Abstract
The City Plaza is a self-organized housing project for homeless refugees in the center of Athens which currently accommodates 400 people. City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Center evolved as a concrete practical response to the conditions of asylum seekers in Greece and the lack of responsibility by both the Greek state and the international community in April 2016. In our framework, City Plaza Hotel is an example of autonomous solidarity at local scale. The occupation of the hotel is not seen as the only solution to the ‘refugee crisis’ but as a micro-example of how solidarity work can provide alternatives and a ‘utopia’ on how the crisis could be dealt with. The City Plaza Hotel case is an example of how a local initiative, a single building, can articulate the crisis, i.e., failed management, and present a new imaginary and a practical alternative.
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Agustín, Ó.G., Jørgensen, M.B. (2019). Autonomous Solidarity: Hotel City Plaza. In: Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_3
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