User:Leilapb1/sandbox

Area: Greece
Exarcheia (anarchist neighborhood in Athens); Anarchism in Greece; Greek government-debt crisis; Greek government formation, January 2015

Sector: Refugees
Immigration to Europe; Asylum in the European Union; African immigrants to Greece

Taliban insurgency, Operation Enduring Freedom, refugee camp

Article 1: Exarcheia
This article is extremely short and it does not have nearly enough information to describe an entire community and its historical origins. The article mentions "fair trade shops," "organic food stores," and "comic book shops," but does not elaborate on any of the unique neighborhood landmarks - such as anarchist gathering spaces or the anti-fascist boxing gym. There is some discussion on the "talk" page, mostly about biased things that have been removed, but little discussion of expanding the article from a stub.

Article 2: Asylum in the European Union
Wikipedia cites this article for being confusing or unclear, needing cleanup, and needing to be checked for neutrality. However, the talk page only has 1 comment - which is very surprising seeing as this is such a broad and controversial subject. In addition, there are some comments about Greece but the sources only say the name of the newspaper, not the name of the article. In addition, this article does not have a specific time frame, and strings together asylum legislation from a variety of times, even while rulings and legislation are changing in the midst of the refugee crisis.

Article 3: Refugee camp
This article does not address the current European migrant crisis in an appropriate way. It does not mention any of the refugee camps in Greece and while it mentions refugee camps in Italy and France, it does not describe the time period or origins of refugees, which would help readers to connect these camps to current events. In addition, the "health" section does not talk at all about mental health, and the "criticism" and "durable solutions" sections do not talk of housing alternatives such as the refugee squats in Greece and across Europe.

Area: Exarcheia
Exarcheia is renowned for being Athen's historical core of radical political and intellectual activism.

2 History and political significance
The headquarters of PASOK, a Greek political party that supported austerity measures dictated by the European Union in 2009, are also located in the neighborhood and has been a target of attacks by anarchists. Police stations and other symbols of authority (and capitalism) such as banks are often targets of far-leftist groups. Protests that begin in Exarcheia often evidence diverse political formations and coalitions, including dispossessed young people, migrants, anti-authoritarians, anarchists, and Greek citizens from the moderate to extreme on both ends of the political spectrum.

The European refugee crisis resulted in an enormous migration to Greece - in 2017, 55,000 people throughout Greece were registered as as permanent residents. When borders between Greece and the European Union were closed, many migrants were forced to stay in camps that lacked housing or hygiene infrastructure. As a result, refugees and migrants sought alternative options within Athens, including squats in the Exarcheia neighborhood.

2.1 Athens Polytechnic uprising
On December 17, 1973, the Greek military raided the student occupation of the Athens Polytechnic University, killing 40 civilians. The events resulted in public outrage and the passing of the Academic Asylum Law, which designates university campuses as off-limits to police and military personnel. This law has contributed to the prevalence of protests within Exarcheia, as the Polytechnic functions as a site of insurgent coordination as well as a safe haven from police violence.

2.2 2008 Greek riots
On December 6, 2008, a Greek police special guard shot and killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos within blocks of the Athens Polytechnic University, leading to the largest protests in Greece since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. Protests originated in Exarcheia and the neighborhood continued to be the epicenter of demonstrations as they spread across Athens.

In the aftermath of the riots, collectives and movements in Exarcheia expanded initiatives experimenting with new political formations, especially to provide public spaces organized around an anti-hierarchical and anti-commercial ethos. For example, activists turned a parking lot into the guerrilla Park Navarinou, which hosted events such as ticket-free movie screenings and anti-consumerist fairs. The Sporos collective developed solidarity economies through trade and sale of Zapatista-produced goods, and the Skoros collective promoted re-use, recycling, and sharing practices. Other new and renewed political formations in the neighborhood included producer or consumer cooperatives and collective kitchens.

2.3 Migrant communities
Exarcheia is the site of a large migrant and refugee community. The overcrowding and abuse within Greek refugee camps has propelled a movement of squatting within Athens and across Greece. There are more than a dozen squats in Athens, primarily centered in Exarcheia, serving as housing, healthcare, and social centers for refugees, migrants, or anarchists. These squats provide space for highly diverse communities and coalitions. For example, the City Plaza squat houses Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Pakistanis within a single occupied hotel. Many of these spaces aim to recreate the feeling of home for displaced migrants and refugees.

However, far-right, neo-fascist, and nationalistic organizations have been connected to multiple attacks and burnings of refugee squats. In addition, the Syriza government has recently evicted multiple squats in Athens.

