"Where there is room to fight for your beliefs that is the ideal place" : Imagination and agency of Athenians with migratory background

Abstract: In the globalized world, border regimes are ambiguous, withdrawn or reinforced based on who approaches them, where and how. Borders are equally the boundaries that permeate spaces of nation-states and cut across them through racialized, gendered, and classed divisions. Following the so called "migration crisis" in Europe of 2015, there has been a wave of research documenting how practices of bordering and othering dehumanize asylum seekers, violating their rights. In this thesis, I proceed from similar observations to see how such practices, together with experiences resulting from them, affect the possibilities of agency and imagination of a common space on behalf of people with migratory background. Employing the idea of hybridity, I maintain that while the responsibility for atrocities related to migration and bordering should always remain on violators, whether official institutions or individuals, their persistence should not be seen as foreclosing agency, imagination, or practices of building a future common space on behalf of people with migratory background. The hybrid position that these people occupy does not necessarily only sustain their disempowerment, but it also equips them with unique possibilities for agency. Neither seems there to be any predefined path from exposure to harsh violations of one's rights to disempowerment. The possibilities for common and welcoming places to which everyone has a right appear through an engaged and equal attention to migrants' own agency, imagination, and capabilities, rather than through an exclusive attention to their vulnerability or a neoliberal celebration of multiculturalism.