Vol. 15 No. 1 (2024)
Research Article

Homeless migrants’ commoning practices. “Our House” solidarity project in Athens’ Omonoia square

PDF
Charalampos Tsavdaroglou
School of Spatial Planning and Development, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Omonoia Square, almost no people are in the square, and the advertising posters from a commercial center are clearly visible as there is almost no vegetation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.c.tsa.15.1.054.063
Categories

Published 2024-03-31

Keywords

  • migrants,
  • commoning,
  • homeless,
  • Athens,
  • Omonoia Square

How to Cite

Tsavdaroglou , Charalampos. 2024. “Homeless migrants’ Commoning Practices. ‘Our House’ Solidarity Project in Athens’ Omonoia Square”. European Journal of Geography 15 (1):54-66. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.c.tsa.15.1.054.063.

Copyright (c) 2024 Charalampos Tsavdaroglou

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2023-11-09
Accepted 2024-03-30
Published 2024-03-31

Abstract

In recent years, Athens has been at the center of the so-called “migration crisis”, as thousands of newcomers have found temporary or permanent refuge in the city. However, because the state’s housing policies have reduced the available positions of those who have the right to settle in state accommodation structures, an ever-increasing number of newcomers facing homelessness and live in city’s streets, parks and squares. In this context, a solidarity collective kitchen named “Our House” was self-organized by a group of newcomers on the city’s central square, Omonoia Square, where it remained for two years. Our House project activities, based on mutual help and commoning practices, claimed the homeless migrants’ right to the center of the city. However, in 2019 the square was turned into a construction site and Our House activities were prohibited. This paper is based on ethnographic urban research and discusses the solidarity practices of homeless migrants through the theoretical approaches of the right to the city, as well as critical approaches to homelessness and urban commons. The main findings of the paper focus on highlighting the homeless migrants’ commoning practices, and the paper’s contribution lies in the enrichment of theoretical discussions on the right to the city and urban commoning practices through the case homeless migrants’s self-organization.

Highlights:

  • The question of the homeless migrants’ right to the center of the city
  • There is a lack of addressing the solidarity commoning practices among homeless migrants
  • Urban regeneration plans vs. homeless people
PDF