In addition, Exarcheia and bordering Omonoia have been the focus specialized policing tactics in Greece. These include MAT, (Public Order Restoration Units) an anti-protest police unit implemented after the dictatorship; Operation Virtue, which used blockaded areas and rapid raids of public spaces to capture undocumented migrants in the 1970s and 1980s; and Operation Xenios Zeus, which implemented stop-and-search and document checks for foreigners in 2012.

Mental Health
Refugees experience a wide range of traumas in their home country and during their journey to other countries. However, the mental health problems resulting from violent conflicts, such as PTSD and disaster-induced depression, can be compounded by problems induced by the conditions of refugee camps. Mental health concerns within humanitarian aid programs include stress about one's home country, isolation from support structures, and loss of personal identity and agency.

These consequences are increased by the daily stresses of displacement and life within camps, including ongoing risks of violence, lack of basic services, and uncertainty about the future. Women and girls in camps often fear being alone, especially at night, because of the risk of trafficking and sexual violence. The most prevalent clinical problems among Syrian refugees are depression, prolonged grief disorder, PTSD, and anxiety disorders. However, the perception of mental health is affected by cultural and religious values that result in different modes of expressing distress or making sense of psychological symptoms. In addition, refugees who have experienced torture often endure somatic symptoms in which emotional distress from torture is expressed in physical forms.

Unique conditions for the mental health of refugees within camps has led to the development of alternative psychological interventions and approaches. Some mental health services address the effects of negative discourses about migrants and the way that traumatic experiences affect and fragment identity. A therapeutic support project in the Calais refugee camp focused on building spaces of collectivity and community, such as youth groups, to challenge the individualization of distress and trauma. This project encouraged discussion of refugees' small acts of resistance to difficult situations and promoted activities from migrants' cultural roots to develop a positive conception of identity. Other mental health approaches acknowledge core cultural tenets and work to structure the camp itself around these values. For example, in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, Pakistani policy prioritized the centrality of personal dignity and collective honor in the cultural traditions of Afghan migrants, and constructed "refugee tented villages" that grouped people within their own ethnolinguistic, tribal, or regional communities.

12.4 Europe
Moria, Oreokastro, Kastikas, Idomeni, and other camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos, and Chios have rapidly filled (up to 3-4 times more than their official capacity) with migrants fleeing violence in the Middle East and Africa. Since 2015, refugees fleeing conflict such as the Syrian Civil War have attempted to enter Europe but are often stopped in Greece, where they spend, on average, 8 months to a year in camps. Some camps have been destroyed or evacuated, including the evacuation of 4,000 residents from a camp on the island of Lesbos (capacity 1,500) from a tent fire that destroyed more than half the camp.

Current alternatives
Within countries experiencing large refugee in-migrations, citizen volunteers, non-governmental organizations, and refugees themselves have developed short- and long-term alternatives to official refugee camps established by governments or the UNHCR. Informal camps provide physical shelter and direct service provision but also function as a form of political activism. Alternative forms of migrant settlement include squats, occupations and unofficial camps.

Asylum seekers who have been rejected and refugees without access to state services in Amsterdam worked with other migrants to create the "We are here" movement in 2012. This group set up tents on empty land and occupied empty buildings including an empty church, empty office spaces, an empty garage, and a former hospital. The purpose of these occupations was both for physical housing and to create space for political, cultural, and social community and events.

In Brussels, Belgium, the speed of refugee processing and lack of shelters in 2015 resulted in a large number of refugees sleeping in the streets. In response, a group of Belgian citizens and collective of undocumented migrants built the an informal camp in the Maximiliaan park in front of the Foreign Office and provided food, shelter, medical care, schooling, and activities such as a mobile cinema. This camp also functioned as a form of protest through its claims to space and visible location in front of government agencies.

The "Jungle" in Calais, France was an unofficial refugee camp, not legally approved by local or national French authorities. Because the camp did not receive support from the state government or international aid agencies, grassroots organizations developed to manage food, donations, temporary shelters and toilets, and recreational activities within the camp. Most of the volunteers had not previously been involved in refugee aid work and were not professionals in humanitarian aid. Although filling a need for service provision, the volunteer nature of aid in informal camps resulted in a lack of accountability, reports of volunteers taking advantage of refugees, risks of violence towards volunteers, and a lack of capacity to handle complex situations within the camps such as trafficking, exploitation, and violence. However, volunteer work in the Calais Jungle also functioned as a form of civil disobedience, because working within the camp fell within the definition of Article L622-1 of the French Penal Code, known as the "délit de solidarité" ("crime of solidarity"), which made it illegal to assist the "arrival, movement or residence of persons irregularly present on the French territory."

My Contributions
I have edited and added to the articles "Exarcheia" and "Refugee camp."

