The Newcomers’ Right to the City Producing Common Spaces in Athens and Thessaloniki

This chapter examines the newcomers’ right to the city as it is expressed by Greek state policies and the solidarity practices of newly arrived refugees. It deals with the theoretical discussion on open dialectics and a post-colonial approach to the production of the common space, and explores the features of the refugees’ right to the city and to adequate housing vis–a–vis state-run camps in Athens and Thessaloniki. According to the autonomy of migration idea, the focus has to shift from the apparatuses of control to the multiple and diverse ways in which migration responds to, operates independently from, and in turn shapes those apparatuses and their corresponding institutions and practices. The chapter explores the socio-spatial features of the refugees’ common spaces in Athens and Thessaloniki, and draws some concluding remarks on the social relations and modes of communication, through which the communities of the refugee common space are formed.