Table of Contents

1. TOPIC AREA OF RESEARCH	3
2. THEORETICAL PREMISES AND CONCEPTS	3
2. 1. The “Mediterranean model” and beyond	3
2. 2. Cities and urban neighbourhoods	5
2. 3. Reconstructions of citizenship?	6
2. 4. Gendering migrant spaces and movements	7
2. 5. Everyday life and intercultural interaction	8
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY	9
3.1. The case study as a methodological tool: Kypseli and its public spaces	9
4. CASE STUDY	12
4. 1. Geographies of migrant settlement in Athens	12
4.2. About Kypseli 	14
5. FIELDWORK FINDINGS	18
5.1. International Migration and Urban Transformations	18
5.2. International Migration and the use of Public Space	21
5.3.  Social movements and the Agora	29
5.4. Migration, belongings and appropriation of urban space	35
2.Statistics tables	57

1. TOPIC AREA OF RESEARCH

Following from discussions among participants in WP7 and the general outline of GeMIC, the goals of our research can be summarised as follows: a) to investigate the migrant’s use of urban spaces and the ensuing changes of/in the city, b) to look for formal and informal practices in local communities and neighbourhoods in which intercultural interactions take place, c) to examine migrant’s practices in their local and transnational lives, linked to (re)definitions of citizenship.

Our report follows the structure commonly agreed by the research team of WP7.

2. THEORETICAL PREMISES AND CONCEPTS
2. 1. The “Mediterranean model” and beyond
The migrant groups and individuals which we examine in this project are drawn to Greece, and to Southern Europe more generally, in the aftermath of 1989. The changing nature of those global migrant movements, alongside with specific local development patterns in Southern European countries has led many researchers to talk of a “Southern European” or “Mediterranean model” of migration (among many King et al 2000; Macioti, Pugliese 1991; Bettio et al 2006; Tastsoglou, Hadjiconstanti 2003). Movements had started earlier (in Italy already in the 1970s, in Greece and Spain in the mid-1980s), but they became more intense, at times massive, in the 1990s, involving people not only from Third World countries but also from Eastern Europe. Following the “fall of the Berlin Wall”, the latter were not only “free to flee” from their countries, but free to go and come back. And many took this opportunity in order to cope with the harsh realities of passage to a neoliberal market regime.

There is by now a voluminous literature (to which we make specific references below) examining the changing characteristics of migratory flows towards Greece, as well as the other Southern European countries of the EU. Differences among groups of migrants, countries and particular localities are significant, while the complex geographies of movement/settlement cannot certainly be understood in a simple North-South scheme. There are, however, some features which differentiate post-1989 migration flows from earlier ones towards the North, justifying perhaps references to an emerging “model”. Among these features we identify the following, which are relevant to our research in Greece in the context of GeMIC: 
high chances to find a job in a large “informal economy”, involving many areas of economic activity, and most prominently personal services, construction, tourism and agriculture
a growing demand for female labour, particularly in caring and entertainment and to a lesser degree in tourism
migrant settlement predominantly in urban areas.
We comment briefly on these features below.

It has to be underlined, however, that the “model” already seems to be destabilised by yet more recent flows. These originate from areas where war, persecution and dire oppression are the order of the day: conditions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Kurdistan, Palestine, Sudan and Somalia account for almost compulsory decisions to move, usually involving young men and children. Such flows are usually approached as “transit” - an idea which is only partially sustainable, since a large part of these migrants ends up settling in “intermediate” destinations (including Greece), as a result of, for example, cross-border restrictions in the EU, individual or group decisions on-the road or the workings of a profitable “migration industry” which controls the routes and mechanisms of migration (see Ventoura, Papataxiarchis 2009). 

the informal
The attractiveness of Southern Europe has been attributed to a number of factors, including the permeability of borders (which for Greece is much stronger), poor internal police checks, opportunities to find a job in a large “informal economy” – the latter being probably the most prominent in migrants’ own accounts (for a detailed discussion of the multiple meanings and uses of the term “informal”, see Vaiou, Hadjimichalis 1997/2003). Although many researchers and official reports have approached the informal economy (or sector, or activities) as a “result” of growing migration flows, there is ample evidence to the contrary, i.e. that migrants are attracted to the South of the EU, and to Greece in particular, because there is an already well-developed informal economy in which it is easy to make a living, or even make money, even without a residence/work permit. 

Moreover, there is a widespread expectation that, sooner or later, they can somehow regularise their status (see, for example, Pugliese 2002 for Italy, Martinez Veiga 1998 for Spain, Bagavos, Papadopoulou 2006 for Greece). From this perspective, the informal economy appears more like a “pull factor”, rather than an effect of migration flows (see among the earlier analyses, Reyneri 1998). The initial easiness to find a job, however, has to be qualified not only because of the exploitative conditions of such job arrangements but also in view of the difficulties arising in the middle and longer term. The latter are due to the fact that “legalisation processes”, at least in Greece and Italy, depend on employer’s certificate and on payment of social security contributions, both of which have multiple repercussions. On the one hand, even when migrants manage to acquire the certificate and pay the required number of workdays to the social security, their legal situation remains highly precarious dependent as it is on their being continuously employed. On the other hand, and because of these requirements, some jobs have emerged, at least in part, from the informal status, most prominently jobs to do with cleaning and caring, where a lot of migrant women are employed. 

demand for female labour
In the particular political and economic conjunction of the 1990s, the opening of borders with Eastern Europe coincided in Greece with an expansion of the service sector, a booming construction sector and restructurings in agricultural production towards more intensive methods and products. In this context several niches in the labour market faced shortages of labour, in particular seasonal, flexible and low cost, to which the irregular status of most migrants provided a totally vulnerable, and therefore underpaid, disciplined and subordinate labour force (for a similar argument in Spain, see Pedone 2006). The demand for “women’s work” was already intense, as a result of four interconnected “local” developments: (a) a general rise of incomes and of the standard of living; (b) increase of local women’s employment rates; (c) a fast ageing population in changing family arrangements; (d) significant shortages and inadequacies in public caring services. These developments contributed to a “caring gap” and a growing demand, mainly in cities, for domestic help, care for the elderly, for children, for the sick and the disabled, for lower tier jobs in tourism and, in a different way, for entertainment. It is therefore no surprise that much of the recent research focuses on these areas of employment1, combining multiple sources and methods and emphasising different aspects of the phenomena.

Migrant women cover caring needs2 which would not easily be met otherwise, ensuring at the same time the continuity of a family-based model of care. Personalised care is particularly important when it comes to elderly people, children and disabled persons – i.e. members of families which until recently were cared for by women of their family (Vaiou et al 2007; see also Bettio et al 2006). In this new arrangement, care is “privatised” as far as the state is concerned, while new divisions of labour develop within families – mainly among women, local and migrant. The latter has important effects on men’s involvement and, by this token, on caring cultures and gender relations among locals as well as among migrants. 

settling in cities
Post-1989 migrants to Greece find their ways and settle predominantly in cities, even though there is considerable employment demand in rural ad tourist areas as well. Their numbers and settlement typologies lead to significant socio-spatial and cultural transformations in the constitution and development of urban space. As much recent research and elaborations of statistical data indicate, they do not settle in remote areas of the urban periphery, but rather in neighbourhoods with a mixed population composition around the city centre. Migrant settlement in formerly unused spaces, run down or empty buildings, but also regular yet older stock has re-integrated such spaces in urban life - and in the property market - and has contributed to shape new patterns of living. Relatively fast improvement of housing conditions is a considerable step towards integration – which has led several researchers to argue that integration in urban life sometimes takes precedence over integration in society (see for example Germain 2000; Glick Schiller, ?a?lar 2009). As this is one of the main axes of our research in the context of GeMIC, we discuss it in more detail below.

2. 2. Cities and urban neighbourhoods
Migration as a social process takes place in a geographically uneven and diverse space, which cannot be abstracted from its analysis and understanding. Distance and proximity, geographical differentiation and inequalities among areas/places, particular features and meanings attributed to places, all form part of the constitution of social relations (Lefebvre 1991a). Urban space on the other hand, is a product of interconnections, of relations and embedded material practices which underline the multiple and simultaneous co-presence of individuals and groups with different, unequal and often conflicting narratives and trajectories. From such a perspective, urban space is not an already constructed and closed entity. It is continuously in the making, through probable or unforeseen transformations and connections, which may materialise or not in the context of a system which includes heterogeneity, indeterminacy and openness to future restructurings, but also powerful geometries of power (Massey 2005).

Migratory movements reveal different aspects of urban space, since, per force, they link spaces and places together, they link the local with global processes which lead to migratory flows. In this sense they support what D. Massey (1994) calls “a progressive sense of place”, that is to say a conception of place as a particular moment in intersecting social relations, “nets of which have over time been constructed, laid down, interacted with one another, decayed and renewed. Some of these relations will be, as it were, contained within the place; others will stretch beyond it, tying any particular locality into wider relations and processes in which other places are implicated too” (p. 120).

Urban neighbourhoods are such places towards which migratory flows are directed “after 1989”. In this period there can be identified a renewed interest in the “neighbourhood”, parallel to or in contrast with approaches which point to the growing importance of supra-local networks and to ever globalising cities. Despite the discourse on disarticulation and constant mobility urban neighbourhoods continue to be a significant reference in the everyday life of many people, invested with meanings and relations extending beyond its spatial determinations. In our approach it is a significant “place”, in the sense that D. Massey accords to the term, and a privileged locus/field for the study of intercultural interactions among locals, migrants and combinations of these, as well as for the study of urban transformations to do with migrant settlement.

We approach the neighbourhood as an important socio-spatial scale among many and not as a bounded space. The economic forces which determine it extend beyond its boundaries and beyond the boundaries of the city in which it is located; residents bring with them their origins in remote and multiple places; the products sold in local shops have been produced in a global economy. These and other aspects of “the neighbourhood” emerge also from our case studies in central neighbourhoods of our cities, where we identify global-local encounters and (re)negotiations of multiple identities of place. The practices of migrant women and men reveal changing urban landscapes, which are invested with different gendered meanings and experiences (see also Dyck, McLaren 2004) and point to informal mechanisms of integration “from below” along with, and sometimes despite of, institutional practices “from above”. Such mechanisms may be found in the workings of the housing market, in the uses of public spaces, in the renewed neighbourly relations, in the formation of dense support networks, in the ever more prominent presence of migrant businesses and services – all of which involve increasing numbers of locals as well.  

In-depth interviews, systematic observation and informal discussions in public spaces reveal the multiple uses and meanings that migrant men and women accord to their new area of everyday life, contributing at the same time to its (re)constitution and transformation. This observation aims to underline the particular ways in which women and men live in urban neighbourhoods as places of their everydayness. Women’s invisible and undervalued everyday activities contribute to constitute “familiar places” and play an important role in settlement and family welfare both “here” and “there”. Their everyday and longer term practices related to paid work, housing, household provisioning, populating public spaces and services and networking account for the revitalisation of urban neighborhoods distinctively more than those of men, whose absences and presences in these domains point to lives more focused around paid work and disconnected from the caring aspects of everyday life.

2. 3. Reconstructions of citizenship?
The intense presence of migrants in urban spaces and their complex everyday tactics and strategies to “settle” in a new and unknown place, in the urban neighbourhoods of our research, raise a number of questions to do with participation and belonging. Such questions point to the need to rethink citizenship and its exclusive connection to the national scale. As much of recent literature has underlined, citizenship is undergoing various reconstructions in the “era of globalization”, part of which have to do with re-scaling at various levels: up-scaling to include participation in supra-national entities (eg. debates about EU citizenship), as well as down-scaling, referring to sub-national scales, such as cities, municipalities, neighbourhoods (for a review of debates, see Purcell 2003). Moreover, the significant presence of migrants and their quite varied legal statuses lead to rethink the idea of a homogeneous community of rights, duties and membership and instead elaborate on notions of “differentiated” or “multi-layered” citizenship (Young 1990; Yuval Davis 1997). The latter, along with the idea of down-scaling, seem to be useful for our analysis of participation and belonging in the cities/neighbourhoods of our research.

Here, the Lefebvrian conception of “the right to the city” seems particularly fruitful, in that it reorients membership and participation towards inhabitance: the women and men who inhabit the city have, or rather may claim, a right to the city which brings together the urban dweller (citadin) and the citizen (citoyen) (Lefebvre 1968). The right to the city includes on the one hand the right to appropriate urban space, i.e. to live, play, work in urban space, represent and occupy it – a whole host of rights of use; on the other hand it includes the right to participate in the production of urban space, in decisions about it but also in (re)defining patterns of living it, in a process that Lefebvre calls “habiter”. In both these senses, citizenship and participation are seen as a process, rather than a static set of rules, a process which involves interactions and negotiations and delineates boundaries of belonging and/or exclusion which are deeply gendered (Secor 2004). 

2. 4. Gendering migrant spaces and movements
The arguments raised above aim to underline the importance of gender in our analysis and understandings which connect urban space, migration and intercultural interactions. These connections evolve in at least three areas. The first has to do with gendered geographies of movement and settlement, i.e. the different ways in which women and men move in/through and inhabit space; the second refers to the co-constitution of gender relations and (urban) space; and the third points to the gendered formulation of theoretical propositions and concepts, in our case about migration and urban intercultural spaces. 

