Postcards From the Edge of Europe: Immigrant Landscapes and the Creation of Greektopia, Heterotopia, and Atopia in Lesvos, Greece

Abstract

The island of Lesvos is composed of landscapes that have been influenced since antiquity and has been used by its inhabitants for many centuries. Now, in the wake of the civil war in Syria, social unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and harsh economic and civil strife in northern Africa, more and more nonindigenous people and cultures occupy the island. Social and intercultural relations between the indigenous Greeks and non-Greeks are marked by tension and conflict as they compete for access to the island’s limited resources during this time of fiscal crisis in Greece. This postcard from two sociologists documents the struggle for space, albeit temporary, on an island where the quest for public space has led to contested landscapes of refuge and the creation or maintenance of Greektopias, or zones of exclusion.