Within Exarcheia, I have substantially expanded the article, because previously it only had a few short sections. I have added to the general overview of the "history and political significance," as well as more specific and in-depth sub-sections about historical and current events. I have explained the significance of the 1973 and 2008 riots upon the social, political, and geographical makeup of the community. In addition, I have explained in depth the way that the European refugee crisis has affected Exarcheia through a movement of squatting building for migrant housing as well as an increase in fascist and state violence.

In the Refugee camp article, I have added to the section on Notable refugee camps to include current camps and processing centers in Greece as part of the contemporary European migrant crisis. I have created a section on Mental health in camps and described both the specific mental health problems that affect refugees in camps as well as the camp-specific interventions and alternatives to traditional psychological practices. In addition, I have created a section on alternatives to camps, that includes various forms of informal settlement and occupation (including informal camps and squats) and explores the political and social significance of these spaces.

Exarcheia
Chatzidakis, Andreas (May 2013). "Commodity Fights in Post-2008 Athens: Zapatistas Coffee, Kropotkinian Drinks and Fascist Rice". Ephemera. 13: 459–468.


 * This article explores socio-economic tension in Athens, especially in the forms of 'commodity fights' and exclusive, identity-based zones (such as a migrant free zone and fascist free zone). I use its overview of the effects of the 2008 riots to summarize and map the social and political formations in the area.

"Gun from Greek PASOK shooting used in past guerrilla attacks -police". Reuters. November 7, 2017. Retrieved 2018-02-05.


 * This article explains that a right-wing political party has its headquarters in Exarcheia, which demonstrates the broad and contentious political makeup of the area.

Astrinaki, R. ""(Un)hooding" a Rebellion: The December 2008 Events in Athens". Social Text. 27 (4 101): 97–107. doi:10.1215/01642472-2009-056.


 * In this article, an academic reflects on first-hand experiences to make sense of the political demands and material violence of the 2008 protests in Athens. Because a lot of this violence is linked to anarchist groups, it is crucial to understand the academic and social context for their actions, as well as the breadth of their diversity.

Apoifis, Nicholas. "Fieldwork in a furnace: anarchists, anti-authoritarians and militant ethnography". Qualitative Research. 17 (1): 3–19. doi:10.1177/1468794116652450.


 * This article is about ethnographic research in Exarcheia, which is valuable to me in a personal sense for my PE, but the author also addresses the "cultural logic and practices underpinning anarchist and anti-authoritarian activity in this space," which is crucial context for the political events that occur here.

Chtouris, Sotiris (January 2017). "Refugee Flows and Volunteers in the Current Humanitarian Crisis in Greece". Journal of Applied Security Research. 12: 61–77 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.


 * This article gives some context to the influx of refugees into Athens and Exarcheia, as well as a historical understanding of the ways migrants have had to navigate physical and urban space in different ways.

Vasilaki, Rosa (2017-04-17). "We are an image from the future': Reading back the Athens 2008 riots". Acta Scientiarum. Education. 39 (2): 153–161.


 * This article looks at at the economic rise and fall of Greece in the 2000s, around the keynotes of the 2004 Olympics and the 2008 riots. I want to explore its claim that Exarcheia "holds a key symbolic role in the universe of left dissent in Greece" to better articulate the political significance of the neighborhood and specific events in its history.

Vradis, Antonis (2009). "Greece's winter of discontent". City. 13 (1): 146–149. doi:10.1080/13604810902770754.


 * This article evaluates the unusual participation in the 2008 Greek riots and seeks to historically differentiate them from media accounts and theories of other uprisings in the time period. It helps to explain the historical background for the neighborhood and the way the current environment is shaped by a collective memory of its political past.

Koptyaeva, Alexandra (June 2017). "Collective homemaking in transit". Forced Migration Review. 55: 37–38 – via EBSCOhost.


 * This article specifically focuses on City Plaza itself, and is one of the very few academic sources that actually examines fieldwork and firsthand experiences within the refugee squats of Exarcheia. This is crucial perspective for the Wiki page.

"Greek police arrest 12 amid raids on anarchist squats". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2018-04-04.


 * This news helps to situate the precarious situation of migrants within Exarcheia. They face violence from fascists as well as economic violence from a lack of opportunities, but the collective spaces for refugees often also face eviction or abuse from the state itself.

Strickland, Patrick. "Greek anarchists organise for refugees as 'state fails'". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2018-04-04.


 * Because there are so few academic studies about the squatting movement in Exarcheia, I have also drawn on contemporary news articles in order to provide more perspective and detail about the current situation in the neighborhood.

Dalakoglou, Dimitris (2013). "The Crisis before "The Crisis": Violence and Urban Neoliberalization in Athens". Social Justice. 39: 24–42 – via ResearchGate.


