https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:21 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/punitive-inclusion-the-political-economy-of-irregular-migration-in-the-margins-of-europe/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:21 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/punitive-inclusion-the-political-economy-of-irregular-migration-in-the-margins-of-europe/ Continued]]> Focusing on the treatment irregular migrants have received in Greece since the early 1990s, this article seeks to advance critical scholarship on how European countries have responded to migration from impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged parts of the globe over recent decades. The article first draws attention to ways in which purportedly exclusionary approaches to irregular migration control may be imperfect by design, insofar as restrictions are imposed on outflows to secure an exploitable workforce that serves important labour market needs and, by extension, dominant political interests in the ‘host’ state. Moving on to address the precise ways in which labour exploitation of irregular migrants is brought into effect, the article demonstrates how seemingly unrelated state policies and practices regarding matters of migration, welfare, employment and criminal justice, as well as certain manifestations of anti-migrant violence by non-state actors, may act in combination with one another to this end.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-politics-of-austerity-and-the-affective-economy-of-hostility-racialised-gendered-violence-and-crises-of-belonging-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:32 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-politics-of-austerity-and-the-affective-economy-of-hostility-racialised-gendered-violence-and-crises-of-belonging-in-greece/ Continued]]> In this article I examine the friction between xenophobic discourses on migration and the crisis caused by the politics of austerity in Greece. On the one hand, an ‘excessive’ influx of migration is managed through violent means by the state and the para-state; on the other, a ‘scarcity’ of domestic resources is blamed for a ‘rise’ in racist attitudes, and the political ascent of a fascist movement-cum-parliamentary party, Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn). ‘Crisis’ is said to give rise to ‘austerity’—and hostility. Inverting the inverted causal relationship between crisis, austerity and hostility, I problematise representations of hostility towards migrants that construct racism as a consequence of economic conditions or even as the antidote to the ‘bitter pill’ Greeks have been forced to swallow. I examine how racialised and gendered violence secures the politics of austerity in Greece focusing on three eruptions of violence (the feminicidal acid attack on Konstantina Kouneva, the murder of Shehzad Luqman and the drowning of eleven refugees near the island of Farmakonisi). I draw concrete connections between the politics of austerity and what, drawing on Sara Ahmed, might be termed an ‘affective economy of hostility’ that articulates racialised and gendered modes of belonging and estrangement. Some bodies are rendered vulnerable and precarious, while others assert an entitled relation to national space while being economically disentitled by austerity measures.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-crisis-before-the-crisis-violence-and-urban-neoliberalization-in-athens/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:16 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-crisis-before-the-crisis-violence-and-urban-neoliberalization-in-athens/ Continued]]> The “Greek crisis” was officially inaugurated on May 2010 with the loan the Greek government took from the IMF-European Union-European Central Bank troika, the largest a country had ever taken (€110 bn). Since then, the social implications of this crisis have been dramatic. The form and the scale of social phenomena observed today in Greece and particularly in Athens–e.g., extreme poverty and inequality, profound police violence, organized racist violence–are unprecedented for the country. Nevertheless, a diachronic examination of some socio-spatial aspects of Athens reveals that the social character of the current crisis has been taking shape for some time. This article aims shed light on the social shape of the crisis by outlining three such socio-spatial dimensions as they materialized in the case of Athens during 1990s and 2000s: first, the emergence of new forms of social exclusion and inequality; second, the vast project of urban (re)development and the new spatialities it produced, and third the emergence of novel forms of political and xenophobic violence.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/beyond-spontaneity-crisis-violence-and-collective-action-in-athens/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:12 +0000 http://arc.local/items/beyond-spontaneity-crisis-violence-and-collective-action-in-athens/ Continued]]> This article argues for the analytical potentials of the concept of spontaneity in our effort to understand critically the socio-spatial dynamics of Athens, but especially the contemporary collective protest actions in the city. Such critical understanding emerges as a significant task given the current urgency to grasp the capitalist crisis and the collective reactions to it. However, taking into account the re-configuration of extreme-Right violence in the streets of Athens, the article attempts to revisit the Marxist dichotomy between spontaneity and non-spontaneity. Via an anthropological critique of this distinction, the paper suggests an additional point of focus beyond spontaneity.

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