Escape commons as a method

^{Makeshift settlement of people who escaped the burning camp of Moria in Lesvos Island, (September 2020)}

Dr Haris (Charalampos) Tsavdaroglou, USI visiting scholar

In collaboration with MIGLOBA

This PhD workshop embraces the argument expressed by Papadopoulos et al. (2008, 56) that ‘escape comes first’, and that when people are moving ‘they leave the stage of forced immobility’ (Papadopoulos et al. 2008, 56) while ‘power reorganises itself in order to respond to their escape’ (Papadopoulos et al. 2008, 56). Indeed, it could be said that migrants, displaced persons and people on the move are constantly carrying out acts of escape. Escape from war zones in the countries of origin, escape from state-run camps, escape from bureaucratic obstacles, escape from xenophobic attacks; a wide range of acts of escape take place every day at the borders of the territory but also within the countries of arrival. For this reason, states and supranational unions such as the E.U. constantly build fences, hot spots, deportation centers, carry out push backs (Border Violence Monitoring Network 2020) and produce a multifaceted labyrinth (Tsitselikis 2019) of bureaucratic procedures for asylum applications in order to block, trap, and discourage newcomers to continue their journey. However, people on the move constantly aim to ‘circumvent state controls’ (Mainwaring 2016, 289) and ‘challenge the archipelagos of enclosures’ (Moll 2023, 585), people escape and claim the right to move. However, the crucial question remains: what are the social relationships between people escaping and which make the escape possible?

This workshop will focus on decolonial and affective geographies of people on the move in order to address the abovementioned question. The main argument is that through the concept of escape commons, we can think of escape as having a double contribution; on the one hand it aims to highlight the importance of commoning practices as a way of catalyzing acts of escape, and to demonstrate the possibility that escaping itself constitutes a collective act, which activates inventive new practices of commoning.

Programme

9:30 - 9:40 Introduction (10 min)

9:30 - 10:20 Lecture (50 min)

10:20 - 10:40 Q&A (20 min)

10:40 - 10:55 Break (15 min)

10:55 - 11:25 Individual vignette writing exercise on their topics (30 min)

11:25 - 12:00 Vignettes discussion in groups of 3-4 persons (35 min)

12:00 - 12:30 Plenary discussion (30 min)

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

Charalampos (Haris) Tsavdaroglou

Visiting scholar at UAntwerp between 15 April and 13 June 2024​

Dr. Charalampos Tsavdaroglou is a scholar in critical urban studies and his work specializes in migrants’ urban and housing commons, refugee camps and in the newcomers’ right to the city. He is currently PI in the HFRI research program: “Refugees’ solidarity city. Institutional policies and commoning practices in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki” (RECITY) at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Post-doctoral Researcher in the Horizon H2020 program: “Arrival infrastructures as sites of integration for recent newcomers” (REROOT) at University of Thessaly. Moreover, he is visiting professor on Human Geography at the School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University and Lecturer on Sociology of Space at the School of Spatial Planning and Development, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Charalampos holds a PhD (2016) in Urban and Regional Planning, from School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During the academic years 2017-2023 he was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Thessaly, University of the Aegean and at the National Hellenic Research Foundation. His research interests include critical urban theory, autonomy of migration, approaches to urban commons and mobile commoning practices, intersectional, decolonial and affective geographies, and urban social movements.

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