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Cultural interaction and identity-making between port and industries: Socio-spatial Readings of Piraeus’ Neighborhoods during the Interwar Period

Interaction culturelle et constitution d’une identité entre port et industries : lectures sociospatiales des quartiers du Pirée pendant l’entre-deux-guerres
Πολιτιστική αλληλεπίδραση και δημιουργία ταυτότητας μεταξύ του λιμανιού και των βιομηχανιών : κοινωνικοχωρικές αναγνώσεις των γειτονιών του Πειραιά στον Μεσοπόλεμο
Dr. Alexandra Mourgou
p. 69-98

Résumés

Résumé : cet article explore les relations dialectiques entre l’espace, le lieu, la/les cultures, l’/les identités des quartiers de travailleurs réfugiés du Pirée pendant l’entre-deux-guerres. Le Pirée était la ville grecque qui accusa le plus grand accroissement de population dans les années 1920-1928 puisque sa population augmenta de 88 % selon les recensements. En 1928, 101 185 personnes déplacées d’Asie Mineure, du Pont, d’Istanbul et de Thrace s’étaient installées dans la ville. Dans ce contexte les notions d’espace, de lieu, de culture et d’identité sont examinées à travers les processus socio-spatiaux qui s’y produisent. Dans ce but, une approche méthodologique hybride est utilisée, inspirée par la géographie critique et culturelle, par les études urbaines, l’anthropologie et l’histoire orale.

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Texte intégral

Introduction

1From its establishment in 1830, Piraeus was a modern port city that was built for commercial and industrial purposes. From the mid-19th and early 20th century onwards, the city progressively evolved into the major industrial port of the country as well as a melting pot of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. In the emerging working-class refugee neighborhoods, social practices were developed that remained invisible for many years, as their main actors were people at the bottom of the social pyramid whose history hardly left traces in official historiography. In its working class and refugee neighborhoods, a predominantly urban culture flourished that resulted from the encounter between multiple cosmopolitan identities of the past and the development of new survival processes in a modern city, often associated with semi-legal or unseen practices.

  • 1  Massey, 2005; Soja, 1980; Harvey, 2004; Hall, 1990, 1997 and 2005

2This paper explores the dialectic interrelations between space, place, culture(s), and identities(s) of the working-class refugee neighbourhoods of Piraeus during the Interwar Period. On a theoretical level, space and place are perceived as always in process. In this context, notions of space, place, culture, and identity are examined through the socio-spatial processes occurring within the case study.1 For this purpose, a hybrid methodological approach that draws from critical and cultural geography, urban studies, anthropology, and oral history, is employed. I bring together excerpts from interviews and documented and oral testimonies in order to (1) investigate the social and cultural geographies of the working-class refugee neighborhoods of Piraeus, (2) examine the social practices held in them, and (3) cast light on the cultural interactions and the identity-making in those neighborhoods that lay between the port and the industrial zone.

A working-class port city among industries

  • 2  Kotea, 1995; Papastefanaki 2009; Hastaoglou - Martinidis, 2010.

3Among the major ports of the Eastern Mediterranean, Piraeus is the only port city that was not developed taking advantage of a preexisting traditional urban fabric, but instead planned from scratch after the establishment of the modern Greek State, gradually evolving into a modern urban center. The development of industry, the construction of railway lines, and the port were instrumental in forming the city’s social geography.2

  • 3Belavilas 2007; Papastefanaki, 2009 and 2007; Leontidou, 2001; Tsokopoulos, 1999.

4The evolution of Piraeus into the country’s largest harbor was linked to the development of industry, which began to blossom in the mid-19th century and saw rapid growth especially during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This procedure was carried out in three stages. The first was the industrialization of the area near Agios Dionysios, the second was the industrialization of the railway lines to and from Thivon Street, Piraeus Street, and Neo Faliro, and the third and last was the industrialization of the seafront area from Drapetsona all the way to Keratsini (Krakari breakwater and westwards). The establishment of the Incorporated Greek Company of Chemical Products and Fertilizers (1909) and the General Cement Company “Hercules” (1911) was of pivotal significance, as the two firms launched the existence of large industrial complexes on the city’s periphery and consolidated the working-class character of the settlements that emerged around them. In the 1930s, Piraeus maintained its position as the largest industrial city in the country. Its most important industrial sectors were the textile industry, the chemical industry, the transport industry, the food industry, the tobacco industry, and the ceramics industry.3

  • 4  Belavilas, 2018 and 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009; Kotea, 1995.

5During the last decades of the 19th century, the construction of the railway and harbor infrastructure consolidated the city’s position in the national and international urban network. The harbor played a significant role in urban development, as from the 19th century onwards Piraeus had already become one of the most important maritime centers of the Eastern Mediterranean. It was a point of arrival or transit for an unknowable number of refugees and internal migrants. The harbor’s amplified role was also in line with several infrastructure projects carried out especially in the 1930s, such as the construction of the Grain Silo next to Vassiliadis’ Shipyard. In 1930 the Piraeus Port Authority (O.L.P.) was founded.4

  • 5  Mourgou, 2022; Belavilas, 2021; Tsokopoulos, 1984; Papastefanaki, 2009; HastaoglouMartinidis, 2 (...)

