Circular movements: Migratory citizenships in anticolonial Athens

Abstract

This essay remaps geographies of belonging in Athens. It thinks the city in circles and circulations, writing an anticolonial Athens made out of nonlinear geographies and histories, anti-border struggles, anticolonial pasts and futures, migrations and mobilisations. The essay writes three circular movements: narrating how Athens is part of a Mediterranean feedback loop in which struggles are in constant circulation; thinking a circular square in the middle of the city as a polis not dictated by ideas of ethnos; and following the ways that people make new choreographies of belonging in the dance circle, finding footwork out of step with the restrictive rhythms of the nation. These movements are forms of spatial resistance, and the essay closes by sharing some methods of movement writing. Through these circular movements, the essay seeks to map ways out of the linear geographies and histories of empire, and the ongoing colonialities of citizenship.