Experiences of migration include complex mobilities and multiple crossings, but also constructions, of borders and boundaries at various scales, ranging from the body to the global. The crossings are not limited to border lines between countries, they extend to the spaces of the everyday, where institutional “gaps” leave room for passages, albeit risky and temporary. They also continuously involve negotiations of gender relations and adaptations of identity over spaces and places, “here” and “there” (Koffman et al 2000; Pedone 2006; Vaiou et al 2007; Pedre?o, Torres 2009). Borders and boundaries in this sense have very different permeability and reflect different “geographies of control”, as they are connected to combined hierarchies of gender, class and ethnicity (Silvey 2006).

In migration literature, mobility is often approached as a “window of opportunity” to escape the dominance of the state and capital, or of cultural and other constraints (eg. Portes et al 1999). Such arguments tend to over-emphasise choice, resistance and freedom to move, while underplaying the ways in which gender institutes major restrictions on mobility (Anthias 1998; 2001). Such restrictions have to do with the constitution of gender identities in different places, which permeate women’s and men’s attitudes, decisions and perceptions; they also have to do with conceptualizations of migration in which the model of migrant-traveller is already conceived as male (Pratt, Yeoh 2003). Raising mobility to a paramount value in the era of globalisation and in the context of recent migrations tends to undervalue the power relations involved in moving and the cost both for those who move and for those who stay back; part of this cost is only revealed when the different involvement of men and women in such practices is examined (Hondagneu Sotelo, Avila 1997). 

Gender (like class, ethnicity, sexuality, age) determines to a large extent which bodies belong where (who are “strangers” in a particular space), what spatial experiences different individuals and groups live (eg. how safe does a migrant women feel in a public square), what techniques of exclusion correspond to particular bodies (eg. what rules of appearance make the bodies of migrant women “strange” in public spaces). Such questions are an indication of formal and informal regulations of space, through which unequal conditions of access and exclusion are formed at different scales and among different women and men from different ethnic backgrounds and diverse migratory projects.


2. 5. Everyday life and intercultural interaction
Everyday life is both a theoretical standpoint and a methodological tool which facilitates the fusion of the issues examined in our research in GeMIC. In our approach, the everyday is a field where people do not only endure but also act upon, redefine and negotiate the terms of their existence in urban space and beyond. In a Lefebvrian line of argument, we work on the idea that everyday life does not include only continuous adaptations, but also conflicts related with processes of collective and individual consciousness and thus the possibility of emancipation in the everyday itself (Lefebvre 1991b). In this sense, everyday life is not an unchanging routine or a sphere separate from the world of rules (Smith 1987), but a means to overcome binary divisions, like global/local, structure/agency, North/South, we/them, I/others. Attention to the everyday is a way to understand processes and power relations producing diverse experiences and practices and operating at a variety of scales.

Starting from the everyday does not lead necessarily to a micro-level socio-spatial analysis or to an exclusive focus on the local. On the contrary, we envisage it as an entry point in order to study processes which develop in different and interlocking geographical scales, ranging from the body to the global. From this point of view, emphasis on the materiality of everyday life incorporates the multi-dimensionality of migratory flows, involving macro/structural causes, family and individual decisions to move, practices which develop “there”, “here” and on the way, intercultural interactions within macro-process of globalisation and local conditions (see also Pedone 2006). 

Such an emphasis reveals how the routine, taken-for-granted activities of everyday life in homes and neighbourhoods, in public spaces and communities, tell us a lot about social, cultural and economic shifts and the ways in which the urban is constituted at the intersections of local and global processes. The levels of multiplicity implied by such connections do not permit the use homogeneous and pre-determined categories or of one-sided approaches to community, boundaries, identities and sense of “belonging” (Anthias 2000). Women and men develop a whole host of strategies: adaptations and piecemeal decisions, particular practices and subversions (Mavridis 2004; Rantalaiho, Heiskasen 1997) – all of which are connected with the city and its multiple cultures.

In our approach, “culture” (and intercultural interaction) does not refer to a given context of meanings alone, but also and more importantly to social practices, prior to which nothing in the social world can be constituted “not consciousness, not ideas or meaning; not structures or mechanisms; and not texts, discourses or networks” (Simonsen 2003:157). The multiplicity of meanings and practices, that is inherent in the variety of social life in (multicultural) cities, makes culture volatile and changing, albeit with concrete geographical references. In this theoretical context, we can challenge essentialist and naturalistic conceptions where migrants are identified with certain communities and are “foreigners” among local people (see also Vaiou, Stratigaki 2008).

However, the “everyday” is more than a perspective; it is also a question of methodology, of how we study/approach our subject matter – to which we come back in the next section of our report. To start from people’s everyday practices and experiences enables us to explore how these are defined by gender relations and structures and also how women’s and men’s everyday actions (re)produce and (re)form these relations and structures (Smith 1987). The multiple individual actions, which emerge through such a focus, are constitutive of culture, place, individual and collective identities and unveil intercultural interactions (see also Lykogianni 2008). Such a perspective contributes on the one hand to make visible women’s and men’s activities and practices and gender relations, usually shadowed by exclusive emphasis on global developments, and on the other to come to grips with the patterns women and men create and the meanings they invent and to learn from them. If we map what we learn, connecting one meaning or invention to another, we begin to lay out a different way of seeing (see Harding 1991: 129).


3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In a metropolis like Athens, that is the wider field of our research, areas (spaces, neighbourhoods) that are historically formed are always in a process of becoming, “in a process that is never closed and finished” (Massey 1998). The settlement of a great number of migrant women and men in concrete places in Athens is a significant component, another layer, of local history; it contributes to a different dynamic of social relations and leads to a renegotiation of place identity, as it forges new relations between local and global (Vaiou et al 2007). In the same places different people, according to gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality etc, live different everyday lives. The investigation of spatio-temporal shifts at different spatial scales becomes the prime step for understanding how different everyday lives are formed and intertwined and how urban development is related to social dynamics.

3.1. The case study as a methodological tool: Kypseli and its public spaces

Case study is a basic methodological tool that we used in order to ‘weave’ together gender, urban pubic space and intercultural interaction, while defending locality, temporality and subjectivity. It permits to investigate individual action within a specific, spatiotemporally structured society; to understand the mutual relationship of the individual with the social, of the social with the spatial and of the local with the global; and to investigate the identity, modes of life and perceptions of the subjects of research, through the qualitative analysis of the material gathered in the field. 

Our point of departure is migrants’ everyday lives, as they are deployed through their practices and experiences of/in the city and through the meanings they assign to it. As we have already argued in section II. 2, this point of departure allows us to approach and bring to the foreground of enquiry those aspects of the urban experience that are often ignored or silenced. In order to approach our subject matter from this perspective, we focus on a particular neighbourhood in the centre of Athens, Kypseli, with more than 20% migrant population. In the context of this case study, we make use of a number of qualitative methodological tools which yield different types of material and lead to combined readings and interpretations. More specifically, in our study in Kypseli we use:
a) participant observation in Kypseli square 
b) participant observation in the Agora/”School”
c) migrants’ mental maps 
d) in-depth interviews with migrants
e) interviews with key informants
In what follows, we take these in turn.

a) Participant observation in Kypseli square 
The main topics in the systematic observation have to do with 
- the people who use the square (gender, ethnicity, age), 
- why they are there (meeting their friends, spending there their free time, taking the children to play etc), 
- how often they go, 
- whether different groups of people who use/go to the square do so in specific hours and days of the week, 
- what kinds of relations, interactions, communications develop and can be observed in this public space. 
Systematic observation is complemented by informal discussions and in-depth interviews with people who use the square frequently (as the systematic observations have shown), in order to be able to form a better understanding of the ways in which these people do not only use but also appreciate this public space, as well as their relations with other people (migrants and locals) they meet there and interact with.  

b) Participant observation in the Agora/ “School”
As we have already mentioned, Agora is a prime place of intercultural interaction, as it is a meeting place of different groups of migrants and locals. At the same time, the example of the Agora and the courses of Greek language offered by volunteer Greek locals/teachers underline the significance of informal movements in processes of migrant integration. Such collective actions emerge in the gaps of social control and the lack of institutions, related with the “right to the city”, such as those that should provide public services and operate public spaces for people and not for profit. 

During the courses of Greek, and in collaboration with the teachers, we approached migrant students with various levels of language capabilities and discussed with them about their everyday lives in Greece-Athens-Kypseli and about the public spaces they use in the neighbourhood and in the city. Some of them accepted to sketch their itineraries and points of reference in the city (see section ‘c’ below). The discussions we had with migrants in the Agora gave us the opportunity to gain their confidence and some of them agreed to be interviewed in depth (see section ‘d’ below).

c) Migrants’ mental maps
With this methodological tool we attempted to gain a better understanding (and a visual impression) about migrants’ perceptions of the neighbourhood and the urban fabric. This effort was greatly hampered by the level of language capabilities of the particular migrants, as we explain in our analysis. The issues that can be approached through the maps have to do: 
- with the kind of (public) spaces and activities which matter for them;
- with the frequency with which some points of reference (places) appear in the maps and hence their importance beyond individual preference
- with the extent to which their sketches reflect the “real” map of the neighbourhood and the city, in other words how familiar the respondents are with different places in the neighbourhood and the city.
We were also aiming to identify particularities according to gender, ethnicity and age – which was not possible in the end, for reasons that we explain in the analysis of our findings.

d) In-depth interviews with migrants 
As we have already noted, we came to know our interviewees in classes of Greek in the Agora and during our systematic observation in the square of Kypseli. The goal of this research project is not to investigate the frequency of social phenomena but rather to analyse people’s attitudes about the questions/issues posed by our initial hypothesis and at the same time remain open to questions/issues which come up in the fieldwork, reflecting migrants’ everyday experiences and practices. In this sense, the number of interviews cannot be fully pre-determined; it is rather decided in the process, following criteria of “saturation” and repetition.

In-depth interviews with 12 migrants contain a very rich material, only part of which refers to (public spaces of) the city, which we analysed in part II. They reveal the uses of urban public spaces by migrant women and men, as well as the practices they are involved in, contributing to the practical and symbolic transformation of those spaces. Each of the “cases” contributes to a deeper understanding of the social processes surrounding each migrant. 

The interviews took place as open non standard conversations, based on an interview guide of general topics, agreed upon by the research team of WP7 (see Interview Guide). Our objective was to obtain information on the characteristics of each migrant as well as the organization of their everyday lives in the neighbourhood and in the city. Even though migrant profiles vary, we attempted to gain a range of basic schemes of everyday arrangements related with family, work, leisure, uses of public spaces in the neighbourhood and in the city, settlement and integration in city life, through which we could clarify significant aspects of our research questions. In this context, we looked at women’s and men’s integration in the local labour market and the combinations of paid work and caring; conditions of access to leisure and city life;  relations among migrant and local women and men; reasons for choosing this particular neighbourhood; uses of public spaces and public facilities and services, as well as migrants’ participation in formal or informal associations; patterns, behaviours and relations which are constituted, adopted, challenged and transformed in the interpersonal contacts among migrants and locals in their everyday lives. 

e) Interviews with key informants 
Our key informants include are tree of the volunteer teachers in the language courses of the Agora: 
a. Eleni, teacher in the school and resident of Kypseli since she was born. 
b. Kostoula, teacher in the school and resident of Kypseli for many years. 
c. Maria, teacher of the school and resident of Patisia, a neighbourhood very near Kypseli
The interviews with these key informants told us a lot about the context within which the idea of the school of Agora has started, as well as their motives to participate in this local movement. They also unveiled the problems that migrants face in attending the courses and how they perceive this activity. 

As two of the volunteer teachers (Eleni and Kostoula) live in Kypseli for many years, interviews with them gave us also information about the history of the neighbourhood and their experiences of living there with and without migrants; they described sides of the social changes to do, for example with the proliferation of migrants’ shops, their ways of settling in apartment blocks, their uses of public space. This information enriched our other sources, including our own previous research in the area (Vaiou et al 2007).

4. CASE STUDY
As already mentioned in the section about methodology, our research on gender and intercultural spaces in Athens focuses on the neighbourhood of Kypseli, of which we present here a short historical background, based on a variety of sources. Before coming to the specifics of Kypseli, however, we discuss some key features of recent migration flows to the metropolitan area of Athens, which helps put our findings in context.

4. 1. Geographies of migrant settlement in Athens
As already mentioned, Athens, like other major cities in Southern Europe, has received a bulk of recent migratory flows in the 1990s. In 2001 and according to the population census, migrants were 7.5% of the population resident in Greece (or 797,000 people) and 11% of the population of Greater Athens (or 321,000 people), although many researchers consider these figures an underestimate. Almost half of the migrants residing in Greater Athens live in the central municipality of Athens and not in some remote periphery (fig. 1). A closer look at migrant settlement within the municipality of Athens reveals interesting patterns to do with the forms of concentration (fig. 2). An extensive nucleus is immediately identifiable in an area which includes the “heart of the city” and a range of neighborhoods at its immediate vicinity. The latter are part of the intensive urban growth of the 1960s and 1970s and retain a strong presence of local households. Some 215 ethnicities have been identified in the resident migrant population, with Albanians being the vast majority (51.1%), followed at a distance by Poles and Bulgarians (5.0% and 3.8% respectively), with quite different migration patterns and gender composition. 