6From the first years of its urbanization, Piraeus became a receiving place for islanders and refugees who had left the countryside due to consecutive wars. Gradually the ranks of both the lower social strata and an emerging bourgeoisie exhibiting relatively early modern characteristics began to swell. Migrants and refugees from all parts of the state (the islands, the Peloponnese, and Central Greece) and from outside its borders started to congregate in the city. The main criterion for the location of settlements in the making was the place of origin of the settlers. In the late 19th century the factories and the harbor developed rapidly, not far from the neoclassical and commercial places of the city. Taking place together with the “economic miracle” that occurred in the center of Piraeus was also the accumulation of activities that the Municipality wished to restrict to specific spaces. This socio-spatial segregation was related to land use and validated in 1869 by the heavy boundary of the Athens – Piraeus railway tracks that cut the city in two. On the south-eastern side of the railway track were the commercial and shipping activities, while on the north-western side were located the industrial zone, the workers’ neighborhoods, and the brothels. Around the port, a wide network of informal or (semi-) illegal work developed, which engaged a non-negligible part of the population5.

  • 6Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2021.

7Over time many of the working-class neighborhoods were formed “beyond the walls.” These neighborhoods were inhabited mainly by people who came to Piraeus “uninvited” and in search of a better life. The main cores of the working-class neighborhoods formed an arc on the outskirts of the existing city. The oldest core was the “district of the Factories” (Συνοικισμός των Εργοστασίων), northwest of the railway station. Two branches of this settlement that gradually developed a little later were the “Kaminia” and the “Maniatika.” Yet another core was “Vavoula’s Gouva” (Γούβα του Βάβουλα). Finally, two other working-class settlements inhabited mainly by people from Crete can be noted around the churches of Profitis Ilias and Agios Vasilios.6

  • 7  Gkizeli, 1984; Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009.
  • 8  Kyramargiou, 2019; Mourgou 2022; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2021.

8During the latter 19th and early 20th century, Piraeus continued to be a major place of attraction for populations originating from various provinces of the modern Greek state and the Ottoman Empire, including persons from Central Greece, the Cyclades, the Peloponnese and refugees from Eastern Rumelia. Most of the city’s inhabitants were artisans, craftsmen, and laborers who worked in the port and in the manufacturing industry. Until the outbreak of WWI, Piraeus was a transit point for villagers emigrating from the Greek countryside to America and staying for a while in Piraeus as they tried to find a way to survive. Another group integrated into the plebeian strata of the city was composed of the rural population that abandoned the countryside after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913. Inhabitants of the settlement of “Maniatika” (people who originated from the Mani peninsula, one of the southern fingers of the Peloponnese), others of the settlement of “Hydraiika” (people who originated from Hydra), Cretans, Armenians, and, in general, people of diverse origins, together brought about the emergence of a social map of multiple identities, which for many years continued to embody aspects of the everyday life of the settlers’ homelands.7 The living and housing conditions of the working strata of Piraeus were harsh. Workers usually lived in tiny wooden dwellings that had a tamped earth floor and a tin roof. The houses, cafés, taverns, markets and streets of the various neighborhoods served as meeting places for their inhabitants, enabling the sharing of experiences and importantly, the forging of new cultures through the myriad unseen aspects of everyday life.8

  • 9  Wacquant, 2014; Mourgou, 2021 & 2022.

9During the urbanization process of the latter 19th century, activities that did not fit with the government’s desired representations of the city started to accumulate beyond the existing urban fabric, both in Piraeus and in Drapetsona and encompassing the cemetery, the tanks, the shipyards, the brothels (“Vourla”), the hashish dens. Progressively, a network of social practices was developed that existed in the shadowy gray area between legality and illegality. In and around this network could be found a number of people whose everyday life and process of survival were inextricably intertwined with these marginal practices.9

Map 1 Working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus at the early 20th century.

Map 1 Working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus at the early 20th century.

Source: Mourgou, 2022, p. 137, Background map source Map of Piraeus Eleftheroudakis - Bart

From the “refugee flood”10 to the settlements

  • 10  I am borrowing this phrase from Belavilas, 2021.
  • 11  Leontidou 2001; Liakos 2019; Kostis, 2015.

10The Interwar period was a time of intense urbanization, especially for the Athens-Piraeus complex. The arrival of successive waves of populations, culminating with the displaced populations that arrived in Greece after 1922 due to the Asia Minor Catastrophe, played a pivotal role in this development. While their exact number is difficult to specify, according to the League of Nations an approximate figure is 1,360,000, a number roughly equivalent to one-fifth of the country’s entire population at the time.11

  • 12  Gkizeli; 1984.
  • 13  Sarigiannis, 2008; Karydis, 2008; Charalampidis, 2011; Leontidou, 2001; Gkizeli, 1984; Belavilas, (...)

