__ad.susx.ac.uk_ITS_Group_gs_gs-research_SRO REPOSITORY_FACULTY UPLOADS_Tahir Zaman_Neighbourliness conviviality and the sacred in Athens refugee squats - Final Edit 04 Nov .docx.pdf (350.77 kB)
Neighbourliness, conviviality, and the sacred in Athens’ refugee squats
To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement-affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement. This paper makes the case that refugee squats in Athens are distinct spaces wherein different understandings of (co)existence converge – spaces whose production is contingent on support from neighbourly relations and networks that are mediated in moments through conceptions of conviviality informed by religion. Based on ethnographic work carried out in 2016 and a spatial analysis of refugee squats in Athens, this paper emphasises neighbourliness and conviviality as they relate to sacred understandings of coexistence. This helps highlight the limits built in to thinking about the movement of refugees from the global South through Euro-centric ontologies of the social. More than this, following postcolonial debates on the decentring of knowledge production, the research makes manifest how Islamic socio-cultural memories of jiwar or a right of neighbourliness complicate geographies of humanitarianism that make stark binary assumptions between religious and secular space. In turn, the evidence from Athens indicates that refugee perspectives on neighbourliness are imperfectly translated by migrant rights activists as solidarity, obscuring the different ways Muslim structures of feeling contribute to the production of refugee squats.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Transactions of the Institute of British GeographersISSN
0020-2754Publisher
WileyExternal DOI
Issue
3Volume
45Page range
529-541Department affiliated with
- Geography Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2019-12-06First Open Access (FOA) Date
2021-11-28First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2019-12-05Usage metrics
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