Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GAPRIA (The Gentrification of Activism, Autonomous Collective Politics and the Right to the City in Exarchia, Athens)
Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2025-04-30
The research project ‘Gentrification of Activism, Autonomous Collective Politics and the Right to the City in Exarchia, Athens (GAPRIA) aims to examine the gentrification and eviction of activism, which entails the ways in which activist city spaces and radical neighbourhoods become gentrified through processes of urban regeneration that lead to the eviction of activists and emancipatory ideas about city life. Although gentrification and eviction studies have so far thoroughly documented the social and material costs of gentrification policies on the urban poor, they have failed to document the political costs of such policies relating to the eviction of communities of activists that produce more emancipatory, alternative visions about city life. The recent upheaval of attacks on autonomous radical neighbourhoods and the simultaneous rise of the far right on a European level with the detrimental effects it brings for democratic life, makes it more urgent than ever to address this research gap and document and analyze the processes that make such eviction possible.
GAPRIA will fill this research gap by investigating the gentrification of activism in the radical neighbourhood of Exarchia in central Athens, Greece. Exarchia constitutes an urban area with a long history of radical anti-authoritarian organizing and politics. In recent years it has formed the main ground of innovative solidarity initiatives where activists and migrants co-created living spaces that hosted hundreds of people seeking refuge from nearby war-torn areas. These activist experiments have recently faced brutal eviction processes by the state , which makes the investigation of such processes, as well as more subtle processes of displacement such as through gentrification, more timely than ever. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this condition with even more restrictive and violent measures towards the right of assembly and protest in public spaces.
The project will examine the gentrification of activism along four levels that represent the project’s research objectives (obj): (1) The conceptual level, that will explore the ideas about city life that are enacted by communities of youth and activists that use public space as a resource for sustaining their initiatives; (2) The discursive level of producing evictable subjects, that will explore, though policy and media analysis, how youth and activists are produced as such through gentrification policies, often in tandem with racializing and securitizing discourses about public space; (3) The level of praxis, that will explore, through ethnographic fieldwork, resistance to such gentrification processes enacted by autonomous activists in the context of current struggles against austerity, evictability and the privatization of public space; (4) The comparative level, whereby the gentrification of activism in different European contexts will be explored collaboratively and in an inter-disciplinary manner. This will be achieved through the organization of an International Conference bringing together scholars from Anthropology, Politics, Human Geography and Urban studies. Beyond the above research-oriented objectives, the project aims to: (5) enhance the researcher’s career development through a program of training activities tailored to her specific needs for professional maturity; (6) disseminate research results widely to academic and non-academic audiences.
GAPRIA will fill this research gap by investigating the gentrification of activism in the radical neighbourhood of Exarchia in central Athens, Greece. Exarchia constitutes an urban area with a long history of radical anti-authoritarian organizing and politics. In recent years it has formed the main ground of innovative solidarity initiatives where activists and migrants co-created living spaces that hosted hundreds of people seeking refuge from nearby war-torn areas. These activist experiments have recently faced brutal eviction processes by the state , which makes the investigation of such processes, as well as more subtle processes of displacement such as through gentrification, more timely than ever. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this condition with even more restrictive and violent measures towards the right of assembly and protest in public spaces.
The project will examine the gentrification of activism along four levels that represent the project’s research objectives (obj): (1) The conceptual level, that will explore the ideas about city life that are enacted by communities of youth and activists that use public space as a resource for sustaining their initiatives; (2) The discursive level of producing evictable subjects, that will explore, though policy and media analysis, how youth and activists are produced as such through gentrification policies, often in tandem with racializing and securitizing discourses about public space; (3) The level of praxis, that will explore, through ethnographic fieldwork, resistance to such gentrification processes enacted by autonomous activists in the context of current struggles against austerity, evictability and the privatization of public space; (4) The comparative level, whereby the gentrification of activism in different European contexts will be explored collaboratively and in an inter-disciplinary manner. This will be achieved through the organization of an International Conference bringing together scholars from Anthropology, Politics, Human Geography and Urban studies. Beyond the above research-oriented objectives, the project aims to: (5) enhance the researcher’s career development through a program of training activities tailored to her specific needs for professional maturity; (6) disseminate research results widely to academic and non-academic audiences.
Extensive ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted on gentrification and eviction in the area of Exarchia, as well as resistance to such processes through interviewing resident-activists in the area, as well as through participant observation. Furthermore, a media analysis of key mainstream Greek newspapers has been performed in relation to their depiction of Exarchia and the gentrification processes undertaken there. The results of the fieldwork and, particularly the media analysis, have informed a journal article prepared by the researcher and submitted at the prestigious journal of the American Anthropological Association and Critical Urban Anthropological Association, City and Society, and is currently undergoing peer review. A draft book proposal with project results is also under preparation and is envisioned to be submitted to a relevant publisher, along with another ethnographic chapter prepared and presented in the context of the Interdisciplinary Conference of the International Society of Ethnology and Folkore (SIEF) on the under-researched area of resistance to gentrification. Finally, a policy paper on ‘The Important Role of Public Space in Youth Political Participation’ has been prepared drawing from project results, as well as other EU and Council of Europe policy papers in the context of Youth Participation, and will be disseminated widely to relevant stakeholders. All project results are available on the website of the project: https://www.gapria.com/(opens in new window).
Through the ethnographic research and subsequent publications produced in the context of this project, new knowledge on gentrification has been produced that informs on the political costs of gentrification and eviction processes beyond the material and social costs that have been thoroughly researched in this field of study. Moreover, the publications along with the policy paper break new ground in understandings of the importance of public space for the formation of critical publics and on contemporary ways of resistance to gentrification. Given the short duration of the project (two years) more time is needed to analyse project results and ensure further publications from this research project. Also more ethnographic research on this topic would prove helpful not only in Exarchia, but also in other radical neighbourhoods facing similar threats.