Kouki, H. – To Archeio https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:33:04 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 Migrating from Pakistan to Greece: Re-visiting agency in times of crisis https://toarcheio.org/items/migrating-from-pakistan-to-greece-re-visiting-agency-in-times-of-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:50 +0000 http://arc.local/items/migrating-from-pakistan-to-greece-re-visiting-agency-in-times-of-crisis/ Continued]]> This paper focuses on migration from Pakistan to Greece in an attempt to uncover the dynamics of the regulation of irregular migration (and asylum-seeking) in Greece. It examines the factors, policies, and actors that influence the plans, actions, and decisions Pakistanis make before leaving their country and when arriving in Greece. After setting the background against which Pakistanis enter and settle in the country, we trace these migrants’ decision-making process throughout their movement based on a series of qualitative interviews. While a variety of actors and factors are at play in the way people move from the one country to the other, masculinity emerges as the framework within which these come together.

]]> Muslim immigrants and the Greek nation: Theemergence of nationalist intolerance https://toarcheio.org/items/muslim-immigrants-and-the-greek-nation-theemergence-of-nationalist-intolerance/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:22 +0000 http://arc.local/items/muslim-immigrants-and-the-greek-nation-theemergence-of-nationalist-intolerance/ Continued]]> Faced with claims for recognising religious diversity, liberal European democracies have shifted in the last 10 years towards a more restrictive view of integration. This paper seeks to make a contribution to this line of research on how European countries deal with migration-related ethnic and religious diversity today by investigating the case of a southern country, notably Greece. Greece is an interesting case to study: it has by now 20 years of experience as a host country, but still its migrant integration policies are under-developed. In addition Greece it is currently experiencing an acute economic crisis while irregular migration towards the country is on the rise. These developments have contributed to bringing migration on to centre stage in political discourse with a concomitant rise of racist and xenophobic discourses against migrants. This paper takes, as a case study, the public Muslim prayer that took place in several squares of Athens on 18 November 2010 as a peaceful protest against the fact that Athens still does not have a formal mosque. We use this event as an opportunity for interviewing social and political actors directly or indirectly involved in it on their views regarding migration, religious diversity and their accommodation in the Greek public space. We analyse their discourse on whether and under what conditions religious diversity, Islam in particular, should be tolerated or accepted in Greek society. We propose here the notion of ‘nationalist intolerance’ to make sense of Greek discourses and propose a dynamic understanding of tolerance and intolerance as concepts that do not emanate from abstract norms but are rather negotiated in specific contexts.

]]> The Greek crisis and European modernity https://toarcheio.org/items/the-greek-crisis-and-european-modernity/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:22 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-greek-crisis-and-european-modernity/ Continued]]> This collection explores the current economic and political crisis in Greece and more widely in Europe. Greece is used to illustrate and exemplify the contradictions of the dominant paradigm of European modernity, the ruptures that are inherent to it, and the alternative modernity discourses that develop within Europe. By critically reviewing the ‘alternative’ path to modernization that Greece has taken, the authors question whether the current Greek economic and political-moral crisis is the resulting failure of this ‘alternative’ or ‘deviant’ modernization model or whether it is the result of a wider crisis in the dominant European economic and political modernity paradigm.

]]> The spatiality of a social struggle in Greece at the time of the IMF https://toarcheio.org/items/the-spatiality-of-a-social-struggle-in-greece-at-the-time-of-the-imf/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:10 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-spatiality-of-a-social-struggle-in-greece-at-the-time-of-the-imf/ Continued]]> The €110 billion bailout offered to the Greek government in May 2010 by the so-called troika (comprising of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union) was not only the largest of its kind in Western history to date, it also marked the entrance of Greek society into a period of extreme turmoil, with profound changes in the standard of living and the everyday reality of large segments of the population. The country’s extensive public sector saw wage reductions, pension decreases and tax rises. In the private sector mass lay-offs and redundancies became widespread, as did wage reductions and renegotiations of labour contracts.

Against this turbulent backdrop an extraordinary event would soon take place in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki. In early 2011, the beginning of the largest mass hunger strike on European soil saw 300 undocumented migrants, mostly of Maghrebi origin, demand the legalisation of all undocumented migrants in the country.

Regina Mantanika and Hara Kouki, Athens-based researchers and activists, trace the chronology of the strike in the city by looking at the series of different spaces—both public and private—that took turns in hosting it: the Law Faculty of the University of Athens, in which the migrants were quickly made unwelcome; the private mansion in which they found shelter and finally, the public hospitals to which many of them were transferred and in which they ended their strike. Mantanika and Kouki offer us the preliminary findings of their research on these spaces’ dynamics, the way in which they interacted with the strike and how the strike itself transformed some of these spaces in return.

I can hardly think of a more appropriate topic and paper with which to launch my term as editor of the Alternatives section of City, a section set to engage and discuss ‘with groups and individuals who are developing alternative urban visions and practices’. Here we have an extraordinary such example: the practice of a small number of people who nevertheless forced us to rethink the distinctions between private and public, between local and foreign, between a struggle for life and for death. In a historical conjuncture where alternatives are desperately sought but seldom found, where the public retreats in the face of the private, tracing the spatiality of this newly encountered social struggle is a much needed and rewarding exercise.

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