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

References

  1. Agustín, Ó. G., & Jørgensen, M.B. (2019). Solidarity and the ‘Refugee crisis’ in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan.
  2. Amster, R. (2003). Patterns of exclusion: Sanitizing space, criminalizing homelessness. Social Justice, 30(1), 195–221. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768172
  3. Andriopoulos, T. (2015). Omonia square as a limit and a narrator. Athens Social Atlas. https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/omonia-square/
  4. Arapoglou, V., & Gounis, K. (2017). Contested Landscapes of Poverty and Homelessness in Southern Europe: Reflections from Athens. Cham: Pal-grave Macmillan.
  5. Arvanitides, P., Papagiannitsis, G., Desli, A.Z., Vergou, P., & Gourgouliani, S. (2021). Attitudes towards refugees & immigrants in Greece: a nation-al-local comparative analysis. European Journal of Geography, 2(3), 039–055. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.p.arv.12.3.39.55
  6. Association of Graduate School Architects - Panhellenic Union of Architects. (2020). Open letter to the Mayor of Athens on the subject: Omonia Square, “Interference in public common space”. [Ανοιχτή επιστολή προς τον Δήμαρχο Αθηναίων με θέμα: Πλατεία Ομονοίας, “Παρέμ-βαση σε δημόσιο κοινόχρηστο χώρο”] (in Greek). https://www.sadas-pea.gr/anoichti-epistoli-pros-ton-dimarcho-athinaion-me-thema-plateia-omonoias-paremvasi-se-dimosio-koinochristo-choro/
  7. Association of Graduate School Architects - Panhellenic Union of Architects. (2019). Announcement regarding the works carried out in Omonia square. [Ανακοίνωση ΣΑΔΑΣ – ΠΕΑ σχετικά με τις εργασίες που εκτελούνται στην πλατεία Ομόνοιας] (in Greek). https://www.sadas-pea.gr/anakoinosi-sadas-pea-schetika-me-tis-ergasies-poy-ekteloyntai-stin-plateia-omonoias/
  8. Athens Insider (2021). A tale of two squares: Omonia and Syntagma. September 26. https://www.athensinsider.com/a-tale-of-two-squares-omonia-and-syntagma/
  9. Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2011). Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. New York: Routledge.
  10. Bakoyannis, K. (2020). Instagram post, February 19, 2020. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8w0qgoFGPe/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=afdcf148-acfe-48c1-9c97-c2e3d396cf85
  11. Beeckmans, L., Singh, A., & Gola, A. (2022). Introduction. Rethinking the intersection of home and displacement from a spatial perspective. In Beeckmans, L., Gola, A., Singh, A. and Heynen, H. (eds) Making Home(s) in Displacement Critical Reflections on a Spatial Practice. pp 11-42. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
  12. Blomley, N. (2008). Enclosure, common right and the property of the poor. Social & Legal Studies, 17(3), 311–331. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663908093966
  13. Belloni, M., & Massa, A. (2022). Accumulated homelessness: Analysing protracted displacement along Eritreans’ life histories. Journal of Refugee Studies, 35(2), 929–947. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feab035
  14. Border Violence Monitoring Network. 2020. The Black Book of Pushbacks.
  15. Christodoulopoulou, (2023). I consider the "sunbathing" for immigrants a badge of honor. [Θεωρώ παράσημο το «λιάζονται» για τους μετανά-στες] (in Greek). https://www.tanea.gr/2023/05/12/politics/tasia-xristodoulopoulou-theoro-parasimo-to-liazontai-gia-tous-metanastes/
  16. Claus, P. (2021). The Past — and Future — of Athens’ Omonia Square. Greek Reporter, May 4. https://greekreporter.com/2021/05/04/the-past-and-future-of-athens-omonia-square/
  17. Clocke, P., May, J., & Johnsen, S. (2008). Performativity and affect in the homeless city. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, 241-263. https://doi.org/10.1068/d84j
  18. Davis, M. (1992). City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books.
  19. Daya, S., & Wilkins, N. (2012). The body, the shelter, and the shebeen: An affective geography of homelessness in South Africa. Cultural Geogra-phies, 20(3), 357–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474012469886
  20. DeVerteuil, G., May, J., & Von Mahs, J. (2009). Complexity not collapse: recasting the geographies of homelessness in a ‘punitive’ age. Progress in Human Geography, 33(5), 646–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508104995
  21. E-kathimerini (2022). Is there a vision for Omonia? June 6, https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/1186015/is-there-a-vision-for-omonia/
  22. Fisher, L, & Jorgensen, M. B. (2021). “We are here to stay” vs. “Europe’s Best Hotel”: Hamburg and Athens as geographies of solidarity. Antipode, 53(4), 1062–1082. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520980053
  23. Gill, J. (2011). Athens. Oxford: Signal Books Limited.
