https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:45 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/intensita-precariecorpi-sessuati-nelle-strade-e-nellepiazze-della-grecia/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:45 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/intensita-precariecorpi-sessuati-nelle-strade-e-nellepiazze-della-grecia/ Continued]]> This essay is concerned with the gendered body politics emerging in theantiausterity protest sphere forming in Greece in the context of an ongoing debt crisis. How do bodies, subjects, and collectivities come into play when protesting modalities of power thatforeclose the conditions that make it possible to contest them? How does protesting theneoliberal regime of knowledge and power encompass processes of gendered, raced, andclassed subjectivation? How might it also unsettle the gender, race, and class norms thatregulate who is admissible to established spaces of intelligibility (including the space of political subjectivity and public protest)? How is the possibility for plural gendered protestactivated in a regime of power that depletes certain livelihoods and subsumes all politicaldiscourse under the unmarked universal of economic management?

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/on-the-politics-of-queer-resistance-and-survival-athena-athanasiou-in-conversation-with-vassiliki-kolocotroni-and-dimitris-papanikolaou/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:44 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/on-the-politics-of-queer-resistance-and-survival-athena-athanasiou-in-conversation-with-vassiliki-kolocotroni-and-dimitris-papanikolaou/ https://toarcheio.org/items/surplus-citizens-struggle-and-nationalism-in-the-greek-crisis/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:25 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/surplus-citizens-struggle-and-nationalism-in-the-greek-crisis/ Continued]]> The crisis in Greece has elicited the full spectrum of responses – from optimism for a left parliamentary politics inspired by Syriza’s electoral victory, to pessimism about the intransigence of the EU and calls for the reinstatement of full national sovereignty in Europe. In Surplus Citizens, Dimitra Kotouza questions the terms of the debate by demonstrating how the national framing of social contestation posed obstacles to transformative collective action, but also how this framing has been challenged. Analysing the increasing superfluousness of subordinate classes in Greece as part of a global phenomenon with racialised and gendered dimensions, the book interrogates the strengths, contradictions and limits of collective action and identity in the crisis, from the movement of the squares and neighbourhood assemblies, to new forms of labour activism, environmental struggles, immigrant protests, anti-fascism and pro-refugee activism. Arguing against the strategic fixation on unified identities and pointing instead to the transformative potential of internal dispute within movements, Surplus Citizens highlights the relevance of a discussion of Greece to collective action beyond it, as we continue to traverse a global financial crisis that has provoked conflicts over nationalism, immigration and the rise of neo-fascism.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/back-to-basics-stateless-women-and-children-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/back-to-basics-stateless-women-and-children-in-greece/ Continued]]> European societies are effectively witnessing a growing refugee crisis in tandem with the ongoing economic crisis in recent years. Within this climate, migration is at risk of being seen more than ever before as an additional ‘burden’ that societies have to ‘carry’ and it is sometimes even questioned why it should be accommodated or respected at all. This paper draws on empirical research from Greece to examine changing European societies, with a particular focus on how the crisis is affecting the most vulnerable members of society, the stateless children and women migrants and refugees.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/migrant-domestic-workers-family-community-and-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/migrant-domestic-workers-family-community-and-crisis/ Continued]]> This article examines the consequences of the economic crisis in Greece on the families and community organizations of migrant domestic workers. After spending more than a decade in individualized low-status jobs, migrant women are facing the effects of the economy on their primary and secondary solidarity groups, families, and communities. The research suggests that although this tendency is not new, it has been greatly exacerbated by the ongoing recession and has resulted in the emergence of new forms and perceptions of family and community. These changes further undermine the social position of migrant women, who were one of the most atomized and vulnerable sectors of the workforce even before the advent of the economic crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture-2/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture-2/ Continued]]> In the political fluidity of our times, the dismal economic situation in Greece is perhaps extreme but indicative of a deepening crisis in Europe, which is expanding, both geographically and socially. Contrary to the dominant rhetoric, austerity measures and pacts imposed on Greece, Portugal, Spain – and later Cyprus – do not seem to provide effective remedies. On the contrary, they seem to plunge entire areas and groups of people into a vicious cycle of rising unemployment, shrinking incomes and deep impoverishment. In the context of this rhetoric, an almost exclusive emphasis on the macro-economic aspects of the crisis, seems to “expel” from public debate the fact that there are effects of austerity policies that are unevenly distributed, inscribed as they are on existing inequalities: inequalities among places, between women and men, locals and migrants, big and small employers, secure and precarious workers and, most importantly, intersections of