Weaving Solidarity: Migrant Women’s Organisations in Athens

Refugee Women's Needs: The Athens Case

“…In addition to affirming Christopoulou and Leontsini's (2017) finding that the needs of migrant women in Greece differed by country of origin, a trend emerged that indicated that women who perceived Athens as a transit city for their communities tended to identify short-term immediate needs (e.g., accommodation and financial support) among the top needs for their community members. While women who viewed Athens as the final destination for women from their communities largely identified needs oriented toward long-term self-sufficiency, such as education, employment and Greek language lessons.…”

“…Because the researcher was also conducting trainings at the organization as a volunteer, it was underscored that participation in the study or lack thereof, would in no way affect women's ability to participate in these training courses. Although some researchers argue that participation in the community where the research takes place can compromise a researcher's objectivity, others highlight that community participation allows researchers to gain deeper insights into the experiences of individuals in the community and to build trust prior to conducting research [3,8,9]. In this situation, the researcher determined that the benefits of community participation outweighed the potential drawbacks.…”

“…Despite the sizable number of women asylum seekers arriving in Athens, women's voices are often excluded from research on refugee needs. This is partially due to perceptions that refugee women may be unable to give informed consent to participate in research due to their perceived vulnerability [3,4]. This perception of refugee women's vulnerability contributes to researchers' reluctance to engage in research on refugee women both due to perceptions that women refugees are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, as well understandings that link vulnerability with incapacity and an inability to make informed decisions about one's own well-being [5,6].…”

Polskie organizacje imigranckie w Europie. W poszukiwaniu nowego modelu

“…Do tej listy dyscyplin i subdyscyplin można dopisać także relatywnie słabą obecność organizacji imigranckich w badaniach nad trzecim sektorem oraz ruchami społecznymi. Warto jednocześnie zwrócić uwagę, że nie oznacza to, iż problematyka w ogóle jest niedostrzegana, przeciwnie -pojawiają się coraz to nowe prace jej dotyczycące (Portesn Fernández-Kelly, red., 2016;Christopoulou, Leontsini 2017;Mora 2018;Mikkelsen 2019;Lillevik 2020), w tym także tematyczne numery czasopism (np. "Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies", nr 5(31) z 2005 r.).…”

Migrant solidarities and the politics of place

“…The point of this brief review of the international migration and refugee literature is to illustrate that a range of interpretations of solidarity co-exists with a Marxian-Hegelian inspired interpretation of solidarity, which is the main focus of this article. This interpretation, too, can be associated with diverse and multi-disciplinary research discussing, for example, the solidarity among migrants and between migrants, refugees and non-migrants in Europe (Martínez López, 2017; Piacentini, 2015) or practices of labour organizing involving migrants (Foster, 2016; Christopoulou and Leontsini, 2017; Tapia, 2017). This interpretation often challenges the very categories of international migrant, refugee and citizen that the Westphalian territorial order has created and imposed, and that research following other interpretations sometimes reifies uncritically.…”