The influx of migrants to the city centre has created a considerable demand for housing, particularly after a first period of temporary arrangements (in cheap hotels, overcrowded and rundown flats and even public squares). The municipality of Athens, like most historic centers of Greek cities, includes a rich typology of urban neighborhoods, resulting from a complex set of micro-local histories. After 1980, young households with better incomes started moving towards suburban areas, in search for better living environments. This movement, however, never reached the dimensions of an “exodus” (Emmanuel 2002). It rather led to successive re-orderings of the built stock in many central neighborhoods, such as manufacturing micro-firms in basements and lower floors of apartment buildings or, later, empty flats. Such restructurings kept prices low and attracted students, lower income households and, after 1990, migrants. 

Migrants live in basements and lower floors of the same apartment buildings in which students and professional offices (lawyers, doctors, engineers etc) occupy the middle ones, while higher income mainly elderly households remain in the upper floors – a pattern which contradicts theoretical arguments of gentrification based on rent gaps (eg Smith 1996). Migrants have upgraded through personal labor many old flats and paid higher rents than were proper for what they rented, usually in older apartment blocks. Initially, newcomers usually co-habited with friends or relatives and/or sought smaller and cheaper flats and, most importantly, owners who would accept them. Over the years, a very profitable business has developed channeling newcomers to flats, which involves widespread sub-letting. As their job situation and incomes became more stable, migrants started looking for better housing conditions, usually in the same neighborhoods, where networks and ties were already established. (Vaiou et al 2007, chapter 5.5, interviews with real estate agencies).  

After more than two decades (since the beginning of the 1990s), there is an observable tendency for migrants to buy flats, in older apartment buildings, where prices per square meter are lower. Albanian households in Athens are the main protagonists in this process, since they tend to pursue longer-term family projects, and women among them are key actors. In a situation of limited household resources, women’s work, predominantly as domestic helpers and carers, yields a much more stable income (and possibilities to save) than men’s seasonal or occasional work mainly in construction; on the other hand, and in this context, women have a decisive say in matters of housing (location, size, internal arrangement, etc), not only “here” (in the place of settlement), but also “there” (in the place of origin), where they also invest in housing purchase and/or improvement. Remittances do not only cover immediate survival needs “there”, but also trigger developments in the housing market and the growth of construction activity, with significant multiplier effects.

As migrants settle more permanently, they begin to contribute to local economies through their activities and their incomes mostly spent locally, with immediate effects on local shops and services. It has been estimated that migrants accounted for 1.1% out of the 4.5% GDP growth in the 1990s (Labrianidis, Lyberaki 2001). Extensive field work in Kypseli and other neighborhoods of Athens, including detailed land use mapping, revealed a considerable number of shops addressed to migrants, as well as shops owned or run by them (see also Vaiou et al 2007). In Kypseli, with more than 25% migrant population, 53 such shops were identified in an area of about 700 by 700 meters. These shops do not only serve the different ethnic groups living in the area, but also a broader community of customers, including many Greeks, from the immediate vicinity and sometimes from other parts of the city. 

Migrant presence is also very pronounced in public spaces and forms an important part of urban transformations in Athens. At times, public squares and parks are used as temporary sleeping places for newcomers, usually men; but most intensely they are used as meeting and recreation spaces for various ethnic groups who thus make their presence visible to other migrants as well as to locals. Particular micro-spaces are appropriated, regularly or occasionally, by different ethnic groups in all the central public squares, parks and gardens. This condition of appropriation has been violently challenged by “enraged local residents”, mobilised by extreme right wing groups and silently supported by police (in)action: groups of Afghan migrants who settled around a central public square were thought to “invade” the neighbourhood square and thereby destabilise everyday patterns of use or even non use3. Such incidents underline the instability of informal co-presence and intercultural interaction in urban public spaces and point to the need for more permanent arrangements, measures and vigilance.  

4.2. About Kypseli 
Kypseli, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the municipality of “new” Athens, appears as a named site on a map of the new capital and its surroundings in 1860 and acquires more or less its present boundaries on the “city plan” of 1930, which incorporates considerable extensions of the city as a whole. In the beginning of the 20th century dispersed country houses and villas start appearing in an area, which was practically agricultural land. The influx of refugees from Asia Minor in 1922, along with internal migration from other parts of the country contribute to more intense urbanisation of the area, initially with single family houses, mainly for well-off households. In the 1930s the first multi-storey apartment blocks make their appearance and the river-bed which traverses the area is covered and re-designed into a linear garden with trees, bushes, fountains, playgrounds and sculptures. This linear garden, present day Fokionos Negri street, is still the central open space in the neighbourhood, leading to Kypseli square, which is one of the sites of our fieldwork. 

The Municipal Market (“Agora” - another site of our field work) is also built in this period (1935), according to plans of the Technical Service of the municipality, as part of a wider plan which proposed such markets in several neighbourhoods, in order to decentralise the Central Market of Athens. The Agora operated as food market until 2002, when it was closed down. Since 2007, following the mobilisation of local citizen groups, it functions as a self-managed neighbourhood centre, with cultural activities, many of which involve migrants. 

Kypseli, like many other central neighbourhoods of Athens, is intensely built with apartment blocks in the 1960s and 1970s. But in the 1950s it still keeps many features of its past, with several non-urban uses, a lot of green spaces and still many single family houses with gardens. Local residents know each other, children play in the streets and cars are scarse. Such aspects of its urban development appear vividly in the accounts of old residents4:
“…of course I remember [the neighbourhood] in the old days, when the river-bed was not yet totally covered, water was flowing, there were trees, eucalyptus, and you could hear the sounds …it was a spectacle…” (S.K., resident since 1947)

“Further away from Kypseli square there was a sheepfold with real sheep. A little hill it was, all houses were not included in the city plan …they were gradually incorporated” (N.X., speaking about 1954, when she first moved to Kypseli as a small kid)

The apartment blocks, with multiple types and sizes of apartments, attract many internal migrants. Increasing population densities coincide with a period of growth and rising standards of living, in which Kypseli becomes famous as a centre for night life in the whole city.
“…. the best people congregated there […] Kypseli was famous, it had theatres, cinemas, it had…” (S.K. resident since 1947) 

Intensive reconstruction continues through the 1970s, when the present form of the neighbourhood is consolidated. Since then it is concurrently depicted in all planning reports as “one of the most problematic areas” in the city (fig. 3-5). And indeed multi-storey apartment buildings (6-8 floors), high densities (350 people per hectare), lack of open spaces, car traffic, pollution and parking in every bit of public space gradually become part of the experience of residents. Thus, in the 1980s one can identify a move away from Kypseli of younger and better-off households towards the developing suburbs in the north-east and the south-east of the metropolitan area. 
“… Kypseli was a beautiful neighbourhood, it had these magnificent houses of the inter-war period and neoclassic. I remember many of them, I remember Kerkyras being a dust road. And then the reconstruction started and blocks of flats were built, without trees in the front, without parking places and lots of people left from the neighbourhood to the suburbs” (Eleni, volunteer teacher in the Agora, has lived in Kypseli all her life)

As a result of the particular features of urbanisation and of successive building regulations, a rich typology can be found in the building stock of the neighbourhood. The less favourable part of this stock (small apartments in basements and lower floors) went through various changes of use (including manufacturing workshops, student housing, professional offices, etc) and remained for several years empty and/or devalued, before “welcoming” in the 1990s a mosaic of tenants from all parts of the world. Recent migrants initially settled in the basement and ground floor flats of apartment buildings (fig. 6). Professional offices gradually occupied the middle floors, while old residents, particularly older in age, remained in the better and more spacious flats of the upper floors. There are of course many particularities in this complex pattern of building occupancy, named “vertical segregation” (Maloutas, Karadimitriou 2001), but it is true that recent migrants have contributed not only to re-insert this old and ageing housing stock to the market, but also to upgrade it through personal labour and mutual assistance. The extracts from interviews which follow are indicative:
“…The young woman across from us …, you see, she takes this flat and turns  it into a beauty…It used to be in appalling condition and she put …she put tiles, she maintained it, she turned it to new…” (S.K. resident since 1947)

“Look, they do not rent it in good condition, as it is written in the contract that we should leave it, painted and all that. No, they take the opportunity, they see somebody who is in a hurry and…” (R.S., Albania, from discussion during Greek courses in the Agora)

The very same features, which have driven many local households away from Kypseli, have functioned in a different way for the recent migrant population. Flats which old residents considered small, badly maintained or inadequate for their needs, have been fast occupied by migrants who had little choice but to settle for low rent – often getting lower by sharing the premises, even “overcrowding”, as the following extract indicates.
“And we came here together with the child. Initially we stayed with my brother’s sister in law…We stayed there first, in a single room all of us. It was not good conditions…” (K.A., Albania) 

Old residents leave Kypseli because of the noise, pollution, lack of open space and parking. Migrants settle in because it is centrally located, easily accessible by good public transport and offers many possibilities to reach other areas of the city where jobs can be found. 




Social and demographic features
The 1990s is a new turning point for Kypseli, which seems to gain populations, following a former downward tendency of decrease both of population and of the size of household. Census data5 indicate a consolidation of population, as the outflow of old residents is counterbalanced by the settlement of usually larger migrant households, as well as by a small but identifiable “return” of local youth. Thus, in the 2001 census a 9.1% population increase is identified, compared to 1991, and Kypseli reaches 47,437 inhabitants, 21% of whom are migrants. 

Census data also show the multiplicity of migrant groups present in the area. Albanians are by far the majority with 49.2%, followed at a distance by Poles (8.5%), Bulgarians (4.5%), Romanians and Ukranians (3.5%). Smaller percentages are present from Moldova, Russia, Georgia, Yugoslavia, Armenia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Irak, Iran, Turkey, Syria and many other countries. All these constitute the mosaic of residents in Kypseli, the most multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Athens (fig.7).

Migrants are dispersed in the entire neighbourhood, with small concentrations in some parts, as can be seen by the data of residents per city block (fig. 8). Fewer migrants can be found along the main streets and along Fokionos Negri. As it may be expected, migrant population is young, with the so-called productive age groups (15-64) constituting more than 75% in some migrant groups. The majority of migrant residents are employed (66.5%), according to the census, but probably hard hit by the present crisis. Among women percentages are lower (55.3%), but the figures probably do not include a large number of women who work as live-in carers, pay indirectly (through the husbands) for social security and declare themselves as “housewives”.

The proportion of women is rather high (52%), mainly because of the presence of migrant groups from Eastern European countries, in which women are the absolute majority. Women in general have a higher level of education than men, although there are differences by country of origin and their skills are very seldom used in the Greek labour market. Different migration patterns depending on the country of origin account for significant differences in the presence of children and elderly people among migrant groups. Thus, for example, among Albanians, where family migration prevails, a higher proportion of children may be identified, while very few children can be found among Bulgarians – which corresponds to the pattern of migration of women alone. 

the features of a multi-ethnic neighbourhood
Kypseli seems to retain some of its historically developed features, like a great variety of land use, with an emphasis on commerce and entertainment, high proportion of housing, a densely built and densely populated urban fabric, intesive use of public space and of public services, scarse as these may be (fig. 9). At the same time, new features can be identified, mainly to do with the numerous and intense presence of migrants. This presence, already 20-years old, is imprinted in different ways in housing, in shops, in the use of public space and local services, in the sounds and odours of the city (fig. 10-11). Satellite TV antennas, “extension” of the private living space on sidewalks and other common spaces, groups who speak unknown languages, music and food from every part of the globe, shops bearing advertisements in languages incomprehensible to “locals”, children who flock local schools and kindergartens - all testify to the presence of a multi-ethnic crowd and to the changes in the neighbourhood.

Inventive adaptation sometimes directs migrants to the development of particular practices to do with inhabiting public spaces, thus becoming more “visible”. In addition there are by now numerous shops operated by, or belonging to, migrants, while others target them particularly (fig. 10). 
“…the bakery which belonged to Greeks in the past, was sold to Albanians, who already own two bakeries. It is a very good bakery, big, much better than when the Greeks operated it, it has expanded let’s say, with the things it sells, the variety, bread is great …” (A.P. resident since 1945)

“We have here, we have Pakistanis. I shop …I buy this bread, Arabic…I buy spices or their tea if they have it, …” (K.E. Albania)

In any case, it is certain that migrant shops mark the streets and re-define the image of the urban tissue. At the same time they themselves find points of reference and places to frequent, like kiosks on the square, a cafe, a barbeque stand which are meeting points for men migrants. Women on the other hand congregate mainly in the square, particularly mothers of small children, since playgrounds and open spaces are rare in the area, while Fokionos Negri, still a (pedestrianised) linear green space, is lined by rather upmarket cafes and restaurants targeting a rather “local” clientele. In the square, a lively space at all times, migrants and locals meet and familiarise with each other and at times establish neighbourly contacts.

