Abstract
Over the past decades, Athens has emerged as both a destination and gateway city for diverse migrant populations. Athenian urban development interrelated with migrants’ settlement dynamics has resulted in a super-diverse and mixed urban environment. This article focuses on the western part of Omonia, in central Athens, Greece, and investigates sociospatial trajectories of migrants’ habitation, entrepreneurship, and appropriation of (semi-)public spaces. It draws on scholarship about everyday encounters where negotiations of difference and interethnic coexistence take place at the very local level. It explores encounters between migrants, as well as between migrants and locals, that are created due to their everyday survival and social needs. The article argues that these ‘place-specific’ and ‘needs-specific’ encounters emerge as ‘micropublics’ that are open to negotiation, manage to disrupt pre-existing social boundaries, and epitomise processes of belonging in the city. The article draws from ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative semi-structured interviews carried out from 2013 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2019.
Highlights
In an era of never-ending forced mobility, migration is constantly reshaping the world, cities, and the local level
Drawing on the scholarship on everyday encounters with difference in super-diverse contexts and aiming to go beyond the ‘ethnic lens’ (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009), this article has offered some insights on Omonia, a superdiverse urban context where newcomers coexist with already-settled migrants and locals (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016; Varsanyi, 2008)
The dynamic context of Omonia is reproduced by the simultaneous existence of a wide range of different housing, entrepreneurship, and leisure activities that unfold its multilevel importance for migrants’ everyday lives in the city: as a place of long-term residence, a pole of attraction for diverse ethnic groups and locals, and as an arrival space for newcomers
Summary
In an era of never-ending forced mobility, migration is constantly reshaping the world, cities, and the local level. Semi-public, or ‘in-between’ spaces, compared to public ones, emerge as capable of providing stronger potentials for the positive negotiation of living with difference, especially when they are related to specific activities, practices, and needs Such ‘spaces of encounters’ (Leitner, 2012), Fraser’s (1992) ‘counterpublics’ and Amin’s (2002) ‘micropublics’ constitute what we might describe as ‘place-specific’ encounters that until today remain open for the contemporary negotiation of difference and interethnic coexistence. These encounters are considered as dynamically open, able to disrupt preconceived boundaries and racial stereotypes (Leitner, 2012), to involve both current subjects and past histories (Ahmed, 2000) and to enact a politics of belonging It is at this particular point that the present article aims to contribute: by investigating ‘place-specific’ and ‘needs-specific’ encounters, as ‘micropublics’ (following Amin’s term) fostering social proximity and coexistence, emerging in everyday spaces where survival and social needs are covered through specific activities and practices. Less attention has been paid to urban contexts where refugee populations have settled since the increased refugee arrivals of 2015, interacting with a wide range of other previously settled ethnic groups (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016), including undocumented migrants (Varsanyi, 2008)
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