11Half the refugees were resettled in urban centers such as Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki. Many of them settled in Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace), thus helping to stabilize the state’s new borders.12 More than 220,000 refugees settled in Attica at a time when the pre-existing population stood at 453,037 (1920). During this period the Athens-Piraeus region was transformed, while various suburbs were developed as small urban centers, as shown in map 2. The urgent need to provide immediate solutions for the refugees’ placement and lodging left no room for negotiating the planning of the settlements. One criterion for their construction was the availability of open spaces far from the neighborhoods of the locals and conducive to expropriation and distancing from the “good areas,” thus achieving socio-spatial segregation while supplying the existing industries with cheap laborers. Since inflows from all over the country were high during those years, the refugee settlements were quickly surrounded by internal migrants seeking a better future who put down roots beside the earlier arrivals. This situation entailed the creation of a dense network of housing and inevitably, of human relations. The largest refugee settlements were located beyond the existing urban fabric, in 12 main and 34 smaller settlements. The largest were Vyronas, Kaisariani, Nea Ionia, Kokkinia, Korydallos, Egaleo, Peristeri, Nea Chalkidona, and Kallithea.13

  • 14  Pizanias, 1993; Paloukis, 2011.
  • 15  Karydis, 2008; Leontidou, 1999.
  • 16  The RSC was established by the League of Nations as a legally independent organization with delega (...)
  • 17  Kostis, 2015; Gkizeli, 1984; Leontidou, 1999; Karydis, 2008; Sarigiannis, 2000; Karamouzi, 1999; L (...)

12The State’s response to the issue of refugee resettlement was carried out in several phases. The first phase can be labelled a short-term “humanitarian” approach, the second a “temporary” and medium-term approach, while the third aimed at permanent housing rehabilitation. This programming did not include the social integration process but merely assisted the refugees’ adaptation to the new conditions.14 Not surprisingly, “self-built housing” (building a house with one’s own means) was, especially in the 1930s, the most common practice of home creation and acquisition. Gkizeli identifies two main categories of builders of self-built housing. The first category included the indigent population. The second included more prosperous folk who were able to relocate to the city by their own means. With the passage of time however, the temporary character that initially seemed to characterize self-built housing was gradually transformed into a definitive situation.15 Meanwhile, various national and international organizations and institutions were active, the most significant of whom were the Fund for Refugee Assistance (henceforth FRA, 1922-1925), the Refugee Settlement Commission16 (henceforth RSC, 1923-1930), the Ministry of Social Welfare (henceforth MSW, 1930 onwards), the National Bank of Greece (henceforth NBG), and the Ministry of Agriculture. However, it must be said that after 1940 and more generally the outbreak of WWII, the resettlement of refugees faded into the background and was no longer a priority.17

Map 2 The Refugee settlements and their relationship with the center of the capital and the port. (12 main settlements and 34 smaller; in grey area built before 1922)

Map 2 The Refugee settlements and their relationship with the center of the capital and the port. (12 main settlements and 34 smaller; in grey area built before 1922)

Source Sarigiannis, 2000, p. 105.

  • 18  Papastefanaki, 2009; Leontidou, 2001; Kayser, 1968.
  • 19  Papastefanaki, 2007.

13The working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus, formed in the late 19th century and situated close to the fringes of the developing industry, were consolidated and transformed following the arrival of the refugees.18 Refugee contribution to industrial growth (either via the recruitment of cheap labor or capital investment) has been highlighted in the literature, while recent analyses indicate that up to the post-war period there was considerable concern regarding the viability of the Greek economy and prospects for productivity among the refugee population.19

  • 20  The term “Great War” (Μεγάλος Πόλεμος) is often used in literature to describe the consecutive per (...)
  • 21  More specifically, it is mentioned that in 1928 there were 101,185 refugees, 68,859 locals, and 81 (...)

14Ever since the “Great War”,20 refugee populations from Asia Minor, Pontus, Armenia, and Russia had been arriving in Piraeus. After the population exchange in 1922, refugees arriving at the port of Piraeus in overcrowded ships were being added to those of the previous years. The bulk of the refugee population stayed temporarily before being redistributed to other regions of Greece. Thus it was that among Greek cities, Piraeus witnessed the highest population increase in relation to its size during the years 1920-1928, this population increasing by 88 % according to the censuses. In 1928, 101,185 displaced persons from Asia Minor, Pontus, Istanbul, and Thrace settled there, representing 40 % of the city’s total population (251,659 inhabitants). Furthermore, a significant number of migrants to the city during this period came from the Peloponnese (10.5 %), the Cyclades (7 %), Attica (3.6 %), the Aegean (2.3 %), the Ionian islands (2 %), and Crete (2 %).21

  • 22  Kyramargiou 2019; Belavilas 2021.
  • 23  Belavilas, 2021, p. 313.
  • 24  Papastefanaki, 2009.

15These uprooted refugees found shelter in any available space: in public and private buildings they occupied, in improvised structures and tents, in warehouses, in squares and in the courtyards of churches and schools. They soon transformed the city’s spaces into a huge, improvised camp.22 Preexisting socio-spatial distinctions became even more intense with the establishment of settlements of disadvantaged refugees near and around the working-class districts of the previous years. Gradually, an “invisible city behind the hills and railway tracks”23 was formed, dominated by improvised structures and shacks and with no little hygiene problems.24 The refugee Angela Papazoglou describes the impasse she experienced after disembarkation:

  • 25  Papazoglou, 2003, p. 141.

And where should we go? The hotels were full. The money we had couldn’t save us. We couldn’t use it. We couldn’t go anywhere. There was no other way. We had to stick in the shit… […]. We were up on our feet in there. I even had the blanket on my back, as if I had been grounded.25

  • 26  Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2018; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2020 and 2021.

