Introductory Fieldwork in Greece | January 2023

Lesvos: graffities in Mytilene Port

From January 9-20, 2023, Claudio Minca and I travelled through the Greek mainland and to Island of  Lesvos, in order to visit government reception centres and meet key people volunteering and working in organizations in the humanitarian sector in Greece. Our work began in Athens, where we had a first meeting with Dr. Olga Lafazani of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF) who also kindly took us around Athens to illustrate some past key sites for migrants. Over the following days we visited various government managed refugee camps, located between Athens and Thessaloniki (RIC Malakasa camp, Ritsona Facility, RIC Diavata camp). 

 In Thessaloniki, thanks to the support of several NGOs, we were able to visit informal urban sites and, thanks to the authorities’ permission we also visited the Diavata refugee camp where we had a meeting with the camp manager. We then travelled to Idomeni, to examined what was left of the former informal camp on the border with North Macedonia, seven years after its eviction. The following days we moved to Ioannina. There, we met with Giovanni Fontana, director of the NGO Second Tree and some members of the same organisation. Dr. Fontana has been active for years in this region of Greece along the migrant routes transiting to Albania and has been supporting our fieldwork by arranging a series of incredibly useful meetings. 

In addition to visiting the area outside the camps in Agia Eleni and Katsikas, we had the opportunity to meet with camp managers, refugees, NGO activists, cultural mediators, local residents,  and Ioannina municipality leaders. These meetings made it possible to begin to sketch-out the complexity of the informal refugee geographies in this area.  

Back in Athens, we had a fruitful meeting at the headquarters of IOM, the UN Migration Agency with IOM's Chief of Mission and Regional Response Coordinator for Greece. The following days included work on former informal camps and city squats by visiting the Plaza Hotel, Victoria Square, Exarchia Square, and other relevant sites.  

Finally, we travelled to the  the Island of Lesvos. In the main city, Mytilene, we had a tight schedule of meetings with several representatives of international humanitarian organizations that have been working on the island for years (UNHCR Representation in Greece, HIAS Greece, Legal Center Lesvos). Part of our fieldwork included the visit to the sites of formal and informal camps that are still active or have been decommissioned (Port squat in Mytilene, ex-RIC Moria, RIC Mavrouni, the northern coast of the island). We finally paid a visit ot the University of the Aegean, in Mytilene, where we had the opportunity to meet with Professor Kizos Thanasis, Head of the Geography Institute.