Most migrants in Kypseli continue to live in small flats, although there is a visible tendency, particularly among Albanians, to buy bigger ones in old apartment buildings. They add their own habits in the familiar surroundings of the neighbourhood where they are no longer so “alien”, even though the issue of legal papers remains unresolved for many of them.
“All, all, all of us around here we are friends. All, we are close […] This is why we do not leave. We are used to the place …You see, like being in my own village now, that is how I feel personally…” (K.E., from Albania)

“She gave this house to be redeveloped and when it was finished she says: do you want to come?[…] Now we go out, her window is across from here. Even at night she may need something […] When I cook something good, I bring some to her… When she buys from a take away that my daughter likes,…she will buy for my children as well…” (R.S., Albania, from discussion during Greek courses in the Agora)

Kypseli, and other such central neighbourhoods in Athens, offer examples of multiple (informal) processes and everyday practices of “living together” among locals and migrants. Phenomena of racism or resentment are not absent from the scene, but it is undeniable that migrants find ways to settle and form their own familiar places and routines, which we study further in two local public spaces, the square (fig. 11) and the former municipal market (Agora, fig. 12).


5. FIELDWORK FINDINGS

5.1. International Migration and Urban Transformations

As we have already mentioned in our presentation of Kypseli, our study area in the context of GeMIC, the influx of migrants accounts for significant transformations at city scale as well as very locally, in the neighbourhood, while their presence and practices is imprinted in different aspects of urban life and urban development. Here, based mainly on fieldwork findings, we discuss three aspects of such transformations: revitalisation of the housing market, intensive use of public transport and restructuring of commercial activity; in the next section discuss a third aspect the uses of public space.  

revitalisation of the housing market
Finding a place to stay is a primary concern of migrant women and men from the moment they arrive. After a first period of temporary arrangements (eg. in cheap hotels, in the homes of relatives or friends, in abandoned houses, in public spaces,…) and as their job situation and income improves, they seek better premises. Our interviewees initially rented basement and lower level flats, rooms on the rooftop of apartment buildings or old empty houses: such premises were more affordable, albeit overpriced for their size and quality; in many cases they were the only ones in which migrants were allowed (fig. 13). In the early 1990s, owners were reluctant to rent to migrants and charged high prices for very low quality stock. Insertion in the housing market took place through contacts and references by compatriots – something which is much more relaxed nowadays.
 “Half a year we could not find somewhere to rent…We were making phone calls, we looked at newspapers. When they heard we were foreign, they refused to give it. So it was…Luckily a fellow worker who lived near and they go every evening to a shop to drink, and they talked, he said that we are looking and this is how we found something… Someone has to say ‘these are good people’, and they give us the flat. I don’t know how to say. They need guarantee…”

“..And then I found…I was looking for two rooms. And I left from there…It was very difficult to find a house then because they did not rent to Albanians” (L.Z., Albania)

Their urgent need to settle contributed to re-insert into the property market stock which had remained unused (and therefore yielded no profit) for many years – a development which is rarely acknowledged by local owners but is identified by real estate agents. The old stock was in bad condition and needed a lot of repairs which were done gradually by the migrants themselves, through personal labour and often with the help of friends and relatives. Men undertake repairs, while women try to decorate with small items, curtains and furniture so as to create a more homely environment.
“We lived in an apartment building, very very old…We have painted and repaired. Now it has a problem, because the pipes are very old […] and a pipe leeks from the toilet flush […] The flat is not ours, we cannot do what we want, change pipes…We repair one thing at a time – when we can” (K.E. Albania)

“…she [the owner] does not want us to leave from here…A lot of work, a lot of work we did…She came form the village and went crazy. She came to a new house. She sits, she drinks coffee, she eats cookies, cheespies, she stays and we eat together...it is a big house, it is not for 250 [euros], but my husband repaired it…he repaired it fine. Now the paint looks new…” (K.E, Albania.) 

Sharing flats with compatriots usually makes the rent more affordable per person, but this strategy often leads to overcrowding. Rented flats cannot meet the particular needs of each household, be it a family or co-habiting persons, usually men. However, a number of adaptations are possible, both in the way the different rooms are used and in the different use of spaces at different times of the day. Our interviewees seek to move to better conditions as their jobs become more regular and their income improves: they move to upper floors and to bigger flats, not in need of immediate repairs. The importance placed on housing and living conditions is implied also in the map of D.N. who gives it a prominent position and shape, unlike “normal” stock in the neighbourhood.

use of public transport
Our interviewees underline the centrality of Kypseli and its good connections with most places in Athens. Public transport features high in their evaluation of the neighbourhood, since it facilitates access to areas where they look for jobs, to meeting places or to particular services. The effectiveness of public transport is underlined in different ways by women and men: most women migrants working as live-out domestic workers evaluate the time-distance to go to work and come back fast, especially when they have small children; most men on the other hand value the possibility to reach the remote places where they tend to work in construction sites. 
“Now I am very well here. To go to my job, it is very easy, I go, I come back […]. It is close to the city centre, you can go to Omonia and buy a newspaper, send things home, let’s say money or something. It is very near the centre. You go fast…” (A.N, Georgia)

Intensive use of public transport contributes to the migrants’ familiarisation with broad parts of the city. It is no coincidence that bus and metro lines and stops structure the maps of many of our respondents in the map-drawing exercise, even in cases of otherwise very poor images, while the actual sketch of the bus or trolley appears quite prominently. Incidents of resentment of migrants in public transport are sometimes reported in the press, but they were mentioned by the people we talked to. A hypothesis that needs to be tested is how migrants have contributed to the viability of these services at a time when locals were increasingly succumbing to the alleged comfort of private cars. 

intensification of commercial activity 
Migrant presence in Kypseli is very visible in public spaces and in land use transformations. As old residents mention “we became aware of them mostly in the streets”. However, there are by now many shops and small businesses which are either operated by migrants or belong to migrants – observation alone cannot always testify to one or the other. Some special businesses/services are directed to migrants only, most prominently call-centres for communication with the countries of origin and money transfer offices which facilitate sending remittances. 

In our observation sessions we identified also mini-markets, bakeries, hairdressing salons, barbers, video clubs, internet cafes, fast-food stands, ethnic food stores and restaurants – all of which seem to fill a gap in the market, exceeding the neighbourhood and the specific ethnic communities.  These shops attract customers through specialised offer, long opening hours, quality service and affordable prices. They also play a stabilising role in the neighbourhood: they make the migrants’ presence more visible, promote different selling/buying habits and usually function as points of reference for various groups and as contact places between migrants and locals. At the same time they are important employment and income generators. In this process migrant women are key actors, both as consumers and as workers, in “family businesses” or in shops of their own. 

Men migrants we talked to mentioned that they go to the local cafes to drink coffee or smoke hookah with friends and compatriots. They find these cafes less expensive than the cafeterias which are located in more central parts of the neighbourhood, for example around the square, where locals usually go. They thus contribute to revitalize parts of the area where there were no facilities other than houses and empty spaces.
“I buy from the super market here. It has another one over there… It has many shops. It has also Arabian shops. I go there to buy things for hookah. Here we have cafes with hookah. We sit there and drink” (M.O, Syria)

Many Greeks also shop in migrant shops, trying different tastes, qualities and services than the standard ones.
“…And here, next to me there is a small shop, you know those which used to sell milk in the old days… Many years ago it was owned by Greeks, then the Albanians came, it has changed hands three or four times, always Albanians…” (AP, old resident)

“Many shops have opened. There is the Polish one at the corner of Zakynthou street, it is super. I bought the other day some wonderful things. Some cheese and things. There is another shop with Egyptians on Skyrou street, further down - a grocery and greengrocery. There are others towards Kerkyras street, on Skyrou; some others were operated by black youngsters but they closed a couple of years ago. I used to buy mango juice from them and now I buy from Egyptians who also sell Arabic pita-bread, very tasty” (Eleni, volunteer teacher)

Some of these shops offer opportunities for meetings among migrants and locals and among migrants from different countries. One such shop is the tailors’ shop of Evangelia from Albania. People from Rumania, Moldova, Russia, as well as Greeks, congregate there to have their clothes repaired. “They come to Greece alone and live without their families” she remarks. She knows them as customers and takes the opportunity to engage in discussions about their ways of life “here” and “there”. 

The attitudes of locals remain ambiguous. Some talk about criminality, drugs, mafias and prostitution, about women afraid to move around after dark, about old residents who have left; they use hard, phobic language: “we do not have anything to do with them”, “the issue is not how many they are, but how we can get rid of them”, “foreigners are a source of evil”, “we have become Tirana square”. Others, however, admit that “the shops work”, “whatever time I call her [the Albanian neighbour] she comes to buy something for me, to do help do something…”, “they respect neighbours”, “they have revitalised the neighbourhood”, “we are also (internal) migrants”.





5.2. International Migration and the use of Public Space

Migrants we have talked to make intensive use of urban public spaces, in particular Kypseli Square. The different ways in which they use the public spaces of their neighbourhood and the city can be attributed to a variety of factors, closely related to their migration plans: labour conditions and economic situation; legal status; type of household in which they live (alone, with other compatriots or friends, with children, etc), family and compatriot social networks; communal activities; educational level; physical appearance; intergeneration relations; gender relations. We comment on/analyse these factors, based on the interview material. 

Public space in Kypseli, as many in central areas of Athens (and other Greek cities), consists of streets occupied by cars, sometimes even when they are pedestianised, squares which may be the only “green space” in these densely built areas, public services and facilities diffused in the urban fabric, in some neighbourhoods also parks, public gardens, …. Among locals, the uses and meanings of public space have changed significantly, along with rising incomes and standards of living: leisure activities, once informally evolving in open public spaces (neighbourhood streets and squares, parks and public gardens), have gradually given way to more formal uses and commercialised spaces. A good deal of such open public spaces has been ‘privatised’ by the extension of indoor entertainment (and some times commercial) activities into open public space, leaving very little space to be used without any “fee”. In this context, public spaces quite often end up with a perimeter full of coffee shop and restaurant tables and an almost empty core with trees and benches. The perimeter of leisure activities is intensively used by locals who seldom appear any more in the core for anything other than quick passage or, in the daytime, for local outings of elderly people. These spaces, still open to public use and free of charge, have started to be re-populated by migrants and to acquire new uses (Vaiou 2003).

Migrants’ labour and economic situation
As all the migrants of our research have underlined, they go to Kypseli square and to other public and open green spaces because they cannot spend the money needed to go elsewhere, to those privatised areas of the public. Having money to spend for leisure is closely connected with their labour conditions and their migration plans. Women who work as domestic workers or carers more often than not have to pay themselves the social security contributions necessary in order to have residence/work permit (legal papers) and they are always worried if they can keep (all of) their jobs “for ever” and what will happen if they run out of money and/or become unemployed. It is rare to find an employer who is willing to sign for them the required employer’s certificate, let alone pay for their contributions. They are therefore usually very careful to save money for the extra burden, for possible “difficult” days, for their children and/or grandchildren. This is one of the main reasons why they avoid going to places where they have to pay.

For men things are a little better: as they usually work in construction or as waiters, their employers pay at least part of their social security contributions in order to avoid problems with Labour Inspections. However, they also are concerned to save money: in order to help their families who are left back, to contribute to family income and to their children’s education, or to save in order to start a business of their own when they return to their places of origin.  

The testimony of M.O. is characteristic: he has been only twice to one of the cafeterias on Fokionos Negri, the pedestrian street starting from Kypseli square.
“I come here (Kypseli’ square) to sit, to drink a coffee, to find a friend of mine, to look at people, to speak Greek… Because here there are not any  bad people… If you want to listen to music you have to go to cafeteria… Here we do not have these things. In the square you will sit… same places… clean air… only children play here. The square is for these things only. It isn’t anything bad (…) I have gone once or twice to a cafeteria on Fokionos Negri. I have gone there with a friend of mine who has a Greek girlfriend. I drank coffee and each of them ate an ice cream, and we paid 16 Euros. It is very expensive. I asked for the bill and they told me 17 Euros. What could I say? There were 2000 people there… they would look at me…” (M.O., Syria)



Public Space and migrant’s legal status
Despite successive legalisation processes (or as a result of their restrictive provisions), many migrants do not have legal papers or lapse from the “legal” status if they do mot pay the required social security contributions and/or if they become unemployed. This may also draw into an “illegal” status wives and children who often acquire residence/work permits, indirectly, as dependents of their partners or fathers. As one of the teachers in Agora told us, some of the students do not always come to class because they afraid of possible police raids. In fact, there are days when the police decide to make swoops in public places of the neighbourhood (as in other public places in Athens, where the presence of migrants is very numerous). The following piece of interview is indicative:
“Everything is O.K. here (in Kypseli square). The square has only one bad thing, the police… They come almost every day. Two-three, ten-fifteen policemen… not only one. They look for people to catch, men, women… they ask for papers. Here there is no one who sells… something bad. They must go to Omonoia. There people sell cocaine and pinch.. Here we drink some coffee and there are children who play… […] They come all the time. Summer and winter, every day… every morning and night. They do not have good manners ‘why do you look at me’, ‘why do you turn your eyes down?’ ‘What do you have in your pockets?’ They must not talk like that ‘Hello, could you please show me your papers?’ They must ask clearly (politely), in order to have a clear answer…”(M.O, Syria).

