Afroditi-Maria Koulaxi, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom
Keywords
Mediation; migration; identity; encounters; city
Abstract
While the “refugee crisis” has disappeared from our vocabulary and screens, crisis stills defines imagination and practice in cities that are now challenged through the arrival of refugee waves. As significant numbers of migrants have now settled in European cities, there is a need to reflect on how Western subjects perceive “others” vis-à-vis their own identity Hall, 1990; Georgiou, 2006; Gilroy, 2004). Drawing on recent fieldwork in a multicultural neighborhood in the heart of Athens (Greece) at this second phase of the so-called “migration crisis”, the discussion sets out to explore whether everyday encounters with migrants and refugees can generate a range of perceptions and relationships between citizens and noncitizens that are qualitative different to encounters that are primarily mediated. It seeks to explore how mediation (de Certeau, 1984; Silverstone, 1994; 2005) of migration (different modes of communication, from face-to-face encounters in the city to the digital encounters on social media platforms) can also be considered as condition of identity formation, through its particular meanings that are always contextual. The study explores everyday encounters with newcomers in a city of compounded crisis, and interrogates how local citizens react to and negotiate their mediated encounters (with newcomers) through their own experience. Aiming to examine how individuals construct meanings of identity, the paper offers an innovative approach by asking individuals to articulate their own understanding of identity through their experience of newcomers in their neighborhoods as well as by observing the online complexities of everydayness. This research deploys online ethnographic participant-observation of Facebook groups and personal accounts and 30 in-depth interviews with Greek citizens. This provocative research design aims to understand how media power might be contested by embodied encounters between newcomers and settled citizens. An approach in this context has the potential to explore how the embodied encounters with newcomers problematize the mediated, but also how the mediated ones have shaped the embodied.It is timely, as it addresses identities in the city in crisis through the lens of mediation. Taking a closer look on the Athenian reality, in the heart of Greece, it seems that the so-called “refugee crisis” is a dimension of a broader context of compounded crisis in the city. It unpacks the reasons why Athens, that still feels the repercussions of receiving large numbers of migrant populations, is a paradigmatic case study to consider taking into account the following: a) the interaction of several crisis that contribute to the city’s urban decay; b) the strong contextual dimension in mediated and embodied encounters with newcomers; c) the intersectional identities of Greek individuals; and, d) the history of encounter and historicity of alterity in this context. I will present a proposed model for placing the different positions of my interviewees around layers of conviviality (Gilroy, 2004) rejection. Within this axis of different positions, and within each of those positions, I could identify my media narratives, the physical encounter and the different articulations of the physical encounter in media narratives. The visualization of the model includes the following: three layers of conviviality (Positive identification and recognition of Othering; Merging through encounter; Community building without us and them) and three layers of rejection (absolute rejection, Othering justified on the basis of those fundamental categories of community (religion, race, culture) versus the Other that might be different; Tolerance that unfolds through distancing/Othering. My presentation seeks to demonstrate the importance of studying the role of mediation (symbolic power of the media and how audience, as consumers of the media, engage with the respective power) in accommodating and/or disrupting dominant/hegemonic identities in a crisis-ridden urban context. It reveals that the mediation of migration participates in communicative/embodied separation. It is vital to understand how media can become resources for citizens’ identity and how social positions are encountered, created and contested through particular urban spaces and everyday spatial practices. Networks of mediation will shed light on the ambivalent and contradictory attitudes/behaviors. For instance: when citizens are more friendly following a sustained encounter, do they become more hostile when they make references to the media to support their arguments? What are the moments they become more tolerant or more hostile?
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