16The first improvised units of shacks developed around the existing urban fabric in Terpsithea, Afentouli Street, Cross of Profitis Ilias, Kastella, and Chatzikyriakeio. These buildings were eventually demolished or replaced with more recent buildings. Following the initial installation of the refugees, it was decided by the FRA, the RSC, and the MSW to settle them near neighborhoods where other immigrants and some refugees had previously lived. The exception was Nea Kokkinia, which was overwhelmingly settled by refugee populations. The initial housing rehabilitation took place from 1922 to 1930 with the construction of small, one- and two-storey buildings. In the following years, blocks of flats were constructed which were typical examples of the modern architecture movement (for example in Nea Kokkinia from 1934 to 1936, in Drapetsona from 1935 to 1938, in Agios Ioannis Rentis in 1937 and in the Agioi Anargyroi neighborhood of Palia Kokkinia from 1937 to 1939). Prefabricated wooden houses (“Germanika”), and several housing programs were encouraged. Around the planned and organized settlements many arbitrary ones started to pop up.26

  • 27  Kyramargiou, 2019; Belavilas, 2018; Papastefanaki, 2009; Belavilas & Dimitropoulos, 2018

17Organized refugee relocation was carried out in Tourkolimano as well as Nea Kallipoli, where it consisted mostly of self-built housing. The settlements of Palia Kokkinia and Kaminia were created northwest of the railway tracks, while the district of Souda – Neo Faliro – took shape towards Piraeus Street. Around the city proper the other refugee settlements, namely Nea Kokkinia, Korydallos, Agios Ioannis Rentis, Keratsini, Drapetsona, Ikonio, and Perama were established. These settlements were developed and expanded at different times and in different ways. According to the 1928 census, the district of Drapetsona represented the most populated refugee settlement, inhabited by 36,485 people. Second was Nea Kokkinia with a population of 33,201, third Keratsini with 16,127 people, and fourth Palea Kokkinia with 14,225 inhabitants.27 The following testimonies are very revealing regarding the living conditions of the refugees:

  • 28  Galopoulou, 2013, p. 35.

After passing the port of Piraeus and after the disinfection, we were led – on foot of course – to a bare mountain called Vokos, which had houses on its slope overlooking Piraeus. On the other side, it was empty. We arrived, to make a long story short, at a place with tents and a few shacks built with mud bricks. It was called Kokkinia.28

Map 3 Refugee settlements of Piraeus, around 1930

Map 3 Refugee settlements of Piraeus, around 1930

Source Dimitropoulos & Belavilas, 2018 p. 189.

Interpenetration of social strata among the “urban poor”29

  • 29  I am referring to the “urban poor,” inspired by the book by Pizanias, 1993, mentioned in the bibli (...)
  • 30  Papastefanaki, 2009
  • 31  Vaiou & Chatzimichalis, 1997α.
  • 32  Kostis, 2015; Pizanias, 1993; Papastefanaki, 2007.

18From the 19th century onward, the urban population of Greece increased as people of rural and island origin flocked to the new urban centers30 offering opportu­nities for employment. These new urban dwellers, who eked out a living on the basis of both paid and unpaid labor relations,31 found themselves in an unfavorable position. In the interwar period, most refugees of urban origin who were settled in urban centers belonged mainly to the lower social strata. The accom­modation of such a vast number of people seeking a better life resulted in increased formal and informal labor, decreased wages, and a surge in floating populations.32 Within this framework, both divisions and convergences among the anonymous actors of the working-class and refugee neighborhoods of Piraeus are worthy of more detailed study, not only in terms of their position in production, in the city, in private ownership and in the culture of survival but also in terms of their work being paid (by wage or other means) or unpaid (without which survival would not be achieved).

  • 33  Industrial workers in Greece constituted a very small percentage (2.4 %) compared to other societi (...)
  • 34  Pizanias, 1993, p. 64.

19From the latter 19th century until 1940 industrial production was not the principal economic engine of the Greek economy, as the burden of production fell mainly on the rural population.33 In parallel, the stratification of the working strata into a hierarchy related to position in production generated ruptures that hindered collective consciousness. A better fate awaited artisans, who were usually paid monthly wages. Below them were the unqualified workers who were usually paid per diem and spent much of their lives working in various industries. Positioned around this stratum in turn was a vast corps of “occasional and seasonal laborers”34.

  • 35  Kyramargiou, 2019; Papastefanaki, 2009; Pizanias, 1993.

20The various ways of payment resulted in significant differentiations and inequalities among the working-class refugee populations of Piraeus. Monthly wages were paid to a small percentage of the working population, mainly to skilled artisans such as the glassmakers in the Incorporated Greek Company of Chemical Products and Fertilizers in Drapetsona. For unqualified workers, methods of payment were framed either in an informal or a formal economy and could involve a per diem, an hourly rate, piecework, contracting out or personal arrangements. Meanwhile, the absence of an institutional and regulatory framework rendered many small jobs informal or (semi-)illegal. The street vendors plying the city’s neighborhoods were characteristic examples of workers whose employment could at times be considered illegal, and was persecuted by authorities.35

  • 36  Pizanias, 1993; Kanetakis, Beneki & Sarigiannis, 2002.

21Another structural element of industrial labor concerned the seasonal and temporary employment of unqualified workers. This phenomenon was associated with unemployment and professional mobility, and there were many examples of refugees who worked for a few weeks or months in an industrial unit of Piraeus but were eventually obliged to move outside the city (or even to areas nearby such as the gardens of Rentis) to undertake agricultural work. For example, many professional musicians of the 1930s were employed in factories or other production sites but found it necessary to supplement their earnings by practicing their art in exchange for a financial pittance, or even just a meal.36

  • 37  Leontidou, 2001; Papastefanaki, 2009; Avdela & Psarra, 1985.
  • 38  Papastefanaki, 2009; Pizanias, 1993, p. 70.