The fact that migrant women are the ones who assume responsibility to create ‘homely’ environments in the city and to make ends meet in their households, has to do to a large extent with the family traditions of their country and gender relations linked with it. But their inferior or precarious position is also reinforced by the provisions of the Greek immigration law, following which migrant women may acquire residence/work permits as dependents of their partners. Under such circumstances, women are vulnerable to their partners whims and behaviours, while in the, not so uncommon, cases of family breakups they lose their legal status and become equally vulnerable to police control and employer abuses. 

Educational level and age
The ways with which migrants use public spaces are related with their educational level witch sometimes relates to their confidence to overcome difficulties of participating in public spaces. Once again, the case of M.A. is characteristic here, since she has managed to challenge the image we have for live-in carers. Even though M.A. lives in the house of her employer, she tries to find free time for herself.  It is characteristic that she has left one of her previous jobs because she was not permitted to go out many hours, whereas one of the main reasons why she stays in her current job is her possibility to have free time and to relax going out for a walk in Kypseli where she meets her friends and looks at shop windows. M.A. participates actively in the communal life of Bulgarians who live in Greece. Years ago she used to participate in the Bulgarian Community in Athens but she and her friends have distanced themselves from it because they disagreed with the new president who they accuse of using the Community to make money. M.A. and some other women have created a new meeting space: the Bulgarian Cultural Centre. There she spends most of her free time, while her activities are closely connected with her former education and work in Bulgaria, where she was a teacher and choreographer.
“I teach them how to dance and sing. Others teach them to speak Bulgarian language. These children do not speak Bulgarian very well. It is difficult... These are children who do not speak Bulgarian very good. It is a shame not to speak your own language. The Bulgarian embassy and the Bulgarian department gave us books. (M.A., Bulgaria)

Sometimes to be self-confident is not a matter of education. It has to do with how young somebody is. For example, N.A., who is a very young woman, went to school in her country for 7 years. When she came to Greece she started to attend Greek courses in the Agora, as well as in the mosque where she meets other women compatriots of hers. Furthermore, she takes driving courses.
“I did not know that this is the place where courses of Greek language take place. One day, I asked my husband what was there, I saw a lot of people, opening and closing the building, celebrations, I didn’t now what was happening there, I thought it was something like  school or university. That’s what I thought. And then they gave me the paper and I thought I now this store, this school and I went there. I have been there twice. […] 
A woman from Syria created a small school, in the mosque, for us to learn Greek. For women only. She studied here and we took some lessons and could go forward. (…) She is a good woman, her name is big here. She is doing a lot, she helps a lot. […]What else can we do here, we have to learn something, you understand? I like learning Greek, driving; to come and take my girls (daughters) for a drive”. (N.A, Syria)

Family and compatriot networks
For almost all the migrants we interviewed, family or compatriot networks play an important role in their lives here, not only in terms of helping with their settlement, finding jobs or looking after children, but also in terms of the ways in which they use public spaces in the neighbourhood and the city. Family networks play a paramount role among Albanian women who usually migrate with their family, together with (or soon after) their partners. As a rule they are directed to parts of the city where members of their family have already settled and can offer them shelter at least until they find a job/income. 
“We came here with our child. At the beginning we lived in the house of the sister-in-law of my brother. First, we settled there. They and the three of us in a small apartment, in very difficult conditions […] I worked there because my brothers asked me to. They were working there, they are painters. And they told me that they (their employers) wanted a girl for cleaning... […] And then, another of my sisters-in-law told me to go to the same house, in Papagou […] I don’t have any close friend… to speak. Besides, I have no trust… […] I have my sisters-in-law. […] My sisters-in-law and my nieces were escorting Aristeidis to the square when I was working and now they do the same with Geni. They come to my place and I go to theirs. Mostly they come to me, all day and night. Here, to my house… Besides I have a lot of work here. I do not regret… because I have my family most of all […] I go to the big park. Always, with them.  I go there because my sisters-in-law go. My niece goes and plays with my daughter there. There, the children play and we talk about our things. My niece brings to us a cup of coffee, because her house is near-by. We have nice time…” (K.E., Albania)

For migrant men from Burkina Faso, who usually migrate alone, networks of compatriots seem to have a similar function. At the same time, such networks shape patterns of use of public spaces, not only locally, in the neighbourhood, but also city-wide. 
“I go for a walk or for a coffee only with my compatriots. We go to the square; to Monastiraki and the coffee shop near our house. […] When I came to Greece I stayed in a compatriot’s house… (Now) I live with three other compatriots. A group of compatriots found it for us […] When I first came to Greece, I did not know how to move. They have helped me a lot.  They know you well. They try to help… We are 32. Tomorrow I think we have a meeting. (This happens) the first Sunday of the month. 5 hours. All guys are there. To discuss have you any problem?’ ‘No’ if we have not problem everyone puts (offers) 5 Euros” (K.A, Burkina Faso)

Communal activities
Én-depth interviews indicate that immigrants become familiar with different public spaces in the neighbourhood, as well in the city centre and sometimes beyond. The narrative of M.A., who works as a live-in carer, is characteristic here: on Sunday, her free day, she wakes up early, does quickly the domestic chores and leaves from the house. She takes the bus to the city centre, where the first thing she does is to buy Bulgarian newspapers from a kiosk in Agiou Kontsantinou street, near Omonia, and to drink a coffee. M.A. reads a lot of Bulgarian newspapers, published both in Greece and in Bulgaria. As she says, some years ago she could find them in a kiosk in Kypseli square, but now that it has closed she has to go to the centre to buy them.
“In Omonoia, Ag. Kostantinou number 4, we have a big shop with Bulgarian newspapers and we go there and drink a coffee. I read many newspapers… to learn what is happening to Bulgaria… (M.A., Bugaria)

Then, M.A. goes to the Bulgarian Cultural Centre where many groups gather who are active with music, dance, painting and gymnastics. Because the cultural centre is a very small building these groups go there one after the other. Some Sundays they organise festivals and then they go all together. 
… There is woman who does exercise…, she does this, and another who reads (gives lectures) about the migrants (about migration) and reads poems and the poems of a new poet and then we discuss about them… Another woman paints… and sometimes we sing and dance all together…(M.A., Bugaria)

She stays there until 4-5 o’clock in the afternoon and then she goes to the offices of the Bulgarian newspaper in Athens which belongs to a friend of hers who has satellite TV there and they watch Bulgarian programs. At 6 o’clock she goes to a MacDonald’s near Omonoia square, where she meets women from her home town and they talk about issues which concern their town, they learn the news of their place from newcomers and comment on the changes there.
…Nina has a TV and her own office there (in newspaper’ offices), she has satellite and we watch Bulgaria. At 6 o’clock, in the afternoon, (we go) to MacDonald’s. They are all from my town. All women together sit there before they go home. After six, we have made an agreement to discuss about my town. (M.A., Bugaria)

The Cultural Centre accommodates 30-40 people, while their festivals take place either in a Bulgarian restaurant or in a discotheque, both very centrally located. Usually in these places they celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve; they also celebrate the 5th of March, liberation day from the Ottoman Empire, and the 24th of May, dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius for the Cyrillic alphabet. In this same restaurant every Saturday and Sunday there are courses for Bulgarian children who have been born in Greece or who have come at a very young age: they are taught how to sing Bulgarian songs and M.A. teaches them how to dance and sing; they are also taught the Bulgarian language. Also, M.A. underlines the big festival for the Bulgarians who live in Greece, which is organised by the Bulgarian Community and the Cultural Centre. As she says, over 5.000 Bulgarian people who live in Athens participate in this event.
…Some days ago in Klafthmonos (square), there was a big event.  Big (famous) singers had come; my friends from my town had come. I invited them. It was a great event…It had an orchestra and people who were dancing…
…the 8th of March, we had gone all women together in Ameriki’s square…We celebrate There are many taverns there… big tables…and we celebrated there… for 2 hours…
… When we have a big event we have to go to a bigger place. We go to a discotheque, in Xarilaou Trikoupi and a big restaurant in Exarchia, in Solonos street… (M.A., Bulgaria) 

Co-presence/coexistence in public space 
Since the beginning of the 1980s, migrants have become more visible in the public spaces of the neighbourhood and the city. This is observation needs to be qualified by gender, however, since women make more intensive use of urban public spaces than men (fig. 15). Neighbourhood squares seem to have acquired new life through women’s routines and practices, mainly in their open and free ‘core’ area: they are meeting places for women from the same place of origin; play areas for their children; places where, as part of their caring job, they escort local elderly people they look after. In their search to make ends meet with their meagre incomes, it is women rather than men who look for affordable shops, accessible public services, safe places for play and socialising – for themselves and their families. Intensive use of public spaces and facilities at different times of the day and for deferent purposes re-introduces these places in to the urban fabric and to neighbourhood life and draws back the locals as well, particularly children and youth (fig. 16). 

These places are the sites of face-to-face contact and everyday intermingling and, sometimes, confrontation with locals, as well as with other immigrants, mainly those who come from the same places of origin. Informal social integration takes place through casual yet repeated contact, over a period of time. It often leads to less casual relations, even to the formation of friendships and networks. 
“I met her (her compatriot friend) in the square (of Kypseli)… I told her that I will send the child to this kindergarten and she brought there her child too. And when I cannot take my child from the kindergarten she takes her, and when she cannot I take hers”. (L.I., Albania) 

Visibility and co-presence in public spaces contributes to gradually turn the ‘unfamiliar’ into ‘familiar’: for locals, the presence of migrant women and their children in the  square, the supermarket or the local shops is no more an unusual sight; for migrant women these same places have become part of a daily routine which bears characteristics of coexistence. This is not to underestimate the inequalities and power relations built into this coexistence and interaction between locals and migrants, nor to equate public spaces of the neighbourhood (and the city) with the lacking mechanisms of social integration.  But it is not to underestimate either that public spaces have to include, and not to exclude, people, activities, encounters…  
“…(Here there are people) from Syria, (they are) from Romania, Bulgaria, Poland… there, those girls are from Turkey. I know all of them. This guy is from Turkey… He is one year here. He sleeps in the square for one year. And the other day I took him with me, in my house, he took a bath, he ate with me. He does not have a job. Someone has stolen his wallet, his mobile, his passport, everything… Now he is waiting for a passport (and money) for tickets… to return. […]Here come people from Syria. Look now, look there, they are over 20 children. And many Kurds come here. Those on this bench are Kurds. Two of them have gone. They left two. There are too many people who have families with children… Here there are women and children…” (M.O, Syria)
    
Migrant women in our research frequent neighbourhood public spaces and have the opportunity to meet and discuss with local women who make them “feel easy and safe”, as a migrant woman said. At the same time, they meet their compatriots with whom they read newspapers from their places of origins, discuss about the current events in their country or about their everyday arrangements.  
“Here (in Kypseli square) we always come. Here people come and we talk. […] Here we read our newspaper and then I read something else and I give to another woman and the other (woman gives it to) another one… What else can we do? Someone who has not lived abroad cannot understand our pain… We (she and her employer) talk, we go together to shops around here. We know and talk with everybody here… I do not feel that I am in a foreign country. I am not afraid of anything... Fortunately, she (her employer), although she is on a wheelchair, wants us to come every day and every evening, twice a day…”. (A.N., Georgia) 

“During the day, my employer sleeps… (During that time) I can go out 3-4 hours… It’s not a big deal. I go for a walk to Kypseli square and around it. There are some shop windows there. I like it there… for a walk. And Kypseli square is close, I go on foot in 15 minutes […] I meet some friends from Bulgaria…Here, on the fourth (floor), in a very nice apartment a grandmother lives, lady Magda. She had a Bulgarian (woman-carer), but she left because she felt sick. And now she has a Ukrainian, who is very young and does not want to spend much time at home, but she does not speak Greek well”. (M.A., Bulgaria)

(Physical) appearance
During our systematic observation sessions in Kypseli square we noticed that interactions between locals and migrants do not include people who differ significantly in their (physical) appearance, especially black women and men and veiled women. Black men sit on certain benches, on the same side of square, and veiled women sit on the same benches, looking at the playground, where their children play. We propose some hypotheses based on these observations:

People with no obvious racial/ethnic difference approach each other more easily, fear of the “other” does not seem so obvious. On the other hand, the veil seems to create a barrier among those who wear it and those who do not, the latter identifying it with “alien” or “inferior” cultures. However, things may be simpler than our theory-informed ruminations: it may be the case that Africans or veiled women sit on the particular benches and socialize with each other for their own particular reasons which cannot be identified through observation. The following pieces from interviews with migrant women, however, seem to support our hypotheses:
“Aristeidis had a schoolmate who is black. He used to bring him at home… But I don’t know… I don’t like it. I am afraid… not of that kid, but… […] in recent years we see many foreigners in the neighbourhood, and many black people too” (K.E., Albania)

