos says that, despite the furore, tourism has not yet been affected. But the holiday season will wind down within two months, whereas the refugees are likely to keep coming throughout the autumn. If they do, it will be left to the locals to help feed them; the tourists will have returned home.