- University of Barcelona, Antropologia cultural, historia d'America i Africa, Department Memberadd
- Social Geography, Border Studies, Transnational migration, Migration, Cultural Geography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 8 moreMigration Studies, Social Activism, κοινωνιολογία της μετανάστευσης, Anthropology of Borders, Illegality (Anthropology), Urban Anthropology, Sociology of Migration, and Political Geographyedit
- tredit
In this paper, I open a discussion on internal bordering practices, starting from an unexpected space: the home. I delve into instances where newly arrived migrants, despite living in the city center, effectively reside (at) the border.... more
In this paper, I open a discussion on internal bordering practices, starting from an unexpected space: the home. I delve into instances where newly arrived migrants, despite living in the city center, effectively reside (at) the border. My aim is to comprehend borders both as regimes and as technologies of power that manufacture everyday life, even within ostensibly "private" and "secure" spaces. I begin by examining four distinct "homes" of newly arrived migrants in Athens, each representing different configurations of border regimes over the past two decades. However, anchoring the analysis in these different homes does not confine the focus solely to the local or micro scale. Rather, I contend that these "humblest" spaces of everyday life serve as entry points for analyzing bordering practices, power relations, subjugation and subversion across multiple and intertwined sociospatial scales.
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This paper can be read as a film sequence, as each scene is based on the narration of a different everyday encounter in the city. The aim of the paper is to start a discussion on the multiple ways borders proliferate in the urban: not... more
This paper can be read as a film sequence, as each scene is based on the narration of a different everyday encounter in the city. The aim of the paper is to start a discussion on the multiple ways borders proliferate in the urban: not only through laws, institutions or policing practices, but also through deeds, words, and feelings. Rather than analyse migration and borders by focusing only on the borderzones, this paper captures the multiple relations that connect the camp to the city square, the deportation regime to the train carriage, the newspaper headlines to the housing tenements in an attempt to work towards framing a broader theory of borders in geographical terms. Focusing on everyday encounters generates more complicated and nuanced understandings of subjectivity and power, while it brings to the fore the multiple borders that are simultaneously embodied and transcended, performed and challenged, established and subverted.
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The routes of migrants without papers towards Western European countries often converge at the city of Patras, a city in the western borders of Greece with a port connecting to Italy. Around 2001, the migrants who lived there... more
The routes of migrants without papers towards Western European countries often converge at the city of Patras, a city in the western borders of Greece with a port connecting to Italy. Around 2001, the migrants who lived there temporarily—until they managed to cross the border—built a squatter settlement. Following a period of social and political tensions, the settlement was finally demolished in 2009. In this paper I approach the settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, a place of the “other,” the different, as conceptualized by Michel Foucault and others. Heterotopias are like counter-sites in which all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Reading the migrants' settlement as a heterotopic space helps unpack invisible aspects not only of the settlement but also of the city. Exploring the settlement and the city as interrelated spaces, I discuss the social, economic and spatial relations that operate in each of those spaces and also connect them: how borders and migrant illegality operate in the level of everyday life; how space, time, practices and strategies are renegotiated within several geographic scales, from the body to the global. By approaching the migrants' settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, I propose a reading of borders, migration and urban space as processes where several levels of conflict, power and resistance operate.
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In this essay I outline the ways in which κρίση ( krísi – crisis) and μετανάστευση ( metanástefsi – migration) have been interrelated during the last decade in Greece. By being grounded in concrete times and places, I argue that these... more
In this essay I outline the ways in which κρίση ( krísi – crisis) and μετανάστευση ( metanástefsi – migration) have been interrelated during the last decade in Greece. By being grounded in concrete times and places, I argue that these interrelations, far from being stable and fixed, take their form and meaning within wider social, economic and political contexts.