“One day I was outside a shop that sells shoes. I was looking at the shop window for some high-heeled shoes. At that time a Greek woman stopped next to me and asked me why I was looking at those shoes since I was not going to wear them…Why do they suppose that I am not wearing high-heeled shoes? Why, I want them, I wear them, I wear trousers, I wear t-shirts, I am a modern woman. The veil doesn’t change me, I am a young girl and I can wear whatever I want.”  (N.A., Syria)

Public space and gender relations
In-depth interviews as well as systematic observation in Kypseli Square help us understand how gender relations are played out in the public spaces of the neighbourhood. A first and rather obvious observation is that migrant women use the public spaces of their neighbourhood more intensively than men: they perform there a variety of domestic and care activities, which are not usually considered as “real work”, like the daily shopping for the family, escorting the children to kindergartens or schools, taking them to the health centres etc. – activities which men do not seem to undertake.
“We do not go to cafeterias or something like that. Because the child does not sit quietly… O.K. once in a month we may go to Goody’s (a local fast food chain). If I work in the afternoon I cannot go anywhere. I cannot because I am tired and I have to work in the house (to do the domestic chores). If you come home at 3:30 (pm), you pick up the child… until you come and change her clothes from school and have lunch… it is already 5:00 o’clock. You cannot sit for a moment until 7:30. You can go nowhere. You want to sit and rest in your home. When the weather is good, I go for a walk with my daughter. We usually go to Kypseli square”. (L.I., Albania)


In Kypseli square, we observed some men taking their little children to the playground every morning. Our assumption was that those men were unemployed and escorted their children because their partners were working. And this is probably the case if we take into account the words of one of them who told us that he does not have a job and that “only his wife works”. In-depth interviews on the other hand indicate that women migrants adopt traditional roles, even when they have more standard work or earn more money than their men. This does not mean that gender relations do not change following women’s practices. In the words of E.V., who runs her own business (a tailor shop) in Kypseli:
“He helps enough (with the domestic chores)… You know… in my own way… I have arranged it like this. Maybe someone else would make it differently. But in my case, I work more than him (her husband) and, financially, I contribute more money in the house than him… My husband works for 5 hours and he does not earn enough money…  Men do not feel good when the woman is not in the house. Men count themselves with the money they have/earn. I speak for the men from Albania… They want to be the column of the house, they want to control everything in the house… they want to be ‘The Man’. They were raised like this and like this they continue to be. […] Men in Albania want to be something like breadwinner, and they want it for everything, they want to have the economic power, the power of speech, everything. They want to be Men. They used to be like that and they continue to be like that. This man sees that he has not a permanent job, he does not bring money in the house. In this case he has psychological problems. He has problems with his family and he expresses it in his own way, how can I say it, he becomes nervous in home with many things… He gets nervous, of course he gets nervous...”. (E.V., Albania)

Migrant women seem to take more opportunities to communicate with local people (mainly women) than men migrants do. They discuss with their employers, their friends, their neighbours, the people they meet in the shops, the mothers of their children’s friends whom they meet in the school or in public spaces like Kypseli square. The discussions they have with locals seem to have great emotional and practical importance for them, since they make them “feel like home” and give them information that they need about different issues of their lives. The following long extract fro N.A.’s interview, points to a variety of small everyday things which are often necessary and important for migrants to “feel like home”. Such things re-define neighbourly contacts and relations:
“When I came the first 2 years, 4 years not many arabs used to live here. But the last 3 years, wherever I go I see (arabs) (…). I go every Wednesday to the fruit market, they all know me there now, everyone says to me “hi, how are you?” I say “fine” or something like that. Yes, I talk, I talk. And in the supermarket here, there are 3-4 girls who know me, I say “good morning, how are you?” If I need something they give it to me, it is nice… (…) In the block of flats here, lives an old man but he is not married, he is good, I talk to him he is fine but he is also pissed off sometimes. From 3 to 5 he has to sleep and the children make noise. I cannot hold them and he is making a lot of fuss. But he is right, he wants to sleep, he is an old man, he is not young…[…] And close to me there is a good man. At 5 in the morning he gets up and goes to the fruit market. And there is the one who collects the bills on the 4th floor, a woman, she is very good. She is very funny. And we make fun and my husband says ‘I want to marry another woman, a Greek woman’, and she tells him ‘you have such a beautiful wife and you want to marry another one?’ And about courses I had known before I take the paper in the school. One of my neighbours had told me,  but I didn’t now where it was, because I am not going far away (…) and then a girl living next to us is going to high school, first class, and her teacher gave this paper that said where I had to go to learn Greek.”.  (N.A., Syria)

On the other hand, migrant men do not seem to have so much direct contact with locals. What we observed in Kypseli square during our systematic observation sessions in the spring and summer of 2009 is characteristic: a group of 6-8 immigrants goes to the square almost every afternoon and plays domino on a makeshift table which they hide in the trees before they leave. Another group of men, locals this time, borrow that table in the evenings in order to play cards, without saying a word. This ‘silent’ activity reveals a un-confessed communication-agreement between migrants and locals and at the same time a silent acceptance of the presence of migrants in the(ir) local space. This lack of verbal communication is evident in migrants’ in-depth interviews. None of them talks with locals when they go to relax in public spaces, not even with their neighbours. Kostoula, one of the volunteer teachers in the Agora, talks about “invisible walls” which separate people, much in the same way that such “walls” keep apart those who live in basements from those who live in upper floors. She adds, however, that
“…we live close to each other, so things are better than in the suburbs where everyone has his own villa (…) Kypseli is fighting not to form a wall between disappointed, enraged petit-bourgeois and foreigners”(Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

5.3.  Social movements and the Agora
The Agora, former municipal market, of Kypseli is one of the main places of our fieldwork, because of its connections with local and antiracist movements and its orientation towards grass roots activities which make a conscious effort to be inclusive for migrants (fig. 17, 18). People who are in solidarity to migrants try to “cover” the gaps of the Greek migration policies. One interesting such activity is the “School”, i.e. courses of Greek language offered to migrants for free, by volunteer teachers, most of whom  were involved in Left politics before taking part in the Agora squat. Similar schools exist nowadays in many different neighbourhoods in Athens and Piraeus. In the Agora School, in each class there are 5-15 students and usually 2 teachers while every class meets once a week. The number of students varies from week to week as their participation is not stable in the classes –but a total of 200-250 people pass each week from Agora. The group of teachers comprises about 25 people -most of them women- who, in order to coordinate their work, share experiences and solve problems they meet have an assembly once a month. 

From food market to squat
Agora is the old municipal market place of Kypseli, a big local market where tens of small shops selling groceries, fish, meet and cheese were functioning until 2002. After that, the building was locked and remained closed for five years, until 2007. At that time the municipality of Athens presented a plan to transform the old market into a shopping Mall with a big underground parking. A group of locals, most of them members of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left party with 12 elected members of Parliament), decided to squat the place in order to stop the municipality’s plans. In their first text which was presented to the neighbourhood they wrote: 
“Kypseli doesn’t need a Mall. We need free, public space. (…) The building of the Agora is a historical building not only as a building but also as use and atmosphere6”. 
 
After being squatted, the Agora functions as an open public space in the neighbourhood, operated by volunteers/activists who are self-organising in order to offer activities and services which are not provided through formal channels. There is an open assembly once a month which discusses all the issues and problems that occur and decides the program of the following month. People with different interests, backgrounds and beliefs congregate together to organise and participate in different activities and functions which include cultural events, exhibitions and theatre plays, literature evenings, political discussions on issues ranging from the economic crisis to the situation in Palestine, film projections, parties and live concerts, free courses of Greek language to migrants, a market for organic produce every Saturday. Some of these events are very local, while others attract a wider audience (fig. 19, 20).

The Agora is an open public space, not only because of the intentions of the people who operate it, but also because of the building’s architectural form. It is a rectangular building accessible through its two narrow sides, with a long central space and small rooms, former shops, lined along its sides. The space in the middle is a space to pass, to meet and to stop by, a space that connects all the small separate (former) shops in a common function. As Kostoula who participates in the squat argues: 
“This is not a radical, aggressive squat. It is a proposal to the neighborhood. Everything we do here is visible, even if you just pass by, that is why it is very difficult for others to sabotage what we do. There are people who just pass by, cross the Market as a street, everything is open to the public. (…) This is its charm and difficulty at the same time. Who is part of it and who isn’t? Do we put a limit to completely different groups of people who want to participate?” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

In the monthly assemblies of the squatted Agora the idea came up to run a volunteer school for migrants. Some people interested in the issue formed a discussion group on issues of migration; a few months later a woman joined the Assembly and proposed to start teaching Greek to migrants – a proposal to which all agreed. The three women volunteer teachers we interviewed were involved in Left politics before participating in the Agora squat. All three of them started to participate more actively when the initiative was launched to form a group that would teach Greek to migrants. As they underline in their interviews, they did not have much free time and they wanted to participate in something practical, actually trying to change things in everyday life by offering useful knowledge to migrants.
 “…things are difficult nowadays, with the rise of far right and xenophobic discourse. We do that to hold the balance, to set things right”. (Maria)  
“…it changed, even in our imagination, our everyday life. When you find a public space where you can stop by, have a coffee, meet with some people, then you realize that there wasn’t any public space in the neighborhood. We had the chance also to meet with people, people that you have many things in common but you probably never knew they were living next door from you. For me Agora changed my relation to Fokionos Street, to the neighborhood, everything.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

Kostoula feels that in the operation of the squat “invisible walls” are formed, as in the assemblies there were not any migrants participating. When she posed this issue to the assembly some people argued that the squat was open from the beginning, no-one controlled who is coming in and out, it was an open procedure; but Kostoula feels that “… these inner walls, these invisible walls, are much more powerful. It is what holds rich and poor people living in the same city away from each other”. 

The politics of teaching (the language)
Three parameters affect significantly the teaching procedure, according to the volunteer teachers we interviewed: each person’s talent to learn foreign languages; the educational level they had reached in their own country; knowledge of some European language. The latter is particularly important:
 “If somebody knows a European language, s/he knows what is “verb” or “article”, otherwise it is really difficult. (…).(Eleni, volunteer teacher)
Some migrants, for different reasons having to do with their working schedule, lack of free time, unstable residence, etc, come to school for a period and then quit, while others miss many lessons. Such irregularities of attendance create problems in the teaching procedure as well. The latter is further complicated by the fact that people are already tired when they go to class and they have little free time to study and do homework during the week; if they have not been through schooling in their own countries, it is difficult for them to understand why they have to study by themselves. Moreover:
“…they all have learned the Greek language in the street, so they make many mistakes that is difficult to correct in a two-hour lesson. They come here, they say the word correctly and next week they say it wrong again.” (Eleni, volunteer teacher)

The difficulties of teaching foreign adult people come up in the narratives prominently and volunteer teachers feel a high responsibility, related to the bottom-up initiatives they promote and to their politics in general.
“You have to be careful not to think; OK, I won’t be very good in their teaching because we will socialize in the class. Then you underestimate these people, you understand? You have to take the teaching procedure very seriously, with your weaknesses and your mistakes (…) When you teach adult people in your country things are much easier, they have at least finished primary school and their mother tongue is Greek. Someone is richer, someone is poorer but you have a common base. Think now of a class of migrants who are different in age, from different continents, different cultural backgrounds, different religions, experiences, codes of communication and codes of everyday life. The only thing they have in common is that all of them are migrants without political rights, without equal rights, without labour rights.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

But language classes are not only an educational process, they are a social process as well. Sometimes a simple bodily contact, a touch, can be more important than verbal communication.  
“…our obligation is to help them learn Greek. Of course there is social communication between us, as long as both sides want it. It is important that they talk to Greek people; there are normal Greek people who talk to them not to exchange money, not to buy things, not to sell their labour power, not to insult them, not silence. It is normal communication. And after that the “other” the migrants take different shape, it is a Nigerian or a Philippina woman, it is not just a differentiation. And as you go deeper it is not a Nigerian but he comes from a particular place in Nigeria, he is Christian or Muslim, he is married or single, he has children, he works or he is unemployed, he has been to primary school or to the university, he has his own personality. (…) So you are in a strange position, you are trying to build an equal relation and teaching language which is a very important arm on their way to equality; if they speak the language they can understand what you are talking about, understand what is happening in Greek society. And then you can talk to them. It is not paternalistic but you have to go slow, to give them the tools in order to stand equally in this society.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

The process of knowing the “other” contributes to build relations and break monolithic perceptions and identities that create walls between people; this is how political identities are also forged.
“…you start from small contacts between a few people and these people have personal characteristics afterwards. It has nothing to do with liking or disliking somebody, as you can like or dislike a Greek person. But this is for me the way to end up having a serious political opinion, and a vision.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)
 “in class they never speak about racism, not that they don’t come across it but they have never discussed that. (…) I think that when they talk to Greeks they excuse the attitude of other Greek people. Most of them have no relations to Greek people at all. They are really impressed by the way we face them, not only in the class but also outside, fact that is indicative to what they experience out of the school.” (Eleni, volunteer teacher)

As it is to be expected, there are very different reasons why a migrant wants to learn Greek, depending on their work, future plans and family life. 
“Though in the beginning I didn’t want to accept it, many of the students leave when they learn to read a little bit, no matter if they understand what they are reading or not” (Eleni, volunteer teacher). 

