Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ioannou, Sophia
• Savvidou, Valia
• Dell'Orto, Giovanna
• Wetzstein, Irmgard

Titel

Moving On and In: Integration Through Shared and Independent Living Spaces in Greece

Ist Teil von

• Refugee News, Refugee Politics, 2019, Vol.1, p.87-93

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In March 2016, after the European Union reached a deal with Turkey, more than 50,000 refugees were essentially trapped in Greece. Accommodation capacity was quickly exhausted in the Aegean islands, making it imperative that refugees be moved to urban settings on the Greek mainland. This chapter offers a case study of how one civil society actor – the Athens-based NGO SolidarityNow – responded by trying to bridge emergency (housing) and long-term (integration) concerns, especially when facing an ineffective official response from governments and international humanitarian institutions. It showcases two interventions where citizens’ goodwill was supported and incremented: A nationwide awareness campaign and subsequent program, “Home for Hope,” where more than 800 asylum seekers were hosted by Greek families and had a chance to establish new family bonds, and a pilot project for economic development on the tiny islands of Tilos, where both locals and refugees benefited from changes ranging from better medical facilities to English classes. This chapter offers a case study of how one Athens-based nongovernmental organization, SolidarityNow, stepped up under these circumstances to offer a civil society response bridging emergency and long-term concerns, particularly through its housing programs for more than 4,500 "People of Concern". For most of the hundreds of thousands of them who started arriving in 2015, Greece was the first European host country, and thousands continued to arrive daily until the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement in March 2016. The aim of the "Home for Hope" initiative, which SolidarityNow launched in April 2016, was to contribute to the solution of the problem of housing and living conditions for those seeking asylum in order to relocate to other EU countries. Tilos is a small island of 800 inhabitants, near Rhodes and Kos that gathers all the typical features of a local society with limited resources.