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Research Interests:
In the rst day of our squat in the narrow Katrivanou Street where City Plaza’s entrance is, it was chaos. Many neighbors, along with the owner of the building and her friends, had gathered outside and were swearing at us, threatening to... more
In the rst day of our squat in the narrow Katrivanou Street where City Plaza’s entrance is, it was chaos. Many neighbors, along with the owner of the building and her friends, had gathered outside and were swearing at us, threatening to call the police and members of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, demanding that we leave immediately. At the next corner, there was a group of migrants who had previously stayed at the Camp of Hellinicon and had just arrived. Because of the whole mess, they could not reach the door and get into the hotel. After a while, since we did not have any other solution, we formed a human chain to help the migrants to get into the building. At the time I thought—a recurring thought I had on dierent occasions—that the migrants must have felt deeply insecure that day since they were in the middle of a ght between locals who spoke a language totally unfamiliar to them in unprecedented conditions. Several months later, I read an interview by K., a woman from Afghan...
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The first page of the introduction made me very sceptical, as sentences like “the emergent new world order”, a “militarized form of global apartheid”, or “a new form of imperialism – security imperialism”, indicated that I was about to... more
The first page of the introduction made me very sceptical, as sentences like “the emergent new world order”, a “militarized form of global apartheid”, or “a new form of imperialism – security imperialism”, indicated that I was about to read another book of “big wor(l)ds” and global analysis without any focus on the local – a book of abstract notions that were simply left hanging, a book on global structures without people. When I finished the introduction, I was sure my first judgement had been premature, and when I finished the book I was fascinated.
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A noticeable body of literature since the 1980s has been exploring aspects of social philanthropy, NGOs’ activities and State immigration policies. However, little research is available on how the refugees themselves self-organize, claim... more
A noticeable body of literature since the 1980s has been exploring aspects of social philanthropy, NGOs’ activities and State immigration policies. However, little research is available on how the refugees themselves self-organize, claim the right to the city and enact the production of collective housing common spaces. This paper aims to discuss such issues and contribute to this gap. Following the recent spatial approaches on “commons” and “enclosures” the paper compares and contrasts refugee led solidarity housing commons with State-run refugee camps. According to the critical thinkers of “autonomy of migration” the focus has to be shifted from the apparatuses of control to the multiple and diverse ways in which migration responds to, operates independently from, and in turn shapes those apparatuses and their corresponding institutions and practices. Moreover the paper is inspired by the Lefebvrian “right to the city” which embodies the rights to housing, work, education, health ...
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The MIG@NET European FP7 research teams spanned eight countries examining gender, migration and digital networks (http://www.mignetproject.eu/). Here the researchers outline the key findings covering migrant hybrid (online and offline)... more
The MIG@NET European FP7 research teams spanned eight countries examining gender, migration and digital networks (http://www.mignetproject.eu/). Here the researchers outline the key findings covering migrant hybrid (online and offline) activities in three European countries: Greece, Cyprus and the UK. This European multicase study provides insights into the general sociocultural dynamics behind the formation of transnational digital networks because they reveal the most urgent societal problems European countries must face in the early twenty-first century: racism, migration, ethnonationalist ideologies and European citizenship.
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This paper can be read as a film sequence, as each scene is based on the narration of a different everyday encounter in the city. The aim of the paper is to start a discussion on the multiple ways borders proliferate in the urban: not... more
This paper can be read as a film sequence, as each scene is based on the narration of a different everyday encounter in the city. The aim of the paper is to start a discussion on the multiple ways borders proliferate in the urban: not only through laws, institutions or policing practices, but also through deeds, words, and feelings. Rather than analyse migration and borders by focusing only on the borderzones, this paper captures the multiple relations that connect the camp to the city square, the deportation regime to the train carriage, the newspaper headlines to the housing tenements in an attempt to work towards framing a broader theory of borders in geographical terms. Focusing on everyday encounters generates more complicated and nuanced understandings of subjectivity and power, while it brings to the fore the multiple borders that are simultaneously embodied and transcended, performed and challenged, established and subverted.
