Moving populations and emancipatory practices in contemporary Athens in a crisis era

Contemporary metropoles do not act only as places of global economy and power but also as places of encounter and emancipation. If we consider space as a derivative of everyday life experiences, then, those cities derive from the simultaneous presence of millions of people coming from different places of the planet. These populations apart from being in a ‘state of exception’ they often produce their own ‘heterotopias’. While performing everyday life they act as deregulators of the hegemonic image of the city, question vividly institutionalized limits, fragments and borders and produce spaces of resistance and emancipation. This paper aims to enlighten dynamics of coexistence in the Athenian urban fabric. It focuses on spatial emancipatory practices that derive from encounters and conflicts on a local level. Practices that affect different parts of the city and form spaces that come in direct opposition with the dominion policies allowing us to imagine geographies of resistance instead of fear.