22A significant level of social division that permeated the ranks of the impoverished workers who inhabited these settlements was created by the gendered dimension of work. Women’s participation in paid labor increased further after the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees, as many widows and orphans had to work for pay to survive. The majority of those who ended up in Piraeus were employed (even if only occasionally) as unqualified workers in industrial sectors that relied entirely on women’s know-how and labor (e.g., carpet making, textiles, tobacco, paper). As these were the main industries in the capital at the time, inasmuch as we can speak of a proletariat in the interwar period, contemporary research indicates that proletariat was female. In addition, of great importance was the hidden, informal and often marginalized labor of women who toiled at home on piecework or on contract to an industrialist. Many Piraeus households included female pieceworkers who assigned part of the work to younger family members in order to increase productivity, and hence their income. At the same time, the statistics of the time did not record many occupations that were considered “female” and figured in the sphere of informal work, such as cleaners, laundresses, etc. As for unpaid work, women bore the greatest burden, contributing to household survival by dividing their time between productive and reproductive activities.37 It should also be mentioned that many children worked in the industrial shops of Piraeus, either for very low wages or as unpaid apprentices, even in jobs where there was no body of knowledge to be acquired. These children “would do any job to gain a corner in the warehouse and something like food”.38

  • 39  Papastefanaki, 2009; Avdela & Psarra, 1985; Pizanias, 1993.

23Furthermore, grassroots trade unions were fragmented into small groups, rendering noteworthy the lack of union representation of a large part of the workforce despite its integration into paid work. Women and children in particular had no right to participate in the institutions of collective struggle unless they had the written permission of their husbands or fathers. In this way, in terms of social and economic relations, gender hierarchies worked to entrench the most vulnerable populations at the bottom of the socio-economic heap. 39

  • 40  Leontidou, 2001, p. 189.
  • 41  Pizanias, 1993.

24Instability and uncertainty were the lot of small businesses and the self-employed, who sold their labor power “to various employers on occasion”40. Many refugees would open small shops (a process encouraged by the RSC), only to close down when faced with economic fluctuations. Their owners were then forced to practice their profession in other ways, on the street or as employees.41 For example, a textile merchant with a small shop in Nea Kokkinia was considered to be the equal of a peddlar who trudged around the neighborhoods selling a few kantars of cloth carried on his shoulder. Similarly, neighborhoods boasted small hairdressing salons, but also open-air barbers, fishermen with shops, or fishermen peddling a few kilos of fish in the streets.

  • 42  Pizanias, 1993, p. 71.
  • 43  Wacquant, 1993.

25A large segment of the poor of Piraeus fluctuated between formal and informal professions that were often associated with deviance and treated as “parasitic” by the upper classes. Pizanias, in particular, has tracked social marginality at the periphery of this population, where “the sources are silenced”.42 As a labor force it formed a fluid and informal social space in which individuals moved within a wide range of occupations unidentified in the official censuses, continuously changing jobs or practicing more than one profession simultaneously and depending for survival on intense professional (and often geographical) mobility or even on a connection with deviance. Their “social marginality” was the result of a constel­lation of circumstances which included social stratification (as it was formed in the city of Piraeus) and the various cultural and place-based identities that coexisted and collided, but also the conditions under which the formation of the national state took place.43

  • 44  Wacquant, 2014.
  • 45  Wacquant, 2014 about “race making.”

26In fact, the state systematically marginalized a large part of the urban poor “who were at the bottom of the social pyramid”44 through the penalization of social practices that among other things, were associated with the culture of survival through labor. To an extent, this resulted from a process of national formation that demanded “Greekness”45 and denied, excluded and in some cases criminalized whatever contradicted official ideology. Typical targets of prohibition were certain aspects of everyday life that bore witness to the multicultural past of the refugee populations, such as the cosmopolitan idioms of urban popular music and rebetiko.

  • 46  Ahmed, 2000.
  • 47  Zaimakis, 1999, p. 21.
  • 48  Leontidou, 2001.
  • 49  Mourgou, 2021.

27Socio-spatial segregation was related to conditions of social being, i.e. way of life and position in productive relations, while at the same time, it influenced and shaped ethical values, social and interpersonal relations, collective beliefs, and social practices that conferred a particular social profile on a number of persons whose engagement with the unseen aspects of marginality rendered them “unknown others” “outside the social context” (in the official discourse).46 The spatial transformation of Piraeus was effected (among other things) through gradual marginalization of the various “disobedient social enclaves [which had no place] in the appropriate representations and conceptions of the city” 47. Thus, transformation of the built environment of Piraeus was dependent upon the spatial reproduction and representation of marginality. Begging, sex work, peripheral land use of the harbor (e.g. for illegal trade), hashish dens and professions associated with fraud such as that of the “papatzides”, who earned money through a specific game based on bets and played on the streets, were only a few examples of a set of “hidden” survival processes for people whose labor began when night fell.48 It must be said that female sex work was an essential part of the life of the port. Its consistent exclusion as “inappropriate” in Piraeus cast out of the city and rendered invisible those whose survival (occasionally or permanently) depended on it, regardless of whether they practiced it in confinement (in Vourla) or (illegally) in the most hidden corners of the city.49

  • 50  Damianakos, 2001, p. 86.
  • 51  Pizanias, 1993.
  • 52  Leontidou, 2001.
  • 53  Tsokopoulos, 1984.
  • 54  Pizanias, 1993, p. 150.