Research Interests:
City Plaza was an abandoned hotel in the center of Athens, squatted in April 2016, in the midst of what was named a “refugee crisis”. In the 39 months that it operated, it became a home to more than 2.500 refugees from more than 10... more
City Plaza was an abandoned hotel in the center of Athens, squatted in April 2016, in the midst of what was named a “refugee crisis”. In the 39 months that it operated, it became a home to more than 2.500 refugees from more than 10 different countries. Still, what was achieved in City Plaza was beyond that: a community of solidarity and struggle was ‘manufactured’, and City Plaza gradually became a symbol of resistance to the dominant policies of control and repression of migration. This paper focuses on the analysis of the multiple practices and scales of space. The aim is to think around the manifold and interrelated spatial scales, structures, relations and practices that dialectically constructed and were constructed within and beyond City Plaza.
Research Interests: Solidarity and Refugee
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Την 1η Μαρτίου του 2020 μια ομάδα περίπου 40 Μυτιληνιών στο λιμάνι της Θερμής εμποδίζουν τους πρόσφυγες που επιβαίνουν σε μια φουσκωτή βάρκα να απο-βιβαστούν. Με φωνές, απειλές, προσβολές για πολλές ώρες οι κάτοικοι μένουν εκεί για να μην... more
Την 1η Μαρτίου του 2020 μια ομάδα περίπου 40 Μυτιληνιών στο λιμάνι της Θερμής εμποδίζουν τους πρόσφυγες που επιβαίνουν σε μια φουσκωτή βάρκα να απο-βιβαστούν. Με φωνές, απειλές, προσβολές για πολλές ώρες οι κάτοικοι μένουν εκεί για να μην αφήσουν τους πρόσφυγες να βγουν στη στεριά, ενώ προπηλακί-ζουν και ξυλοκοπούν δημοσιογράφους και μέλη Διεθνών Οργανισμών και Μη Κυβερνητικών Οργανώσεων. Πώς φτάσαμε εκεί; Πως οι εικόνες που κυριάρχησαν το καλοκαίρι του 2015, οι εικόνες της διάσωσης στη θάλασσα, των δομών πρώτης υποδοχής στις ακτές της Λέσβου, οι εικόνες της αλληλεγγύης στους πρόσφυγες, αντιστράφηκαν σε μια πενταετία; Στο κείμενο αυτό επιχειρώ να δώσω μια απάντηση για αυτή τη μεταστροφή. Μια απάντηση που αποπειράται να συμπεριλάβει τις πολλαπλές και αλληλοδια-πλεκόμενες κλίμακες του χώρου, από το σώμα στο παγκόσμιο, ανιχνεύοντας την παραγωγή διαφορετικών μορφών οριοθετήσεων και συμπεριλήψεων, εντοπισμών και εκτοπισμών.
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Ένα σχόλιο για τις πολλαπλές κλίμακες του χώρου σε καιρό πανδημίας.
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In this essay I outline the ways in which κρίση (krísi – crisis) and μετανάστευση (metanástefsi – migration) have been interrelated during the last decade in Greece. By being grounded in concrete times and places, I argue that these... more
In this essay I outline the ways in which κρίση (krísi – crisis) and μετανάστευση (metanástefsi – migration) have been interrelated during the last decade in Greece. By being grounded in concrete times and places, I argue that these interrelations, far from being stable and fixed, take their form and meaning within wider social, economic and political contexts.
Research Interests:
City Plaza is a space where strong collective social and political experiences are produced, where self-organisation, cooperation, and resistance are manufactured–for a short time or for a while longer.... more
City Plaza is a space where strong collective social and political experiences are produced, where self-organisation, cooperation, and resistance are manufactured–for a short time or for a while longer.
https://antipodefoundation.org/2017/11/13/intervention-city-plaza/
https://antipodefoundation.org/2017/11/13/intervention-city-plaza/
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In Greece "emergency" is invoked in legislation in order to open the door to private companies to take part in the control and management of migration. But these policies don’t simply facilitate the outsourcing of policing or management... more
In Greece "emergency" is invoked in legislation in order to open the door to private companies to take part in the control and management of migration. But these policies don’t simply facilitate the outsourcing of policing or management of detention centers; they signify the outsourcing of political and social responsibility over the lives of thousands of people.
