Migrant squatters in the Greek territory: Practices of resistance and the production of the Athenian urban space

Ever since the establishment of the Modern Greek state in 1830, the Greek territory has been shaped indelibly by migratory flows. Greece has been shifting constantly from a country of origin to a country of destination and vice versa. Nowadays, due to the country’s geopolitical location that indicates it as one of the main gates of Europe, it constitutes a transit space for thousands of migrants heading towards the wealthy North. Before the burst of the contemporary crisis, the Greek terrain was regarded as an intermediate space between war and peace, poverty and wealth, growth and decline. At the moment, it is a crossroad of migratory flows, a destination for many non-Europeans, a transit for those heading north and a point of departure for Greek citizens that try to escape the crisis. Contemporary Greece is a melting pot of conflicts, a space where different expressions of crises come together.