Cities as Spaces of Solidarity: Challenging the Border Between Host and Hosted

[Zum Nachhören im Mosaik Podcast: https://mosaik-blog.at/hotel-city-plaza-the-city-as-site-of-solidarity/]

Olga Lafazani, researcher and activist, member of the former City Plaza Collective, Athens
in conversation with
Niki Kubaczek and Monika Mokre, Editors of the book Die Stadt als Stätte der Solidarität, Wien: transversal 2021 (https://transversal.at/books/stadt)

The empty hotel City Plaza in Athens was squatted from 2016 to 2019 as a housing project for refugees – and much more than that: as a counterexample to dominant migration policies, the ways of managing and ranking migrants, and the camp model. It formed a political project at many levels: from collectively organizing social production in everyday life, to resistance in the face of policies that aim to control and subjugate migrants.  Common everyday experiences in City Plaza offered the experience of organizing a different life, a very different type of cohabitation: the power and the optimism of a community.

Olga Lafazani, Niki Kubaczek and Monika Mokre will discuss the experiences of City Plaza within the realm of solidarity cities as intersections of transnational and local experiences and forms of activism.
 

ROR-n in cooperation with transversal texts and
the Section Migration and Racism Research of the Austrian Society of Sociology

Bios:

Olga Lafazani is a Postdoc Researcher at Harokopio University in Athens. Her research interests develop at the intersections of migration, gender, urban space and borders.  Her research interests are interrelated with her commitment in anti-racist struggles in Athens and beyond for more than 20 years. She was a member of the collective that occupied and run City Plaza.

Niki Kubaczek is a sociologist and member of the editorial board of transversal texts (transversal.at) as well as of the council of the section for racism and migration research of the Austrian association of sociology. His main research interests are critical migration research, social movement studies, the politics of friendship, difference, affect and commons.

Monika Mokre is a political scientist and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She works a a researcher and activist in the fields of migration, asylum and prison.