28Several commentators have analyzed the position of these marginalized populations in the social pyramid. Damianakos describes as subproletariat the various “groups of outlaws living in conditions of co-conspiracy, impenetrable by society”50: drifters, the jobless, those without family, occasional workers, manual laborers in precarious jobs, as well as former proletarians and unemployed or under­employed workers. Pizanias explains that the identification of the urban poor as subproletariat is misleading, since unstable housing, family, and the constant search for work are common characteristics for all of them.51 Leontidou describes them as “floating populations” or “floating proletariat”,52 while Tsokopoulos calls them a quasi-wage-earning group (“quasi-salariat”)53 and Pizanias a “quicksand population”.54

  • 55  Marx & Engels, 2015.
  • 56  Pizanias, 1993.
  • 57  Leontidou, 1999.
  • 58  Leontidou, 2001, p. 201.

29I do not endorse the strict categorization of the aforementioned terms. Boundaries among the social groups of the poor of the working class and refugee neighborhoods were blurred, as the population could easily shift from one social group to another.55 For example, many musicians of Piraeus, including Markos Vamvakaris and Giorgos Batis, practiced various professions from time to time. Working in the local tannery, running a small café that sometimes served as a hashish den, practicing multiple occasional (legal and illegal) small professions, and earning a living working as a musician was part of the everyday struggle for survival. Moreover, I would submit that simple classification by position in production is not sufficient to capture the social identity of the urban poor.56 The lower middle class, the floating and marginal populations, formed the working class as it appeared at a given place and time, and as such constituted “the dominant classes, the working people or the working poor”57 who were subjected to exploitation. A common aspect of the trajectories for these “interpenetrating social groups”58 is that they shared the same neighborhoods and adversities.

From the camps to the neighborhoods: socio-spatial transformations and the culture of survival

  • 59  Belavilas, 2021; Pizanias, 1993.

30Piraeus, from the first years of its formation, was a melting pot of people originating from different places within the newly formed Greek state and the Ottoman Empire. During the Interwar period the numbers of rural folk who continued to arrive along with the refugees were swelled by populations from impoverished towns who, as a result of disasters, political persecution, economic deprivation etc., were forced to leave their homes and find shelter in the large urban centers of the country. Given the fact that in previous decades transatlantic migration had been blocked, Piraeus continued to be flooded with people wishing to seek a better future in far-away lands.59 Its refugee settlements became progressively denser as more refugees and more migrants moved in. They were

  • 60  Leontidou, 2001, p. 140-145.

living in miserable communities […], in the polluted atmosphere of the factories and the central stations. To go to work, they would walk through stagnant water. In the most isolated neighborhoods, they resided behind hills and parks or even outside the “official” city plan.60

  • 61  Leontidou, 2001, p. 39.
  • 62  Engels, 2009.
  • 63  Massey, 1991, p. 29.
  • 64  “And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel an (...)

31Not surprisingly, the material and immaterial conditions of the refugee working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus gave rise to the consciousness of people’s “common fate”. The neighborhoods’ material conditions, defining as they did the living space of their working-class denizens, pushed toward the development of class solidarity, paving the way for the transition “from fragmentation to collective consciousness”61. The latter was not exclusively related to the workers’ accumulation in the large factories, to paraphrase Engels.62 Instead, collective consciousness was being built upon a core of space that was understood and lived as a “point of articulation in networks of social relations and interactions”.63 Any investigation of the formation of collective (class ?) consciousness can thus be perceived as a socio-spatial process based, among other things, on the common experiences of individuals and how these experiences were crystallized in social practices and cultures.64

  • 65  Hall, 1990, 1997 and 2003.

32According to Stuart Hall, the notion of culture is based on the shared experiences and practices that constitute class in a broad historical sense. Culture is born at the point of intertwining between social being and social consciousness. In this sense, Hall highlights the multidimensionality of the notion of culture, viewing it as an ensemble of contradictions and articulations of the various ways by which people “did things”.65 A typical example for the purposes of this article is the process of constructing improvised shacks and dwellings, which was a collective undertaking of the community.

  • 66  Pizanias, 1993.

33When we speak of the “know-how of survival”, we can say that we refer to a set of cultural acquisitions that have been historically constituted in knowledge and have assumed stable characteristics which are expressed directly, practically and empirically without being formulated in a structured discourse. In the case of Piraeus’ places of resettlement, the cultural heritage that constituted the know-how of survival for their inhabitants was formed via a complicated process of intermixing. The base of this process was the cultural identity developed historically by populations (refugee or not) in their many and varied places of origin (places urban, rural or suburban). To it were inevitably added the ways in which this identity was reshaped within the modern socio-spatial conditions66 imposed on them.

  • 67  Massey, 2005.
  • 68  Kyramargiou, 2019, p. 97.