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The routes of migrants without papers towards Western European countries often converge at the city of Patras, a city in the western borders of Greece with a port connecting to Italy. Around 2001, the migrants who lived there... more
The routes of migrants without papers towards Western European countries often converge at the city of Patras, a city in the western borders of Greece with a port connecting to Italy. Around 2001, the migrants who lived there temporarily—until they managed to cross the border—built a squatter settlement. Following a period of social
and political tensions, the settlement was finally demolished in 2009.
In this paper I approach the settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, a place of the “other,” the different, as conceptualized by Michel Foucault and others. Heterotopias are like counter-sites in which all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Reading the
migrants’ settlement as a heterotopic space helps unpack invisible aspects not only of the settlement but also of the city. Exploring the settlement and the city as interrelated spaces, I discuss the social, economic and spatial relations that operate in each of those spaces and also connect them: how borders and migrant illegality operate in
the level of everyday life; how space, time, practices and strategies are renegotiated within several geographic scales, from the body to the global. By approaching the migrants’ settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, I propose a reading of borders, migration and urban space as processes where several levels of conflict, power and resistance operate.
and political tensions, the settlement was finally demolished in 2009.
In this paper I approach the settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, a place of the “other,” the different, as conceptualized by Michel Foucault and others. Heterotopias are like counter-sites in which all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Reading the
migrants’ settlement as a heterotopic space helps unpack invisible aspects not only of the settlement but also of the city. Exploring the settlement and the city as interrelated spaces, I discuss the social, economic and spatial relations that operate in each of those spaces and also connect them: how borders and migrant illegality operate in
the level of everyday life; how space, time, practices and strategies are renegotiated within several geographic scales, from the body to the global. By approaching the migrants’ settlement in Patras as a heterotopia, I propose a reading of borders, migration and urban space as processes where several levels of conflict, power and resistance operate.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Τα κέντρα κράτησης μεταναστών δεν αποτελούν μια καινούρια συνθήκη στην Ελλάδα. Μέσα στην τελευταία δεκαπενταετία όμως που υπάρχουν χώροι κράτησης στην ελληνική επικράτεια, έχει αλλάξει σημαντικά ο τρόπος λειτουργίας τους και οι τεχνικοί,... more
Τα κέντρα κράτησης μεταναστών δεν αποτελούν μια καινούρια συνθήκη στην Ελλάδα. Μέσα στην τελευταία δεκαπενταετία όμως που υπάρχουν χώροι κράτησης στην ελληνική επικράτεια, έχει αλλάξει σημαντικά ο τρόπος λειτουργίας τους και οι τεχνικοί, ανθρωπιστικοί και νομικοί όροι που ρυθμίζουν την κράτηση. Η πιο σημαντική διαφορά έγκειται στον ρόλο που καλούνται να παίξουν τα κέντρα στη διαχείριση της κρίσης: οι μετανάστες/-τριες παρουσιάζονται και αντιμετωπίζονται σαν πρόβλημα και σαν απειλή, καθίστανται υποκείμενα και αντικείμενα του φόβου, ενώ αυτός ο φόβος γίνεται συστατικό της καθημερινής ζωής όχι μόνο για τους μετανάστες αλλά και για τους ντόπιους. Άλλωστε τα κέντρα κράτησης και η εμπέδωσή τους δεν αποσκοπούν μόνο στο να πειθαρχήσουν τα σώματα των εγκλείστων και την εργατική δύναμη την οποία φέρουν, αλλά, και ίσως κυρίως, όσους/-ες είναι εκτός τους.
Όμως, παρά τις επίμονες προσπάθειες ποινικοποίησης της μετανάστευσης μέσα από τον κυρίαρχο λόγο και τις εφαρμοζόμενες πολιτικές, φουντώνει ένα κύμα αντίστασης τόσο από τους ίδιους τους μετανάστες με συνεχείς διαμαρτυρίες, εξεγέρσεις και απεργίες πείνας όσο και από ένα σημαντικό τμήμα της κοινωνίας που προβάλλει τη συνύπαρξη, την αλληλεγγύη και την αμοιβαιότητα ως τρόπους «αντιμετώπισης» του μεταναστευτικού «προβλήματος».