Teachers and students
Communication and intercultural interaction comes up prominently, problematising the relation of “self” and “other” in and out of the classroom: 
“Sometimes it is very difficult to communicate; you have to go out of your self. (…) Sometimes I wonder how my students see me. We have some contact, we do some things together there is a first level of communication and acceptance. But I am a woman and I am 60 years old. Culturally for some of them I am very old. A woman in their cultures probably has a different social position, looks different than me. In the first lessons I asked them questions about their age, their educational level (…) and then I told them they can ask me questions; otherwise it would be a very hierarchical relation between us. And the first question was if I have children, as in many cultures women are defined by their children. I answered that I don’t have any and one of my students said: in my country women who don’t have children are crying all the time. And immediately I thought yes probably they are also beaten up and exiled. And a monster came in my thought. I didn’t say anything though. (…) I also told them I don’t believe in god, a thing that for most of them was inconceivable. (…) It is a matter of culture, and also a sociopolitical issue. (…) Sometimes we, the teachers, are very Eurocentric and tend to differentiate, tend to believe we know everything and they don’t.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

How migrants/students perceive their teachers seems to be an important concern of the teachers: 
“I think all of them know we are volunteers and all of us wouldn’t do it for money. I am also sure they have understood that not only we are not against migrants, ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ or whatever, but that we stand for equal rights. There were many cases when the police was controlling and arresting migrants and I told them to be careful, to follow small streets, especially those without papers. They know these things and I think they trust me, love, I wouldn’t say love, though I am sure that some of my students love me. At first they tried to talk in the plural to me, to show respect and I stopped it immediately, not “madam” not “lady” just my name. Because I am very open as a person, I talk to them.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

However, teachers don’t always know how to handle very close bonds/relations with people that are in need: 
“I am afraid of the emotional participation in someone’s life, I am very afraid of that, so I ask up to a point, to a point I can handle. You can not open something that you can not take it to the end. People who are in need, they need support and then, if you open up to that, you have to be always available; and I am not that available. It is like friendships, like everyday life, it is much more difficult to be a good friend of somebody who has many unsolved problems.” (Kostoula, volunteer teacher)

The teaching process and also intercultural communication and relations that evolve in class are very complicated and often difficult to handle. How can a European, middle class, Left, feminist woman coexist and communicate on equal terms, in the given teacher/student context with an African, precariously working, Muslim, macho man who has just arrived to Europe? How many intersections and conflicts occur between subjectivities constructed in so different ways at the intersections of gender, class, religion, colonialism, ethnic origin and power? Teachers try to go out of themselves, to handle the relations with their students/migrants on equal terms, subverting issues of power that emerge from binaries such as Greek/foreigner, male/female and teacher/student. They get into positions that have to query their roles, beliefs, cultural presuppositions even their own bodies. They try to view themselves through the eyes of culturally, socially and politically “others” and build relations based on respect and equality.     

Class dynamics 
Through participation in the classes and discussions with students we got the chance to observe how the relations operate in the context of a class between teachers and students, between Greeks and foreigners, between migrants from different origins. In every class there were about 5 to 10 men and women, mixed in terms of ethnicity. One of the biggest problems we faced was that discussion presupposes a minimum level of language skills and most of the people who went to the Agora School had not yet reached that level. In the beginners’ classes communication was very difficult, especially when the discussion was around issues to do with the neighbourhood and the city; we seemed to use terms they could not understand. Sometimes we ended up asking very simple questions “Do you like Kypseli?”, and taking answers like “Yes, it is nice.” But even in these classes it was interesting how all migrants seemed to be very interested in what we were doing - even when words like university and research did not make much sense for them - and most of them were really willing to help. There were some more advanced classes though, were we had in depth discussions with the migrants/students on these issues.
 
One of the topics they loved to discuss was their homelands: how they compared with Athens, what was different, better or worse, always connected to friends, family or other social networks. In one of the beginners’ courses we asked if Athens is different than the city where they grew up. A man from Bangladesh then responded: “Of course it is different, you don’t understand. Here is Europe and there is Asia. Completely different cultures”. 
 
It was obvious in these discussions that, apart from common assumptions like “Kypseli is a dirty neighbourhood” or “it is good because it has good transportation and low rents”, all the deeper discussions about the neighbourhood were connected to social networks; if they had friends, relatives, people they knew and could speak to, if they felt comfortable in the neighbourhood and had a sense of belonging. Also talking about their houses, the relationship to the owner of the house was one of the most important factors that determined even their sense of home. 

Religion came up in the discussions even though we did not intend to. Apart from faith and comfort, it seems to be a very important social capital for migrants, especially when they are new in the “receiving” country. It is also a dividing line among migrants from different religions and a unifying element among migrants of the same religion even when they belong in different ethnic groups. As M. who is Pentecostal said in class “I go to the church every Sunday. There I meet people from all over the world, from America and Phillipines, it is very nice”. Also S. who works in construction, together with other Copts from Egypt, give their free time and money voluntarily in order to build their church in Athens. 
  
Although the class meets once a week and students/migrants have formed groups, migrants participating in the School do not seem to have developed friendly relations outside the school, an observation confirmed also by their teachers. This is perhaps due to the lack of free time, different everyday lives and backgrounds, or simply the fact that building closer bonds is a difficult process that needs a long time to be established. On the other hand the discussions we organised in the classes were a chance for them also to get to know each other better, out of the context of learning the language, as many of them said to us. As we discussed issues about their countries of origin, the places where they have grown, their everyday lives and routes in the city, their opinion about the city and the neighbourhoods, they also started to get closer to each other. In many cases, when someone in the class described a difficult phase of his/her life, all of them seemed to share his/her “problem” and referred to similar stories. So what was even more interesting in class was not just the information we gained but this feeling of relations being built at the same time as we discussed. As S. one of the teachers told us after our participation in his class “It was amazing what happened today. I felt closer to my students and I think they felt closer to each other in just one afternoon; we wouldn’t achieve that even if we sat all together in another 20 or 30 typical lessons.” 

Concluding remarks 
Most of the students in Agora are men. Migrant women probably don’t have the networks in order to learn about the courses and participate; many of them don’t have free time as a large proportion of them work as live-in carers. Some of the migrant women probably don’t have the freedom to participate. In contrast to this most of the teachers are women. As it was stated also in the discussions with the teachers they volunteered because they found it useful to offer some knowledge as a factual solidarity, in the sense of “really doing something”. Probably this perspective of participation in politics – at the level of sharing knowledge in every day life - has a gender aspect, something that is tactile and has a visible result, even for few people. 

In spaces like the Agora, as also in different ways Kypseli Square, hybrid identities of mixing, solidarity and communication are beginning to form. Teachers try to question their “clear” identities, their ethnic, gender, and cultural preconceptions, in order to construct more equal relations with migrant/students with whom they cooperate in the classes. On the other hand, migrant men and women try to re-locate themselves in the context of the School –a place that operates quite differently from other places of everyday life, like work or neighborhood: there they build on their experiences, sharing them with the experiences of other migrant and native people.

In places like Agora new spaces operate, within which co-habitation and co-existence, with all the problems and conflicts that occur, can actually take place. In these kinds of places the resistance to a dominant discourse of fear, racism and xenophobia is an every day practice, beginning in the very local scale of the body and the neighborhood but expanding -as a set of practices, experiences and narratives- through different channels and networks to several interrelated sociospatial scales from the city to the global regime. 

5.4. Migration, belongings and appropriation of urban space
A rather striking observation from our interviews is that almost none of our interviewees have moved from Kypseli since the time of their initial settlement. In our presentation of the neighbourhood we discussed some of the features of its recent development which have led to the availability of an affordable housing stock. It is worth underlining, however, that migrants who live there for shorter or longer periods of time may have changed houses/flats several times, but always within the neighbourhood itself. Especially Albanian women working as live-out domestic workers, some of whom have arrived more than 15 years ago, emphasise their attachment to the place and the ways in which they have gradually built support networks and have become familiar with the space and the functioning of the area.
“All, all, all of us around here we are friends. All, we are close […] This is why we do not leave. We are used to the place …You see, like being in my own village now, that is how I feel personally…” (K.E., Albania)
Here we discuss the ways in which migrant women and men create spaces of belonging in the city and the neighbourhood. More specifically we discuss the importance of networks and co-presence in, and use of, public spaces and facilities. 

networking in the unknown place
The process of settling in Kypseli, as elsewhere, involves intensive networking:  relatives and compatriots, who may have been here before, put up newcomers until they find a place of their own, help them navigate through the difficulties of adaptation in the unknown place, provide “tips” about how to cope, are a potential source of emotional and often practical support, although there are also instances of violent confrontations. Family networks in particular seem to play a key role in decisions to migrate as well as in formulating migration projects, albeit in different ways. We can tentatively say that, among Albanians, families work as a support or safety net in the place of destination, whereas in cases where either women or men migrate alone (eg from Eastern European countries and from Pakistan respectively), the persons who migrate undertake the support of families left behind.
“In the beginning it is very difficult. You don’t know the language. The kids are far away. Very difficult. But little by little you get used to it, you earn money and support them to live better and you can do something at home…” (A.N., Bulgaria)

“…to go somewhere, you have to know somebody. You cannot just go to the unknown [laughter]. Someone has to tell you a few things, to help you in the beginning…When I came here …she [a friend]  was waiting for me, because I did not know the language or anything…” (M.A., Bulgaria) 

At the same time, networking with locals is also important in our interviewees’ accounts. Here as well, gender differences come out prominently: migrant women are predominantly the ones who engage in contacts with local women, practically by sharing common everyday routines. 
“With the lady we met…one day she was out in the courtyard hanging the laundry, and I was hanging the laundry in the balcony, and we talked. Then she goes to the pharmacy, probably she started a discussion with the pharmacist who knows me for years and that is how we started to talk” (K.E., Albania)

Migrant men on the other hand are more likely to contact support organizations and NGOs and share time with other men from work or from their own community.  
“..the guys from Burkina Faso in Greece (…) we make some plans all of us coming from the same town, how do you say this in Greek, meeting you know? (…) When I came to Greece, all new, I did not know how to move. Every month we are 32 who know each other well. One has a problem, I have a problem, the same problem, you understand? (…) So at the end of every month, the first Sunday, at 5, all the guys there. To talk, you have a problem? No, if we don’t have a problem each contributes 5 euros. We do not know what problem we find” (K.A, Burkina Faso)

being in public spaces
According to the law, the people who have talked to us are “aliens”, irrespective of whether they have legal papers or not, they have no formal “right to the city”. But their regular and embodied presence and practices in the neighbourhood and beyond create space for them. Gender differences come out prominently in this respect: it is women rather than men who engage in those everyday routines which contribute to form familiar spaces in the unfamiliar city. 

Women walk the streets of the neighbourhood and cross the square innumerable times in order to go to work and do their daily chores, they take children to school, to the day care, to the doctor, they take frequently to the square their own children, they escort some elderly person they may be looking after as live-in carers, they do the shopping in local shops and super markets, stop at the bakery or the local kiosk, they share time with neighbours. Their ventures into the city start form home and its surroundings which are depicted carefully on their maps: see for example how M.R. details her home on the fifth floor, or R.,S. carefully draws her house and its surroundings (fig. 21, 22).
“The house, I have taken it now, it is not even a year, they gave me some more money, I made my life here with a man, so I decided, I am not young any more, when will I enjoy? I pay high rent, I pay it myself, but it is on the 5th floor, like the big ones, and looks to the front, the sun and the big street, it is a little noisy but it is so nice…” (M.R., Ukraine, from a discussion in the Agora)

Men’s routines on the other hand are more ordered by the workplace and by passing their leisure time with other men in local cafes or in the square. The map of M.K. is characteristic in this respect: it shows his home and former job (he was recently made redundant), but also the house of a friend and different places where he spends his free time (fig. 23). In the same vein, S.M.’s map identifies his workplace and the routes he takes to reach it, but also the places where he likes to go for a stroll (fig 24).
“I wake up in the morning, I make breakfast and then I take a little bath, a little tea, I read a little and then I go to work (…) I read Christian books. And I read a little about my work, I am an electrician. I used to work every day up to 9 or 9:30, very many hours (…) I have friends in Glyfada (a rich suburb by the sea), in Alexandras, and I go there many times. I am friends with other Africans and from Nigeria (…) I know people in our church, many people there, also Americans, Filippinos. It is a Pentecost church” (M.K., Nigeria, from discussion during Greek courses in the Agora). 