34The neighborhoods in which both refugees and non-refugees found themselves in search of a future were gradually transformed into places where multiple and heterogeneous trajectories collided and intersected. These trajectories were inseparable from a wide range of cultural, ethnic, social, political, and economic aspects on the one hand related to the cultures of people’s place of origin, and on the other to the material conditions of their neighborhoods-in-the-making.67 The working-class refugee settlements with their small wooden houses were distinctive within the urban tissue. The improvised wooden shacks the refugees initially
created out of “tins and tar paper for a roof and tamped earth for a floor”68 constituted their place of living for years and were later converted into homes for internal migrants.

  • 69  Jackson, 1989, p. 89.

35In succeeding years, repeated governmental commitments concerning the resettlement of the shack dwellers fostered the conviction that the necessary requirement for a person to qualify for housing rehabilitation was ownership of a shack and not his or her refugee status per se. From the above, we can observe a process where a material condition (a shack) was transformed into a (shared) living experience that placed all residents, regardless of origin and profession, in a common position. This transforming perspective eventually imbued the very notion of the neighborhood with the meaning of collective experiences, in the process transforming cultures as maps of meaning.69

  • 70  Pizanias, 1993.

36The (material and immaterial) conditions of life in these settlements were linked not only to impoverished people’s position in production and in the urban space of Piraeus, but also to the ways this particularly fragile position was changing in response to what was happening on a wider socio-economic scale, forcing them to adapt traditional practices and/or invent new ones. In this way we may speak of a culture of survival which was first, made up of the ways in which know-how related to survival was transformed into a collective process for a group of people in each place at a given time, and second, related to the formation of shared practices and experiences through which survival was ensured.70

  • 71  Hall, 1990.

37The ensemble of a neighborhood’s experiences and survival mechanisms was connected to the diverse continuities and discontinuities of the past in the present. On the one hand, it drew its energy from the (shared) reference that answered the question of “who we are” and involved lived events of the past that through time and memory had been reconstructed into a (supposed) shared experience. This aspect was centrally linked to the trauma of displacement and the connection to the “lost place” (although the “place” was not one but many). On the other hand, it also referred to “who we became” via the continuous socio-spatial transformations that brought refugees and non-refugees into the same “umbrella” of
working-class and refugee neighborhoods.71

  • 72  Leontidou, 1999.
  • 73  Anagnostopoulou, 2006.
  • 74  Chaney, 2002.

38Thus, we can perceive a neighborhood, among other things, as a constellation of interrelations in space which fostered social life and constituted the material condition for the reproduction of social practices. Through the ensemble of social practices related to people’s geographical origin as well as their struggle for survival, a sense of common identity was forged, one that stood in opposition to the dominant classes.72 Due to the neighborhoods’ spatial and social position, Anagnostopoulou remarks that it appeared as if they constituted a particular “class”, in the sense that they activated among their inhabitants the conviction that they “belonged” to a (common) community.73 Inversely, common cultures identified and characterized space, in the sense that a boundary is often recognized as “up to” and marking a place where things are done in a defined way, while what exists beyond is recognized as “other”.74 Pismisis explains in which ways a mesh of unwritten codes gradually emerged, and how this mesh became an essential instrument for the collective survival processes of the refugee and working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus.

  • 75  Testimony of Vassilis Pismisis.

When the refugees came, [they had] different customs, different traditions, different cultures […]. So, to preserve the balance in such a place and in a time when there was lawlessness and a lot of poverty, there had to be some stable things. That is the unwritten laws, you respect me, I respect you, don’t say too many words, etc. And that’s how these people survived.75

  • 76  Leontidou, 2001, p. 185.
  • 77  Vaiou, 2007.

39At the same time, social networks of solidarity were a key component of the culture of survival in the working-class refugee neighborhoods of Piraeus. They were mainly built up through familial or interpersonal relations within a close circle, originally related to a common place of origin but transferred from “there” to “here” and subsequently progressively enriched.76 An individual’s level of attachment to the neighborhood was essentially related on the one hand to the ways in which the community, through the empirical activation of these networks, responded to a given way of life, shaping the sense that people belonged to it (to the extent that survival was transformed into a collective undertaking) and on the other hand, to everyday activities which, due to material conditions, mostly took place in the streets. Although these solidarity networks could be found in the space of the neighborhood, they also transcended its geographical boundaries and at their core involved participation in public life.77 In the following excerpt, Stelios Vamvakaris describes how they constituted a defined context for what happened in the neighborhood:

  • 78  Testimony of Stelios Vamvakaris.

Rules? Yeah, listen, things were kind of primitive, weren’t they? There were few cars, few taxis, you would go in a carriage, the carriage driver would say “what do you need?”, they were wingmen, that’s what they were. They were living with a code, how can I put it? They’d see someone coming from an island, he’d say, “Where can I get some shoes? You’re going to go to this store”, or “Where should I go to eat? You go to that restaurant”, or “Where to go for a night out?”. Things were specifically given in the neighborhood.78

  • 79  Leontidou, 1999.

40A pivotal role in the neighborhoods was that of women, who successfully developed mechanisms of mutual support through group participation in the unseen aspects of everyday life as well as in the context of unpaid work. The sociality present in the streets, in the backyards and at the doors of dwellings, was one of the most important social bonds that developed within the neighborhood. Without it survival would not have been possible in working-class and refugee settlements.79 From the daily laundry that due to space constraints would take place in the street, to the daily care of children whose mothers worked in the factories, the common spaces of the neighborhood could easily be transformed into “one big house”, as one key informant described it to me. The boundaries between private and public space, between home and neighborhood, were particularly fluid.

