Multiple spatial practices and scales within and beyond City Plaza, Athens

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• migration
• solidarity
• squats
• refugees
• athens