these. This paper engages with some of the less debated aspects of the crisis in Athens, with a focus on the complex and usually invisible ways in which it impacts on women. It draws upon research in a low-income neighbourhood of Athens and focuses on changes in women’s everyday lives, which have to do with job precarity and job loss, destruction of social services and the re-shaping of care, as well as practices of coping with/resisting the crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/domestic-violence-against-albanian-immigrant-women-in-greece-facing-patriarchy/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:44 +0000 http://arc.local/items/domestic-violence-against-albanian-immigrant-women-in-greece-facing-patriarchy/ Continued]]> Immigration is becoming an increasingly important policy concern in Europe and in many other nations. Importantly, there is an ever-growing number of women who migrate, many of whom are undocumented. Violence against immigrant women is nearly impossible to estimate. However, immigrant women who are abused face multiple barriers to seeking legal protection from the abuse as a result of their migration status, their positions within family and the host country. This paper examines the issues related to intimate partner violence within the Albanian immigrant community in Greece. It explores how the situation in Greek society and the labor market (such as social policies, xenophobic attitudes, job segregation and the prevailing economic crisis) changed the traditional gender roles and distribution of the power within Albanian families and increased intimate partner violence (IPV). The study found evidence of an increase in IPV in the aftermath of the economic crisis, which could be explained by the ideology of familial patriarchy. Battered immigrant women also face challenges in the Greek criminal justice system, which is also influenced by patriarchal values, when they are seeking relief and assistance in cases of interpersonal violence.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/diasporic-youth-identities-of-uncertainty-and-hope-second-generation-albanian-experiences-of-transnational-mobility-in-an-era-of-economic-crisis-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:43 +0000 http://arc.local/items/diasporic-youth-identities-of-uncertainty-and-hope-second-generation-albanian-experiences-of-transnational-mobility-in-an-era-of-economic-crisis-in-greece/ Continued]]> This paper explores various dimensions of ‘gender’ and ‘mobility’ among immigrant youth from a transnational perspective in an era of economic crisis. The extent and parameters of continuity, contestation and change in migrant youth identities are analysed and we suggest that neither gender nor identity are stable categories but are embedded in sociocultural particularities both in the country of residence (Greece) but also in the country of origin (Albania). Through in-depth interviews with 52 participants, all second-generation Albanian immigrants in Greece born to two Albanian parents, the paper addresses youth identification in relation to gendered representations of belonging. The narrative accounts that we have selected and analysed reflect the emotional challenges, constraints and creativity of Albanian youth.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/engendering-security-at-the-borders-of-europe-women-migrants-and-the-mediterranean-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:41 +0000 http://arc.local/items/engendering-security-at-the-borders-of-europe-women-migrants-and-the-mediterranean-crisis/ Continued]]> The dangers facing migrants attempting to reach the EU by boat have been highlighted in many reports and media articles. However, although more and more women are among those trying to reach Europe, little attention has so far been paid to the gendered nature of the insecurities facing these migrants. This article examines the experiences of women arriving in Kos, Greece, as part of a journey to seek protection in Europe, and analyses the ways in which gendered forms of violence, gendered divisions of space and relations of power create specific insecurities for these women.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/volunteering-mothers-engaging-the-crisis-at-a-soup-kitchen-in-northern-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:40 +0000 http://arc.local/items/volunteering-mothers-engaging-the-crisis-at-a-soup-kitchen-in-northern-greece/ Continued]]> The ‘Bank of Love’ is a soup kitchen administered by the Orthodox Church in the town of Xanthi, Northern Greece. Currently operating amidst economic crisis, the Bank of Love occupies approximately fifty volunteering women who cook and distribute 150 meals to the poor daily. Despite the widespread proliferation of the egalitarian and counter-hegemonic notion of ‘solidarity’, these female cooks do not subscribe to its values. Crucially, however, neither do they embrace the hierarchical idioms of ‘philanthropy’, often understood to occupy the other side of the spectrum. In an effort to depart from analytical dichotomies and designatory taxonomies, which might label the cook’s work as acts of either solidarity or philanthropy, this article uses the multivalent and open-ended concept of ‘engagement’. I pay particular attention to two radically different ‘modalities of engagement’. The first modality is contingent on notions of domesticity and occupies these cooks through their identities as women, housemistresses, and mothers. The second modality appropriates the discourses of volunteerism to transform these women into autonomous agents who enter the public sphere in the name of a good cause. I argue that engaging with ‘engagement’ may not only facilitate an understanding of processes of social transformation vis-à-vis articulations of gender, space, and affect, but also offer insights into the construction of the very object(s) of engagement. The Bank of Love bespeaks of a crisis symbolically constructed through the nexus and obligations of kinship, and of a crisis that provides space for the performance of autonomy and empowerment.

]]>