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Borderzone Departure Cities: Jumping‐Off Urbanism of Irregular Migration on the Edges of Europe

“…In City Plaza, as in similar squats, this form of radical co‐habitation created new types of hybrid political subjectivity of squatter–activists who were both migrants and non‐migrants, or what Karaliotas and Kapsali (2021) call “equals in solidarity”. As Lafazani (2018:900) notes, migrants were “members of the community with responsibility and obligations” which bonded them to the place and to one another, or as a Kurdish family explained, “we are brothers and sisters here” (City Plaza 2018:18). The fact that there were not only shared tasks but also shared spaces, such as the bar and the dining room, and shared events such as birthdays and Eid, meant that the suspended time until departure was not lost or confiscated but fully experienced by the migrants, often with additional values.…”

“…As a point of closure, which is also a point of departure for new understandings about urban spaces of irregular migrants, we can return to Lafazani (2018:904), who, in one of her reflections on City Plaza, has written that “one of the greatest accomplishments of the project has been that, for hundreds of people, it has transformed what is a transitory period of their lives—an intermediate period of uncertainty, loneliness, intense insecurity, anxiety, and worry—into a time that also offers a sense of community, creativity, security, joy, and optimism”. While precarious urban spaces of departure such as City Plaza and the Jungle should not be idealised, they have provided support and a sense of presence for people stuck on the move until they managed to successfully depart.…”

“…6 A conversation with an activist in Exarchia, Athens, 10 July 2017. 7 A conversation with Olga Lafazani, City Plaza hotel squat, Athens, 20 February 2019 (also see Lafazani 2017Lafazani , 2018). 8 Conversations with activists in the Jungle, November 2015.…”

“…7 7 A conversation with Olga Lafazani, City Plaza hotel squat, Athens, 20 February 2019 (also see Lafazani 2017, 2018:896). …”

Border hotels: Spaces of detention and quarantine

“…This collection of essays examines ‘border hotels’ and interrogates how they enact specific logics of governance, generate new hierarchies of immobility while retaining existing ones, create multiple forms of violence and visualise the border in particular ways. While border hotels operate as violent sites of carcerality, governance and control, they also become spaces of contestation, transgression, and resistance (see Lafazani, 2018; Raimondi, 2019). There is thus an inherent ambiguity in border hotels: they challenge our assumed notion of the border as a spectacle, a limit, or performative space of governance and control.…”