  24. Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London and New York: Verso.
  25. Hennigan, B. (2019). From Madonna to Marx: Towards a re-theorisation of homelessness. Antipode, 51(1), 148–168. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12410
  26. Hilbrandt, H., Dimitrakou, I. & Pattaroni, L. (2023). Towards a radical housing responsibility. Radical Housing Journal, 5(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.54825/CAKG9224
  27. Hodgetts, D., & Stolte, O. (2016). Homeless people’s leisure practices within and beyond urban socio-scapes. Urban Studies, 53(5), 899–914. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098015571236
  28. Hordyk, S. R., Soltane, S. B., & Hanley, J. (2014). Sometimes you have to go under water to come up: A poetic, critical realist approach to docu-menting the voices of homeless immigrant women. Qualitative Social Work, 13(2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325013491448
  29. Juul, K. (2022). Welcoming the unwelcome: Migration industries and border control for homeless job-seeking migrants in central Copenhagen. Urban Studies, 59(11), 2369–2387. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221094399
  30. Khosravi, S. (2010). “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  31. Kourachanis, N. (2017). Homelessness policies in crisis Greece: The case of the housing and reintegration program. European Journal of Home-lessness, 11(1), 1–22.
  32. Lacione, M. (2013). Homeless people and the city of abstract machines: Assemblage thinking and the performative approach to homelessness. Area, 45(3), 358–364. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12045
  33. Lafazani, O. (2021). The significance of the insignificant: Borders, urban space, everyday life. Antipode, 53(4), 1143-1160. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12703
  34. Lafazani, O. (2018a). Kρίση and μετανάστευση in Greece: From illegal migrants to refugees. Sociology, 52(3), 619–625. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518765559
  35. Lafazani, O. (2018b). Homeplace Plaza: Challenging the border between host and hosted. South Atlantic Quarterly, 117(4), 896–904. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-7166043
  36. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on Cities. Oxford: Blackwell.
  37. Martin, D., Minca, C. and Katz, I. (2020). Rethinking the camp: On spatial technologies of power and resistance. Progress in Human Geography, 44(4), 743–768. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519856702
  38. Martini, N. (2021). Mooring in the homeless city. A practice theoretical account of homeless urban dwelling and emplacement. Qualitative Soci-ology Review, 17(3), 56–75. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.17.3.03
  39. May, J., & Cloke, P. (2014). Modes of attentiveness: Reading for difference in geographies of homelessness. Antipode, 46(4), 894–920. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12043
  40. Merrifield, A. (2011). The right to the city and beyond. Notes on a Lefebvrian re-conceptualization. City, 15(3-4), 473–481. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2011.595116
  41. Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City. Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
  42. Mitchell, D. (1997). The annihilation of space by law: the roots and implications of anti-homeless laws in the United States. Antipode, 29(3), 303–336. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00048
  43. Moll, L. (2023). The nomos of mobile commons: towards a nomadic constitution of Europe. Citizenship Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2023.2237424
  44. Morgan, B. (2022). What fresh hell? UK policies targeting homeless migrants for deportation after Brexit and Covid-19. Critical Social Policy, 42(1), 150–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183211015621
  45. Noussia, A., & Lyons, M. (2009). Inhabiting spaces of liminality: Migrants in Omonia, Athens. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35(4), 601–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830902765186
  46. Özkan, D., & Baykal Büyüksaraç, G. (2020). Commoning the City. Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics and Ethics. London and New York. Routledge.
  47. Papadopoulos, D., & Tsianos. V. (2013). After citizenship: Autonomy of migration, organizational ontology and mobile commons.” Citizenship Studies, 17(2), 178–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2013.780736
  48. Papagikas, G. (2020). A fountain (instead) for Omonia square. A critique of the regeneration plan. [Ένα συντριβάνι (αντί) για την πλατεία Ομο-νοίας. Μια κριτική στο σχέδιο ανάπλασης] [in Greek]. Void Network. https://voidnetwork.gr/2020/02/22/plateia-omonoias/
