- 22.10.25
- Blog, Thessaloniki
October 22, 2025, Author: Carola Vasileiadi
After finalizing my first PhD year of doing ethnographic ‘fieldwork’ in the Pauluskerk in Rotterdam (Vasileiadi & Swerts, 2024), a new and exciting chapter of my doctoral research project began in February 2025. I moved to Thessaloniki, the second largest city of Greece, located in Southern Europe at the crossroads between South–North and East–West. Growing up in the Netherlands while always maintaining a strong relation to Greece through family visits on Rhodes and living in Athens, moving back immediately felt like coming home.
‘Arriving’ in Thessaloniki
During the first weeks after my arrival, I slowly accustomed to the city life, meeting colleagues at the School of Spatial Planning and Development at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, tasting Bougatsa (the best dessert in town), strolling across the waterfront, and joining in several city protests. Citizens’ emotions ran high as their voices echoed through the streets, calling for change in the wake of deep-rooted structural issues and unforgettable tragedies. Especially the Tempi train crash of 2023 had left a profound scar on the nation, sparking some of the largest demonstrations in recent history. As I navigated my way through Thessaloniki, I soon realized that weekly life often carried an element of unpredictability, wondering whether the library would be closed due to a public strike or a religious celebration. In its own way, this rhythm of disruption and celebration came to define my everyday life in the city.
First Research Steps
While settling in, I began setting up my second ‘fieldwork’ site in the city, known for its long history of mobility encounters, functioning for diverse populations as a place of transit, arrival, settlement, and exit. Since the ‘Long Summer of Migration’ in 2015, the city has been a key crossroads for people on the move along the Balkan route, connecting mobility pathways from the Balkans to Northern Europe. As border measures increasingly restrict refugees from entering Europe, migration routes have become longer, non-linear. I want to understand how solidarity infrastructures in the city work together, are connected to their local areas, and changing over time, while questioning how people on the move themselves shape and navigate through them today. The urban infrastructural approach unfolds everyday challenges of in- and exclusion, negotiations of material and immaterial resources and mobility trajectories within and beyond the city (Meeus et al.,2019; Xiang & Lindquist, 2014).
I started volunteering at a community centre on a weekly basis, where we cook meals for people on the move. Over the months, I spent time learning about their solidarity practices and how they are negotiating challenges, meeting the community members who visited the space, and getting to know the coordinators and volunteers involved. I took part in coordination meetings and organized two creative counter-mapping workshops with community members at the centre. My involvement there, both as a volunteer and ethnographic researcher, continues to evolve through ongoing dialogue with the coordinators and by building relationships of trust. Over time, I have observed that the solidarity space functions as a living room where people from diverse backgrounds with unique life stories and migration trajectories can ‘catch a breath’. Notably, Greek people also use the space in an increasingly hostile context, along with people on the move. As fundings are cut and measures for NGO’s harshened (see for instance Human Rights Watch, 2025), many (internationally) funded solidarity infrastructures set up after the ‘Long Summer of Migration’ now struggle to continue while others disappear completely.
Through my involved in the community centre, I began to familiarize myself with other city spaces that show solidarity with people on the move. From the community centre, I reached out to other urban migration infrastructures to learn about their practices and map the city’s relational field of solidarity initiatives. I also attended other cooking and food distribution initiatives, documentary screenings, live music events, public and university seminars and assemblies. Through various encounters, I quickly met many dedicated individuals engaged in the humanitarian field both within Thessaloniki and across Northern Greece and beyond. Yet, while social gatherings and initiatives take place in the city centre, many people on the move are increasingly being pushed to the outskirts, confined to government reception centres (see for instance Makridou et al, 2024; Tsavdaroglou et al, 2024). Together with university colleague dr. Charalampos Tsavdaroglou, I visited the Diavata refugee camp, a nearby solidarity space, and assisted in a drawing workshop at the Nea Kavala camp near Polikastro. In April, I also joined a large group of grassroot solidarity from Thessaloniki on a demonstration trip to Serres, where another camp is located. Many of the people living there have been waiting for months, sometimes years, for their asylum interviews.
I soon realized that to understand the role of Thessaloniki’s urban infrastructures for people on the move it was essential to situate them within both a broader societal and geographical context, connecting the city to the outskirts, Northern Greece and the Aegean islands along the Turkish border. In May, I joined my PhD colleague Alexandra Makridou on a research trip to Lesbos, where we organized a workshop with humanitarian actors and met with solidarity individuals who have been active since the long summer of migration in 2015. The insights and experiences from Lesbos provided valuable context that I brought back to mainland Greece where I continue my fieldwork in Thessaloniki.
Next Steps...
In the coming months, I will continue my ethnographic fieldwork at the community centre, while also engaging in conversations with other key urban migration infrastructures across the city. In parallel, I am preparing for the next phase of the URBIMM research project, which will focus on conducting life story interviews with people on the move. This new phase will begin after a short winter break in The Netherlands.
References
- Cossé, E. (September 16, 2025 12:00AM EDT). Greece’s Latest Assault on Civil Society. EU Action Needed to Protect Civic Space. Retrieved from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/16/greeces-latest-assault-on-civil-society
- Makridou, A., Frangopoulos, I., & Kapitsinis, N. (2024). Interpreting NIMBY as movements claiming participatory planning in the context of refugee camps’ siting: A comparative case study in two Greek regions. Political Geography, 115, 103216.
- Meeus, B., Arnaut, K., & Van Heur, B. (2019). Arrival infrastructures: Migration and urban social mobilities. Palgrave Macmillan
- Tsavdaroglou, C., Arvanitidis, P., & Valiantzas, Z. (2024). Migrants in the old train wagons borderland in Thessaloniki: From abandonment to infrastructures of commοning. Urban Planning, 9.
- Vasileiadi, C., & Swerts, T. (2024). Keeping Faith: Faith-Based Organizations as Urban Migration Infrastructures for Illegalized Migrants in Rotterdam. Urban Planning, 9.
- Xiang, B., & Lindquist, J. (2014). Migration infrastructure. International Migration Review, 48(1_suppl), 122–148.