 * The author claims that the construction projects initiated by the Athenian government served to restructure the demographics of the city, and explores the specific initiatives and projects carried out in the 1990s and 2000s. Specific investments in infrastructure and policing tactics targeted spaces in which migrants lived, especially exploiting the undocumented status of many immigrants. This is helpful to understand the way that incarceration, patrol, and construction have worked together to shape the way migrants navigate the city.

Refugee camp
Banning-Lover, Rachel (2017-02-10). "Greek refugee camps remain dangerous and inadequate, say aid workers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-03-17.


 * This article provides first-hand data on the dangers of refugee camps in Greece and the way this effects the mental state of those living within the camps.

Burck, Charlotte; Hughes, Gillian (March 2018). "Challenges and impossibilities of 'standing alongside' in an intolerable context: Learning from refugees and volunteers in the Calais camp". Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 23: 223–237 – via SAGE Journals.


 * This article describes a psychological intervention in the Calais Jungle camp. I use the person's firsthand experience to present alternatives to traditional mental health interventions as well as broaden the understanding of trauma to a cultural context.

Children and youth on the front line : ethnography, armed conflict and displacement. Boyden, Jo., Berry, Joanna de. New York: Berghahn Books. 2004. ISBN 1571818839. OCLC 53191376.


 * This expands my understanding of the mental health consequences of violence and displacement. In addition, to other things I have learned, this book dives into the gender-based risks within refugee camps and the effects of interrupted and incomplete interventions.

Depraetere, Anika; Oosterlynck, Stijn (2017). "'I finally found my place': a political ethnography of the Maximiliaan refugee camp in Brussels". Citizenship Studies. 21: 693–709. doi:10.1080/13621025.2017.1341653 – via Taylor & Francis Online.


 * This article helps me to begin my understanding of unofficial refugee camps and the role of volunteer and non-state aid within these camps. Specifically, this also helps me to conceptualize the existence of unofficial camps as a political act in itself.

Hassan, G, Kirmayer, LJ, Mekki-Berrada A., Quosh, C., el Chammay, R., Deville-Stoetzel, J.B., Youssef, A., Jefee-Bahloul, H., Barkeel-Oteo, A., Coutts, A., Song, S. & Ventevogel, P. Culture, Context and the Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing of Syrians: A Review for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support staff working with Syrians Affected by Armed Conflict. Geneva: UNHCR, 2015.


 * This helps my understanding and articulation of the mental health consequences of conflict-related violence, and the ways they are compounded by daily stressors of displacement such as poverty, lack of basic services, ongoing risks of violence, isolation, discrimination, loss of family and community supports, and uncertainty about the future.

McKenzie, Sheena (2016-08-20). "Thousands flee fire at refugee camp in Greece". CNN. Retrieved 2018-03-17.


 * This article provides further evidence and support of the way that refugee camps serve to deepen or add to stress and trauma of refugees, as opposed to simply being a landing place - and holding pen for existing problems created by war and violence in refugees' home countries.

Mistrusting refugees. Daniel, E. Valentine., Knudsen, John Chr. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995. ISBN 0520088980. OCLC 32545794.


 * This book provides examples of feasible ways to mitigate the mental health consequences of refugee camps. I focused on its example of Pakistani-Afghan camps that acknowledged and centered the cultural aspects of trauma and healing.

Slingenberg, C. H.; Bonneau, L. (December 2017). "(In)formal Migrant Settlements and Right to Respect for a Home". European Journal of Migration and law. 19: 335–369.


 * This article analyzes the processes and legal justifications of migrant occupations in France and Amsterdam. I draw on its analysis of Amsterdam to diversify my explanation of alternatives to refugee camps and show the ways the refugees organize outside of the state.

Sandri, Elisa (January 2018). "'Volunteer Humanitarianism': volunteers and humanitarian aid in the Jungle refugee camp of Calais". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 44: 65–80 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.


 * This article describes volunteer engagement within the refugee camp in Calais. I use this information to understand the broad structure of aid in refugee camps as well as to analyze the drawbacks of a grassroots approach.

Rigby, Joe (April 2013). "Impossible protest: noborders in Calais". Citizenship Studies. 17: 157–172 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.


 * This article analyzes protest movements by and for refugees in France, and I especially focus on its mention of the ways that refugee support is a political act in itself because of French laws that make it illegal to help migrants.

P de Jong, J & Scholte, Willem & Koeter, Maarten & A. M. Hart, A. (2000). The prevalence of mental health problems in Rwandan and Burundese refugee camps. Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica. 102. 171-7. 10.1034/j.1600-0447.2000.102003171.x.


 * This article talks about the prevalence of mental health problems in African refugee camps, which might be helpful perspective on refugee camps because most of my research is on Middle Eastern refugees and camps in Europe, so I want to research broader and more diverse perspectives.