The repetitive everyday practices do not challenge in any way the status of migrants towards the law or women’s and men’s “duties” and “appropriate” ways to spend their time, however these are determined. But their embodied presence makes claims to participation in urban life and tends to destabilise commonly held ideas about strangers, outsiders or righteous “owners” of everyday public spaces. At the same time, the embodied presence of migrants contributes to familiarise locals with “strangers”. Daily contact and shared practices gradually modifies earlier attitudes, which now take shape not by media representations but by reference to their known and familiar neighbours7.
“I have Greek  friends, I have five elderly men and one elderly woman, they are old, 50-55. They are my friends, they tell me come home. Where I used to work before they used to come to buy things, I took the order, they asked my name, where are you from, come to my place to do some small job, and so…” (M.K., Nigeria, from discussion during Greek courses in the Agora)

“There was a woman I used to help, her name is Kalliopi. And when she saw my daughter she loved her and she always helps us. So we baptized her Kalliopi, and she is the one who baptized her, the godmother…” (D.R., Albania, from discussion during Greek courses in the Agora)

Informal encounters and contacts of various kinds with both migrants and locals shape a different urban landscape in which the neighbourhood (re)emerges as a site of inclusion, in which practices of mutual assistance and participation in city life acquire an almost forgotten importance. People without formal rights in the places where they live their everyday life can and do take part in a variety of activities and at times find ways of political expression. Here the neighbourhood represents an on-going project of creating, transforming and improving spaces, relationships and activities among multiple communities which inhabit it, a forum of confrontations and mutual adaptations and intercultural interactions which affect migrants but also locals.




References
Andall, J., 2000, Gender, Migration and Domestic Service. The politics of black women in Italy, Aldershot: Ashgate
Anthias, F. 1998, “Evaluating ‘diaspora’: beyond ethnicity?”, Sociology 32:3, pp. 557-580
Anthias, F., 2000, Metaphors of home: gendering new migrations to Southern Europe, in F. Anthias and G. Lazaridis (eds) Gender and Migration in Southern Europe, Oxford: Berg, pp. 15-48
Anthias, F. 2001, “New hybridities, old concepts: the limits of ‘culture’”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24:4, pp. 619-641
Athanasopoulou, A., Papataxiarchis, E., Topali, P. 2008, Worlds of Domestic Labour. Gender, migration and cultural transformations in Athens of the beginning 21st century, Athens: Alexandria and University of the Aegean (in Greek)
Bagavos, Ch., Papadopoulou, D. (eds) 2006, Migration and integration of migrants in Greek society, Athens: Gutenberg (in Greek)
Bettio, F., Simonazzi, A., Villa, P. 2006, “Change in care regimes and female migration: the ‘care drain’ in the Mediterranean”, Journal of European Social Policy,16:3, 271-285
Biris, K. 1996 (first published in 1966) Athens. From the 19th to the 20th century, Athens: Melissa (in Greek)
Campani, G., 2000, Immigrant women in Southern Europe: Social exclusion, domestic work and prostitution in Italy, in R. King, G. Lazaridis and C. Tsardanidis (eds) Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, London: Macmillan, pp. 145-169
Dyck, I., McLaren, A.T. 2004, “Telling it like it is… Gender, place and multiculturalism in migrant women’s settlement narratives”, Gender, Place and Culture, 11:4, pp. 173-185
Germain, A. 2000, Immigrants and cities: does neighbourhood matter?, Montr?al: Institut National de la Recherche – Urbanisation, Culture et Soci?t?
Glick Schiller, N., ?a?lar, A. 2009, “Towards a Comparative Theory of Locality in Migration Studies: Migrant Incorporation and City Scale”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35: 2, pp. 177-202
Harding, S. 1991, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Hondagneu Sotelo, P., Avila, E. 1997, “I’m here, I’m there. The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood”, Gender and Society, 11:5, pp. 548-571
Kambouri, N. 2007, Gender migration: the everyday life of women migrants from Albania and Ukraine, Athens Gutenberg and KEKMOKOP (in Greek)
Kasimati, K. 2007, Athens Gutenberg and KEKMOKOP (in Greek)
King, R., Lazaridis, G., Tsardanidis, C. (eds) 2000, Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, London: Macmillan
Kofman, E., Sales, R., Phizacklea, A., Raghuram, P. (eds) 2000, Gender and International Migration in Europe, London and New York: Routledge
Labrianidis, L., Lyberaki, A. 2001, Albanian migrants in Thessaloniki. Trajectories of prosperity and oversights of the public image, Thessaloniki: Paratiritis (in Greek)
Lefebvre, H. 1968, Le droit ? la ville, Paris: Anthropos
Lefebvre, H. 1991a, The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell
Lefebvre, H. 1991b, Critique of Everyday Life, London and New York: Verso (first edition in French 1947)
Lykogianni, R. 2008, “Tracing multicultural cities from the perspective of women’s everyday lives”, European Urban and Regional Studies, 15:2, pp. 133-143
Macioti, M.I., Pugliese, E. 1991, Gli immigrati in Italia, Bari: Laterza
Maloutas, Th., Emmanuel, D., Pantelidou-Malouta, M. 2006, Athens. Social Structures, practices and beliefs: New parameters and transformation tendencies, 1980-2000, Athens: EKKE (in Greek)
Maloutas, Th., Karadimitriou, N. 2001, “Vertical social differentiation in Athens: Alternative or complement ot community segregation?, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25:4, pp.449-465
Martinez Veiga, U. 1998, “Immigrants in the Spanish labour market”, South European Society and Politics, 3:3, pp. 105-128
Massey, D., 1994, Space, Place and Gender, Oxford: Polity
Massey, D. 2005, For Space, London: Sage
Mavridis, H. 2004, “The concept of everydayness in social theory”, The Greek Review of Social Research, 114B, pp.27-60 (in Greek)
Oso, L., Catarino, C., 1997, Les effets de la migration sur le statut des femmes. Le cas des Dominicaines et des Morocaines ? Madrid et des Cap-Verdiennes ? Lisbonne, Migrations, Soci?t?, 9:52 (juin-ao?t), pp. 115-130
Pedone, C. 2006, Estrategias migratorias y poder, Quito: Ediciones ABYA-YALA
Pedre?o C?novas, A., Torres P?rez, F. (guest editors) 2009, “Migraciones internacionales y din?micas territoriales”, special issue of Areas. Revista Internacional de Ciencieas Sociales, no. 28
Pratt, G., Yeoh, B. 2003, “Transnational (Counter) Topographies”, Gender, Place and Culture, 10:2, pp. 159-166
Pugliese, E. 2002, L’Italia tra migrazioni internazionali e migrazioni interne, Bologna: il Mulino
Purcell, M. 2003, “Citizenship and the right to the Global City: Reimagining the capitalist world order”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27:3, pp. 564-590
Rantalaiho, L., Heiskanen, T. 1997, Gender Practices in Working Life, London and New York: Macmillan
Reyneri, E. 1998, “The role of the underground economy in irregular migration to Italy: cause or effect?”,  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24:2, 313-331
Ribas, N., 1999, Las presencias de la immigraci?n femenina. Un recorrido por Filipinas, Gambia y Marruecos en Catalu?a, Barcelona: Icaria-Antrazyt (mujeres, voces, propuestas)
Secor, A. 2004, “’There is an Instabul that belongs to me’: Citizenship, space and identity in the city”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94:2, pp. 352-368 
Silvey, R. 2006, “Geographies of Gender and Migration: Spatializing Social Difference”, International MigrationReview, 40:1, pp. 64-81
Simonsen, K., 2003, “The embodied city: from bodily practice to urban life”, in J. ?hman, K. Simonsen (eds) Voices from the North. New Trends in Nordic Human Geography, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 157-172
Smith D., 1987, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, Northeastern University Press
Smith, N. 1996, New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, London: Routledge
Tastsoglou, Å., Hadjicostandi, J. 2003, “Never outside the labour market, but always outsiders: Female migrant workers in Greece”, Special Issue: Gender and International Migration: Focus on Greece (E. Tastsoglou & L. Maratou-Alipranti eds), The Greek Review of Social Research, 110A, pp.189-220
Vaiou, D., Bacharopoulou, A., Fotiou, Th., Hatzivasileiou, S., Kalandides, A., Karali, M., Kefalea, R., Lafazani, O., Lykogianni, R., Marnelakis, G., Monemvasitou, A., Papasimaki, K., Tounta, F., 2007, Intersecting patterns of everyday life and socio-spatial transformations in the city. Migrant and local women in the neighbourhoods of Athens, Athens: L-Press and NTUA (in Greek)
Vaiou, D., Hadjimichalis, C. 1997/2003, With the sewing machine in the kitchen and the Poles in the fields. Cities, regions and informal work, Athens: Exandas (in Greek)
Vaiou, D., Stratigaki, M. 2008, “From ‘settlement’ to ‘integration’: informal practices and social services for women migrants in Athens”, European Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, 15:2, pp. 119-132
Ventoura, L., Papataxiarchis, E. (eds) 2009, The Challenge of Migration, special issue of Synchrona Themata, no.107, December (in Greek)
Young, I.M. 1990, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
Yuval Davis, N. 1997, Gender and Nation, London: Sage








































Figures





Fig. 1   Migrants residing in Greater Athens live in the central municipality of Athens and not in some remote periphery 








Fig.2   Migrants settlement in Athens Municipality 



















Fig. 3, 4, 5   Kypseli 







Fig. 6   ÊõøÝëç: ÊáôáíïìÞ êáôïéêéþí ìåôáíáóôþí áíÜ üñïöï





Fig. 7   Kypseli: ÊáôáíïìÞ ìåôáíáóôþí áíÜ åèíéêüôçôá 




Fig. 8   Kypseli: ÌéêñÝò óõãêåíôñþóåéò ìåôáíáóôþí áíÜ O.T. (2001 and 2006)






Fig. 9   Kypseli: Intensive uses of public places 








Fig. 10   Migrants shops







Fig. 11  The square of Kypseli


























Fig. 12   The Agora 

























Fig. 13  Kypseli: Houses of immigrants
   
















 

Fig. 14   Kypseli: Fokionos Negri







 
Fig. 15  Kypseli: Co-presence/coexistence in public space   













 
Fig. 16   Escorting the children to the “square”.  








Fig. 17   The Agora


Fig. 18   The Agora





Fig. 19   The Agora



Fig. 20   The Agora






Fig. 21   The sketch (mental map) of M.R. (female)



Fig. 22   The sketch of R.S. (female)






Fig. 23   The sketch (mental map) of M.K. (male)




Fig. 24 The sketch (mental map) of  S.M. (male)


2.Statistics tables

I. Interviews with migrants


Name
Sex
Age
Place of origin
Household
Work
Place
Date
1
E.V.
Female
43 years old
Albania
She and her partner live with  their 2 children, in Kypseli
Owner of a tailor shop, in Kypseli
In Agora
4/12/2009 
2
L.I.
Female
28 years old
Albania 
She and her partner live with their child in Kypseli
Domestic worker
Her house, near by Kypseli Square 
8/10/2009
3
K.E.
Female
34 years old
Albania
She and her partner live with their children in Kypseli
Domestic worker
Her house, near by Kypseli Square 
17/10/2009
4
M.A.
Female
63 years old
Bulgaria
She lives in her employer’s house in Kypseli
Live-in carer
Her employer’s house, near Kypseli Square
22/11/2009
5
V.A.
Female
34 years old
Bulgaria
She lives with her mother in Kypseli 
Domestic worker, also working in a caf? 
In Agora
25/12/2009
6
T.A.
Male
30 years old
Bangladesh
He lives with a compatriot of his close to Kypseli. His wife is in Bangladesh
Unemployed, temporarily earning some money as street vendor, tem
In Agora
07/12/2009
7
I.B.
Male
27 years old
Bangladesh
He is single and lives with a compatriot of his close to Kypseli
Unemployed, temporarily earning some money as street vendor
In Agora
07/12/2009
8
K.A.
Male
30 years old
Burkina Faso
He lives with 3 compatriots of his close to Kypseli. His girlfriend and child are in Burkina Faso
Worker in the Central Vegetable Market 
In Agora
25/11/2009 
9
A.N.
Female
60 years old
Georgia
She lives in her employer’s house in Kypseli
Live-in carer
In Kypseli Square
12/10/2009
10
L.E.
Male
32 years old
Romania
He and his partner live with their 2 children in Patisia
Construction worker
In Agora
06/01/2010
11
N.A.
Female
25 years old
Syria
She and her partner live with  their 3 children close to Kypseli
Housewife
In Agora
02/12/2009 
12
M.O
Male
23 years old
Syria
He is single and lives alone in Kypseli 
Construction worker
In Kypseli Square
29/09/2009

II. Interviews with key informants –volunteer teachers



Place
Date
1
Eleni
Her house
25/05/2009
2
Kostoula
Her house
06/06/2009
3
Maria
Her house
28/06/2009



III. Participant observation sessions and discussions in Kypseli square and in the Agora


In Kypseli Square 
In the Agora 
1
20/03/2009 
12/5/2009
2
10/04/2009
15/5/2009
3
25/04/2009
27/5/2009
4
28/04/2009
11/06/2009 
5
1/05/2009
04/11/2009
6
12/05/2009
12/11/2009
7
24/07/2009
16/11/2009 
8
28/07/2009
18/11/2009 
9
09/09/2009
23/11/2009
10
14/09/2009
24/11/2009
11
18/09/2009
2/12/2009
12
20/09/2009
4/12/2009 
13
21/09/2009
17/12/2009
14
22/09/2009

15
24/09/2009

16
25/09/2009

17
27/09/2009

18
01/10/2009

19
07/10/2009

20
11/10/2009

21
16/10/2009

22
17/10/2009