Refugees’ Solidarity City

An increasing body of literature focuses on aspects of humanitarian activities and state immigration policies (Gabiam, 2012; Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015). In this literature refugees are often seen as passive recipients of state and NGO led practices. However, there is little attempt to research how refugees enact moments of agency and how they exercise urban commoning practices, with the support of solidarity groups, based on principles of self-organization and mutual help. The proposed project attempts to fill this gap. Following the recent spatial approaches on the refugees’ right to the city (Trimikliniotis et al., 2015; Tsavdaroglou, 2019), theories of urban commons (Chatterton, 2016; Stavrides, 2016), and approaches on refugees’ solidarity cities (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Atac et al., 2021) the research aims: a) to explore acts and mundane daily embodied relations, practices and encounters of solidarity involved in the everyday life of refugees, b) to examine the way these expressions of solidarity are strengthened or curtailed by institutional migration policies, c) to examine the possibilities of implementing aspects of the refugees’ solidarity cities encountered in other countries in the Greek context.

The project focuses empirically on Greece and in particular, on Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki. These cities are at the epicentre of the refugee crisis. During the period of 2015-2020 more than 1.2 million newcomers entered the country (U.N.H.C.R., 2020), however since March 2016, with the closure of the “Balkan corridor” and the EU-Turkey “common statement” (European Council, 2016), essentially sealing EU borders for third-country nationals, thousands of refugees were trapped in Greece. Mytilene is the capital of Lesvos Island and the main entry point for refugees in East Aegean Sea, Athens is the capital of the country and the main refugee transit city, while Thessaloniki is a passage to northern borders. In 2016 municipalities of Athens and Thessaloniki participated in the European network of “solidarity cities” in order to manage the refugee crisis (Solidarity Cities, 2016) and Lesvos islanders were nominated for the Nobel peace prize for solidarity to refugees (UNHCR, 2016). At the same time, the state accommodation policy provides most refugees with residency in inappropriate camps located in isolated old military bases and abandoned factories. Most of the camps are situated on the outskirts of Athens and Thessaloniki while the Moria refugee camp in Lesvos was destroyed by a fire and replaced by a new inadequate and dangerous campsite. Also, a smaller number of refugees found accommodation through the EU-funded program of ESTIA in rented apartments in urban areas, however the program was terminated in the end of 2020 and some thousands of refugees faced evictions and homelessness (NGOs’ report 2020a). Finally, during the covid-19 pandemic, the living conditions in the state-run camps have deteriorated to such an extent that they have become extremely hazardous, unsanitary and unsafe (NGOs’ report 2020b).

Ιn parallel, refugees build everyday relations that often shape the conditions of forms of solidarity to emerge while at the same time they interact and cooperate with local solidarity groups in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki. These relations and interactions have shaped material infrastructures of solidarity that involve the production of self-organized community centers and alternative housing schemes, with collective kitchens, kindergartens, medicine and clothes stores. In the novel and alternative structures, self-managed as urban commons through participatory processes, locals and refugees take decisions together; they engage and learn from each other’s culturally informed practices and try to overcome preconceptions and stereotypes (Della Porta, 2018; Lafazani, 2018; Tsavdaroglou, 2018). Against an institutionally enforced segregation, solidarity initiatives attempt to produce common spaces for locals and refugees in the center of the cities. Thus, it can be argued that a network of “refugee common spaces” has emerged, that enables refugees to shape a sense of belonging, security and personal wellbeing, and with the support of volunteers and activists to have access to food, health care, education, employment, legal aid and urban social life. However, the sustenance of solidarity spaces is often threatened by local xenophobic reactions and state policies that aim to delimit and cancel the newcomers’ right to the city.

Based on the above context, the RE-CITY project aims to assess and explore practices of refugees’ urban solidarity, the way they are enacted, perceived and articulated in terms of top-down policies and grassroots relationships. Specifically, the project aims to examine the institutional policies concerning refugee issues and the way the newcomers challenge these through the daily reproduction of solidarity common spaces and relations. The project aims to move beyond established perspectives of “humanitarian reason” and “migration governance”, in order to research the refugees’ agency in daily relations of solidarity, self-organized commoning practices and active claims to the right to the city. The research is organized around three unique and relatively unexplored axes:

a) The monitoring, mapping and assessing the institutional and infrastructural framework of refugees’ access to the city in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki, considering it an essential step to their integration paths and a precondition for enjoyment of social and civil rights.

b) The documentation and critical assessment of refugees’ commoning practices in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki. The main research question will be: How refugees’ themselves self-organized beyond the state and NGOs’ support?

c) The creation of the REFUGEE-CITY mobile phone application, which will collect, map and present in one platform the existing state, NGOs’ and urban commoning infrastructures, services, projects and solidarity groups which concern refugees in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki. The REFUGEE-CITY mobile application will also allow refugees to evaluate and comment on the abovementioned structures in a way that their experiences and opinions will be voiced, shared and circulated.

References

Agustín, O. G. & Jørgensen, M. B. (2019). Solidarity cities and cosmopolitanism from below: Barcelona as a refugee city. Social Inclusion, 7(2), 198–207.

Atac, I., Rygiel, K. & Stierl, M. (2021). Building transversal solidarities in European cities: Open harbours, safe communities, home. Critical Sociology, DOI: 10.1177/0896920520980522

Chatterton, P. (2016). Building transitions to post-capitalist urban commons. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41(4), 403–415.

Della Porta, D. (ed.) (2018). Solidarity mobilizations in the “refugee crisis”. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

European Council. (2016). Press release: EU-Turkey statement, 18 March. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18/eu-turkey-statement

Gabiam, N. (2012). When “humanitarianism” becomes “development”: The politics of international aid in Syria’s Palestinian refugee camps. American Anthropologist, 114(1), 95–107.

Ilcan, S. & Rygiel, K. (2015). “Resiliency humanitarianism”: Responsibilizing refugees through humanitarian emergency governance in the Camp. International Political Sociology 9, 333–351.

Lafazani, O. (2018). Homeplace Plaza: Challenging the border between host and hosted. South Atlantic Quarterly, 117(4), 896–904.

NGOs’ report (2020a). Joint letter about the exits of recognized refugees from accommodation and cash assistance. https://www.humanrights360.org/joint-letter-about-the-exits-of-recognized-refugees-from-accommodation-and-cash-assistance/

NGOs’ report (2020b). Greece: Move asylum seekers, migrants to safety. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/24/greece-move-asylum-seekers-migrants-safety

Solidarity Cities (2016). About. https://solidaritycities.eu/about

Stavrides, S. (2016). Common space. The city as commons. London: Zed Books.

Trimikliniotis, N., Parsanoglou, D. & Tsianos, V. (2015). Mobile commons, migrant digitalities and the right to the city. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Tsavdaroglou, C. (2019). Reimagining a Transnational Right to the City: No Border Actions and Commoning Practices in Thessaloniki. Social Inclusion, 7(2), 219–229.

Tsavdaroglou, C. (2018). The newcomers’ right to the common space: The case of Athens during the migrant crisis. ACME, 17(2), 376–401.

U.N.H.C.R. (2020). Refugee situations. Operational portal. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5179

U.N.H.C.R. (2016). Volunteers who saved lives on Lesvos nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/10/57f7732d4/volunteers-saved-lives-lesvos-nominated-nobel-peace-prize.html