{"id":17072,"date":"2025-11-18T11:36:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/?p=17072"},"modified":"2025-11-18T11:58:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:58:17","slug":"article-exploring-emotions-a-reflective-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/article-exploring-emotions-a-reflective-map\/","title":{"rendered":"[:el]\u0391\u03a1\u0398\u03a1\u039f | \u03a3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c7\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc[:en]ARTICLE | Exploring Emotions: A Reflective Map"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong data-start=\"87\" data-end=\"292\">As part of the Refugee Week Festival 2025, five civil society organizations collaborated to map the emotional landscape of Athens through the experiences of people with refugee and migrant backgrounds.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 data-start=\"296\" data-end=\"509\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">47 adults answered questions about where they spend their time, where they feel safe, where they enjoy themselves, where they feel uncomfortable or uneasy, and which parts of the city they choose for relaxation.<\/span><\/h4>\n<p data-start=\"511\" data-end=\"754\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Using the map of Athens as a tool, participants captured their personal experiences in relation to the city\u2019s geography. The main benefit is reflection on personal experiences in space, as lived by people with refugee or migrant backgrounds.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p data-start=\"756\" data-end=\"837\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong data-start=\"756\" data-end=\"772\">At a glance:<\/strong> <em>contradictions, multiplicity of voices, and diverse realities.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p data-start=\"839\" data-end=\"2277\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Most responses trace paths around Kypseli, Omonia, Viktoria, Syntagma, and Pedion tou Areos. This invites reflection on whether\u2014and why\u2014some neighborhoods are less accessible, or why others may become welcoming spaces or even potential ghettos.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Kypseli appears as a place of everyday life and safety, while at the same time being described as an \u201cunpleasant place.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Kypseli and Viktoria are the only areas statistically significant in terms of safety. Additionally, participants spend a lot of time in these two neighborhoods. Thus, the sense of safety is closely tied to familiarity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Omonia remains a central hub but also a space of insecurity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Pedion tou Areos continues to be the main choice for moments of calm.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Viktoria stands out as an example: for some, it is a place of safety or where they spend a lot of time, while for many others, it is simultaneously a place of discomfort or an \u201cunpleasant place.\u201d A core refugee experience is the involuntary loss of familiar spaces, making the creation of new familiar spaces a pressing need in multiple ways. Therefore, building communities and supportive networks within a neighborhood is an expected outcome.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A small but notable percentage (7%) reported feeling uncomfortable or unwelcome in \u201curban\u201d areas like Kolonaki, reflecting the sense that one feels more like a stranger there. Within their own community, there is relative safety, but beyond it, insecurity begins.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4 data-start=\"2279\" data-end=\"2530\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">This emotional map reflects a city that \u201cspeaks\u201d differently to each community and invites us to rethink it not only as a sum of infrastructures but as a living organism shaped by our stories, routes, and the places that do, or do not, accommodate us. The map is available <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/MPHSS-Map-2025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a> (in greek).<\/span><\/h4>\n<blockquote>\n<p data-start=\"2532\" data-end=\"2562\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong data-start=\"2532\" data-end=\"2560\">Our personal experience:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p data-start=\"2564\" data-end=\"2668\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">As we went out into the streets to ask people, it became clear that every response was a unique story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2670\" data-end=\"2805\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Some were in a hurry and answered almost instinctively, while others had just arrived in Athens and looked at the map with curiosity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2807\" data-end=\"3101\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is when you realize that <strong>the same space is never the same for everyone\u2014each person carries their own experiences, memories, and emotions. This is what makes the \u201cemotional map\u201d so valuable: it is not merely geography, but a collective memory and feeling built from many personal moments.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2807\" data-end=\"3101\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-17082 aligncenter colorbox-17072\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Green-Modern-Landscaping-Logo-300x53.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"610\" height=\"108\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Green-Modern-Landscaping-Logo-300x53.png 300w, https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Green-Modern-Landscaping-Logo.png 557w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px\" \/><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of the Refugee Week Festival 2025, five civil society organizations collaborated to map the emotional landscape of Athens through the experiences of people with refugee and migrant backgrounds. 47 adults answered questions about where they spend their time, where they feel safe, where they enjoy themselves, where they feel uncomfortable or uneasy, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homepage","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17072"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17087,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17072\/revisions\/17087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solidaritynow.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}