https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:51:14 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/practices-of-solidarity-in-athens-reconfigurations-of-public-space-and-urban-citizenship/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/practices-of-solidarity-in-athens-reconfigurations-of-public-space-and-urban-citizenship/ Continued]]> The multi-faceted crisis that has hit Greece and other (southern) European countries has had severe consequences on people’s everyday lives. In an attempt to cope with, but also resist, dramatic changes in lifestyles, incomes and welfare, several initiatives have sprung up all over the country at many different scales, with diverse targets, varying actors and outcomes. Many people have abandoned their privacy to participate in public actions of solidarity, in initiatives that often involve new or alternative uses of urban space. It seems that practices of solidarity and claims around material spaces are becoming an important ‘laboratory’ for shaping a different public sphere. Drawing from relevant examples in Athens, the paper aims to reflect on the ways in which such practices and claims arise and develop; how different types of rights and forms of doing politics are enacted in situations of crisis and deprivation; and finally how such practices reconfigure public space and shape notions of belonging, which ultimately (re)define urban citizenship.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/migrant-protest-in-times-of-crisis-politics-ethics-and-the-sacred-from-below/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:52 +0000 http://arc.local/items/migrant-protest-in-times-of-crisis-politics-ethics-and-the-sacred-from-below/ Continued]]> This paper focuses on the 300 Migrant Hunger Strikers event in Greece to explore the material conditions of possibility for migrant politics in times of crisis. It identifies three elements that played determinant roles in the articulation of the event: the politics of equality enacted by migrants, the ethics of hospitality and witnessing enacted by the Greek activists and host populations and the sacredness of the event. Critically engaging with the theories of Rancière, Derrida, Agamben and Durkheim, this paper demonstrates how these elements encountered and how their encounter helped migrants to achieve rights, albeit limited and temporary. Moving beyond the particularity of the event, this paper also highlights the event’s importance for migrant politics in times of austerity, and increased surveillance and racism against migrants. Despite its limited and temporary success, the event demonstrates how a politics of equality, ethical openness and respect for human life can form the basis of true cosmopolitan universality. The event also demonstrates how cosmopolitan universality is constructed from below by the migrants, who despite their undocumented status, engaged in an act of citizenship to demand equality.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/an-unexpected-reform-in-the-maelstrom-of-the-crisis-greek-nationality-in-the-times-of-the-memoranda-2010-2015/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:47 +0000 http://arc.local/items/an-unexpected-reform-in-the-maelstrom-of-the-crisis-greek-nationality-in-the-times-of-the-memoranda-2010-2015/ Continued]]> The article discusses the path of an important reform of the Greek Citizenship Code, starting from the initial introduction of the Citizenship Law in 2010, the public debate and reactions that followed leading to its partial annulation as unconstitutional in 2012, and finally, the developments until its restoration with a new law in 2016. This initiative introducing radical reforms for the Greek context took place in the midst of the public debt crisis, and thus has not been discussed accordingly. Until then, the issue of Greek nationality represented a non-issue in the political agenda of the country, since the issue of citizenship was considered ‘nationally sensitive’. The paper examines how such a reform is pushed forward during extremely difficult conditions, an unprecedented economic and political crisis, coupled by the largest refugee wave in the recent history of the country, having still an uncertain future/outcome.

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