Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the spatiotemporal porosity of the squatted "refugee neighborhood" of Prosfygika in Athens, and the ways in which the recent Kurdish and left-wing political refugees from Turkey inscribe their experiences of survival and revolutionary hope into the affective materialities.

Paper long abstract:

In the recent years, there have been growing numbers of political refugees from Turkey in Athens. Greece has been their primary destination due to its geographical proximity, but also because of the historical continuity and the existing social networks and spaces of Turkish and Kurdish refugees in Athens. Yet, the historical connections and continuities are deeper and more entangled than it first appears, and they are inscribed into the material environments of refuge. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with the recent Kurdish and left-wing political refugees from Turkey in Athens, this paper explores ethnographically and theoretically one such spatiotemporal "node" of refugeehood, the "refugee neighborhood" of Prosfygika. The housing complex was built in the 1930s for the Greek-Orthodox refugees, forcefully displaced from Asia Minor in the 1923 Greco-Turkish population exchange. The buildings are currently home to a large self-organized squatter community, consistent of left-wing activist groups, artists, homeless locals, and various migrants/refugees, and represent one of the epicenters of grassroot urban politics. As such, Prosfygika is a material "node" in a constellation of affective histories of violence connecting Turkey and Greece on the one hand, and on the other a site of spatiotemporal "porosity," realized through negotiating cultural encounters, mutual recognition, and politics of place. By inhabiting and decorating their homes, and taking part in the communal life of the neighborhood, the recent political exiles from Turkey contribute to the porous textures of forced displacement, precarity, and marginalization, but also of survival, temporary home-making, political struggle, and revolutionary hope.