Encountering Everyday Racist Practices: Sociospatial Negotiations of Immigrant Settlement in Athens, Greece

Abstract

This article delineates the ways in which the context of institutional and noninstitutional racist practices, legitimated by the rise of extreme right-wing populism and racism, affects immigrants' everyday lives in Athens, Greece. In this research, I explored the transformations of immigrants' settlement trajectories, coping strategies and tactics, and their bodily interactions when encountering racist violence at the local level, through extensive fieldwork in two case study areas in metropolitan Athens-Omonia and Nikaia. The article is based on previous work on encounters with difference and everyday racism, with the aim of contributing to existing scholarship by examining urban encounters with manifestations of racism in the form of violent practices, which are on a rise not only as exceptional but also as everyday lived events. I demonstrate how immigrants' encounters with police raids and patrols, and with racist violence perpetrated by neo-Nazi militias, transform immigrants' daily lives in the city at the micro-scale. These encounters have an impact not only on immigrants' social relationships, strategies and tactics of settlement, but also on the reconstruction of urban space. My argument is that urban encounter remains an open and dynamic field for negotiation of interethnic cohabitation, as it produces both violent confrontations and sociospatial embodied opportunities for coexistence.

Multiple geographies of precarity: Accommodation policies for asylum seekers in metropolitan Athens, Greece

“…A politics of fear prevailed, constantly representing ‘Otherness’ as an overwhelming threat to be excluded and segregated (Micha and Koutrolikou, 2019). Everyday racism and violent racist practices against the ‘Others’, as well as the fear thereof, affected the spatial practices and habitation of migrants in the city (Papatzani, 2021), multiplying aspects of precarity in their everyday lives in Athens.…”

IDENTITARIAN MOVEMENTS IN THE TOURISTIC CITY: The Marketing of Hate in Verona

“…In this article I have sought to expand avenues of research at the intersection of identitarian movements and urban life by calling attention to local manifestations through everyday practices of bordering and territorialization in cityspace (Brighenti, 2014; Creţan and O'brien, 2019; Papatzani, 2021; Toğral Koca, 2022) and to the utilization of locality in marketing a curated image of the touristic city to likeminded counterparts elsewhere. As a result of the global rise of alliances between identitarian actors, institutional and grassroots, extremist or populist, certain cities such as Verona function as a model that spatially embodies interconnecting themes such as taking back control in one's homeland, anti‐modern nostalgia and reclaiming white European identities as manifested in the traditional family.…”

“…hosts thousands of tourists every day and concomitantly harbours the architectural and cultural symbols of localist pride, such 'maintenance' of a white elite European facade works to set the borders of inside and outside within Verona (Papatzani, 2021;Toğral Koca, 2022). Simultaneously it is applauded elsewhere as a 'reclaiming' of a territory by conferring privileged ownership thereof.…”

“…This may involve ‘patrolling’ the cityspace against migrants and racialized others, who are seen as a threat to coexistence and public order (Gattinara, 2019) and to the native ‘identity’, which is understood in terms of white supremacist undertones. It is in the everyday life of the locality that such a ‘defence of identity’ (Melucci, 1980; Tudor, 2014; Zúquete, 2018) is summoned when challenged in encounters with difference (Papatzani, 2021; Creţan et al ., 2022). Everyday lived experiences of marginalization and exclusion in urban spaces also have a sexual dimension, as it involves boundaries being drawn around appropriate sexual behaviour and the policing of sexual relations or representations (Brown and Browne, 2016).…”

Cross-Regional Sentiment Analysis of VKontakte Communities: Typical Krasnodar vs. Typical Kemerovo

“…Современные исследования социальных сетей и онлайн-сообществ связаны с изучением различных типов или жанров дискурса (медицинского, политического, дидактического, административного, религиозного, дипломатического, рекламного, спортивного) [Wu, Li 2018]; тематик (расист ский дискурс, язык ненависти и неравенства [Papatzani 2021;Pasta 2022]; вопросы вакцинации [Manganello et al 2022]); дискурсивного поведения политических лидеров [Kalantari et al 2020]; фейков и дезинформации [Zhang et al 2021]; аудиовизуальной коммуникации и аудиовизуальных эко систем [Ряб ченко и др. 2021б]; гендерных вопросов [Гнедаш 2022]; социальных последствий цифрового активизма как явления целенаправленного распространения дискурсов и нарративов в онлайнпространстве [Leong et al 2019].…”