Urban scenes of citizenship: inventing the possibility of immigrants’ citizenship in Athens

Cities have always offered multiple spatial settings for human acts that question existing order and create new forms of citizenship. Keeping in mind the Arendtian definition of citizenship as a superior ‘right to have rights’, this paper explores the emergence of scenes of citizenship in contemporary Athens, with regard to the public appearance of immigrants as actors that seek (or not) more than the recognition of separate rights. Some key contradictions that are revealed, such as those that concern the boundaries between private and public life, solidarity and disempowerment, sense of belonging and motivation to exclude, illustrate that acts of citizenship depend on the qualities of the urban scenes in which they unfold and that these qualities are in turn shaped by different articulations of power.