Όμως, παρά τις επίμονες προσπάθειες ποινικοποίησης της μετανάστευσης μέσα από τον κυρίαρχο λόγο και τις εφαρμοζόμενες πολιτικές, φουντώνει ένα κύμα αντίστασης τόσο από τους ίδιους τους μετανάστες με συνεχείς διαμαρτυρίες, εξεγέρσεις και απεργίες πείνας όσο και από ένα σημαντικό τμήμα της κοινωνίας που προβάλλει τη συνύπαρξη, την αλληλεγγύη και την αμοιβαιότητα ως τρόπους «αντιμετώπισης» του μεταναστευτικού «προβλήματος».
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Με αυξανόμενη ένταση διαδραματίζεται τα τελευταία χρόνια η δημόσια συζήτηση για την θεωρούμενη ως μεγάλη αύξηση του αριθμού των μεταναστών/ριων που επιχειρούν να μπουν στη χώρα χωρίς χαρτιά. Δεν είναι όμως τόσο το ερώτημα καθαυτό που... more
Με αυξανόμενη ένταση διαδραματίζεται τα τελευταία χρόνια η δημόσια συζήτηση για την θεωρούμενη ως μεγάλη αύξηση του αριθμού των μεταναστών/ριων που επιχειρούν να μπουν στη χώρα χωρίς χαρτιά. Δεν είναι όμως τόσο το ερώτημα καθαυτό που έχει σημασία («πόσοι;»), όσο το πλαίσιο μέσα στο οποίο τίθεται αλλά και οι τρόποι με τους οποίους απαντιέται.
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Ο έλεγχος της μετανάστευσης, πέρα από πολιτικά κερδοφόρα επιχείρηση –καθώς παράγει ιεραρχήσεις και διαχωρισμούς εντός της εργατικής τάξης, αλλά και αποδιοπομπαίους τράγους για τη διαχείριση κάθε λογής κρίσεων– αποτελεί και μια οικονομικά... more
Ο έλεγχος της μετανάστευσης, πέρα από πολιτικά κερδοφόρα επιχείρηση –καθώς παράγει ιεραρχήσεις και διαχωρισμούς εντός της εργατικής τάξης, αλλά και αποδιοπομπαίους τράγους για τη διαχείριση κάθε λογής κρίσεων– αποτελεί και μια οικονομικά κερδοφόρα επιχείρηση για τις οικονομικές ελίτ. Με άλλα λόγια, ένας συνεχής, χαμηλής έντασης και μερικά αναποτελεσματικός «πόλεμος» εναντίον του εξωτερικού και εσωτερικού εχθρού που ενσαρκώνει η μετανάστευση τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες, είναι εξαιρετικά κερδοφόρος για την πολεμική βιομηχανία, για τις εταιρείες security, αλλά και για κάθε λογής «γνωστούς» επιχειρηματίες.
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This dissertation is an attempt to trace the articulations and interrelations of migration, borders and boundaries. Migrants are conceived as active agents and migration as a social, economic, spatial and cultural process that takes place... more
This dissertation is an attempt to trace the articulations and interrelations of migration, borders and boundaries. Migrants are conceived as active agents and migration as a social, economic, spatial and cultural process that takes place in and at the same time produces transnational social fields. Working on the idea of borders as regimes, I will try to trace their production in concrete times and spaces by a multitude of actors whose practices relate to each other but are not ordered in the form of a central logic or rationality; rather, the concept of “regime” implies a space of negotiating practices. From this point of view borders are conceptualized not only as social and spatial structures but mainly as social and political spaces of negotiation that expand from the borderlands to the very centre of capital cities. One basic stand point of research is everyday life as a theoretical and methodological concept. Inspired by H. Lefebvre, I conceptualize every day life not only as...