  49. Papatzani, E. (2021). Encountering everyday racist practices: Sociospatial negotiations of immigrant settlement in Athens, Greece. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(1), 61–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12984
  50. Papoutsi, A. (2021). Temporal bordering in the space of the camp: Producing and contesting abandonment in Skaramagas and Elaionas camps in Athens. Political Geography 89, 102423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102423
  51. Petridis, P. (2020). The circle of Omonia: choosing the shape of the past [Ο κύκλος της Ομόνοιας: επιλέγοντας το σχήμα του παρελθόντος] [in Greek]. Archetypo, April 13. https://www.archetype.gr/blog/arthro/o-kiklos-tis-omonias-epilegontas-to-schima-tou-parelthontos
  52. Sanò, G., Storato, G., & Della Puppa, F. (2021). Interstitial urban spaces: housing strategies and the use of the city by homeless asylum seekers and refugees in Trento, Italy. Social Anthropology, 29(4), 976–991. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13084
  53. Sapounakis, A. (2015). The homeless: The increasing size of a vulnerable group. Athens Social Atlas. https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/housing-shortage/
  54. Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2022). Against the Commons. A Radical History of Urban Planning. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press.
  55. Sheller, M. (2022). Mobile commoning: Reclaiming indigenous, Caribbean, Maroon, and migrant commons. Praktyka Teoretyczna, 46(4), 29–52. https://doi.org/10.19195/prt.2022.4.2
  56. Smith, N. (1996). The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge.
  57. Stavrides, S. (2023a). Common space creation: can architecture help? (Towards a provisional manifesto). The Journal of Architecture, 28(1), 154–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2023.2179097
  58. Stavrides, S. (2023b). Commoning urban design. A research programme. In Kamalipour, H., Aelbrecht, P. & Peimani N. (eds) The Routledge Hand-book of Urban Design Research Methods. pp. 54-65. New York: Routledge.
  59. Stavrides, S. (2016). Common Space. The City as Commons. London: Zed Books.
  60. Stavrides, S. (2014). Emerging common spaces as a challenge to the city of crisis. City, 18(4/5), 546–550. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2014.939476
  61. Theodorikakou, O., Alamanou, A., Katsadoros, K. (2013). "Neo-homelessness" and the Greek Crisis. European Journal of Homelessness, 7(2), 203–210.
  62. Trade Association of Athens, (2019). Trade Association of Athens 's initiative to “make Omonia like it used to be” [Πρωτοβουλία του Ε.Σ.Α για «να γίνει η Ομόνοια όπως παλιά»]. https://www.esathena.gr/el/protoboylia-toy-esa-gia-na-ginei-i-omonoia-opos-palia
  63. Trimikliniotis, N., Parsanoglou, D. and Tsianos, V. (2022). Mobile Commons in the Pre-Pandemic, Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Era: Drawing from Mobility Experiences in Post-Migrant Times. Praktyka Teoretyczna, 46(4), 49–92. https://doi.org/ 10.19195/prt.2022.4.3
  64. Tsavdaroglou, C., & Lalenis, K. (2023). Post-democratic governance in refugee camps versus newcomers’ architectural housing commons in Ath-ens and Thessaloniki. The Journal of Architecture, 28(1), 50–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2023.2170446
  65. Tsavdaroglou, C., & Kaika, M. (2022). The refugees’ right to the centre of the city. City branding versus city commoning in Athens. Urban Studies, 59(6), 1130–1147. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098021997009
  66. Tsavdaroglou, C., & Lalenis, K. (2020). Housing commons vs. state spatial policies of refugee camps in Athens and Thessaloniki. Urban Planning, 5(3), 163-176. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v5i3.2924
  67. Tsavdaroglou, C. (2018). The newcomers’ right to the common space: The case of Athens during the refugee crisis. ACME, An International Jour-nal for Critical Geographies, 17(2), 376–401. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1463
  68. Tsitselikis, K. (2019). Refugees in Greece: Facing a multifaceted labyrinth. International Migration, 57(2), 158-175. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12473
  69. UNHCR. (2023). Greece, Mediterranean Situation. Operation Data Portal, Refugee Situations. https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5179
  70. UNHCR. (2009). Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas. https://www.unhcr.org/protection/hcdialogue%20/4ab356ab6/unhcr-policy-refugee-protection-solutions-urban-areas.html
  71. Volont, L. & Smets, P. (2022). The politics and aesthetics of the urban commons: Navigating the gaze of the city, the state, the market. Social Inclusion, 10(1), 84–90. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v10i1.5392