  • 80  Testimony of Eleni Perivola.

They might have had some fights, but they cared about each other. If they heard an ah-ha, they would run. […] In the afternoons they would all go out, take their dried nuts and have a chat.80

Conclusions

41Since its modern birth in 1830, Piraeus has been a port city and a reception area for people of multiple origins. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the emerging urban bourgeoisie and the social strata of the urban poor, in relation to the development of industry, the construction of railway lines, and the development of the harbor, shaped both the human and social geography and the socio-spatial segregation that was carried out in the city. During the Interwar period, the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees was instrumental in consolidating the working-class and refugee neighborhoods of Piraeus. The city was progressively surrounded by refugee settlements to which internal migrants were gradually added. Home to a sea of displaced persons hoping to carve out a better future, these neighborhoods were places of encounter and coexistence, where experiences were shared and new cultures emerged thanks to the myriad and unseen aspects of everyday life.

42The difficult business of accommodating such a vast number of people seeking not only to survive but to improve their lives resulted in the emergence of floating populations and “interpenetrating social groups” who shared the same neighbor­hoods and adversities. The neighborhoods in which both refugees and non-refugees strove to gain a toehold were gradually transformed into places where multiple and heterogeneous trajectories intersected, making use of a wide spectrum of cultural, ethnic, social, political, and economic elements. These elements were tied, Janus-like, to both past and present, moulded not only by the culture of people’s place of origin, but also by the material conditions which defined neighborhoods in constant evolution both as physical spaces and imagined communities. With the passage of time a network of community social practices was developed that included the participation of many people whose everyday life and process of survival were often intertwined with marginal practices.

43The configuration of collective consciousness in these Piraeus neighborhoods can be perceived as a socio-spatial process based, among other things, on the experiences of the individuals that inhabited them and how these experiences were crystallized in social practices and cultures. A culture of survival based on multiple contributions of knowledge came to be developed in all the neighbor­hoods, based on the diverse continuities and discontinuities of the past in the present and involving social solidarity networks whose codes were understood by all. These networks were mainly built up through familial or interpersonal relations that benefitted from a close circle stemming from a common place of origin. With time, the remembrance of a lost “homeland’ became intertwined with the challenge of everyday survival in a new place, resulting in the transfer of culture from “there” to “here”, followed by its progressive enrichment.

44Neighborhood, among other things, evolved into a constellation of inter­relations in space which fostered social life and constituted the material condition for the reproduction of social practices. Through the ensemble of social practices related to the geographical origin of people and the struggle for survival in the new place, a sense of common identity was forged in these Piraeus neighborhoods that stood in opposition to the dominant classes. As a necessary amalgamation of the multi-selective past and the unfavorable living conditions of impoverished populations, the neighborhood became the voice of slums and disenfranchised people, a voice that echoes loudly even nowadays.

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Notes

1  Massey, 2005; Soja, 1980; Harvey, 2004; Hall, 1990, 1997 and 2005

2  Kotea, 1995; Papastefanaki 2009; Hastaoglou - Martinidis, 2010.

3Belavilas 2007; Papastefanaki, 2009 and 2007; Leontidou, 2001; Tsokopoulos, 1999.

4  Belavilas, 2018 and 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009; Kotea, 1995.

5  Mourgou, 2022; Belavilas, 2021; Tsokopoulos, 1984; Papastefanaki, 2009; HastaoglouMartinidis, 2010 and 2017.

6Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2021.

7  Gkizeli, 1984; Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2021; Papastefanaki, 2009.

8  Kyramargiou, 2019; Mourgou 2022; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2021.

9  Wacquant, 2014; Mourgou, 2021 & 2022.

10  I am borrowing this phrase from Belavilas, 2021.

11  Leontidou 2001; Liakos 2019; Kostis, 2015.

12  Gkizeli; 1984.

13  Sarigiannis, 2008; Karydis, 2008; Charalampidis, 2011; Leontidou, 2001; Gkizeli, 1984; Belavilas, 2021.

14  Pizanias, 1993; Paloukis, 2011.

15  Karydis, 2008; Leontidou, 1999.

16  The RSC was established by the League of Nations as a legally independent organization with delegates from Great Britain, France, Italy, France, and Greece. RSC’s contribution to the development of the capital’s urban fabric has been instrumental and it has been characterized by researchers as the “urban planner” of the capital. Leontidou, 2001 and 2017.

17  Kostis, 2015; Gkizeli, 1984; Leontidou, 1999; Karydis, 2008; Sarigiannis, 2000; Karamouzi, 1999; Leontidou, 2001; Charalampidis, 2011; Paloukis, 2011; Mourgou, Panagopoulou & Smyrni, 2017.

18  Papastefanaki, 2009; Leontidou, 2001; Kayser, 1968.

19  Papastefanaki, 2007.

20  The term “Great War” (Μεγάλος Πόλεμος) is often used in literature to describe the consecutive periods of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), World War I (1914-1918) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). Liakos, 2019; Dertlilis, 2006, Kostis, 2015.

21  More specifically, it is mentioned that in 1928 there were 101,185 refugees, 68,859 locals, and 81,615 internal immigrants living in Piraeus. Kayser, 1968; Belavilas, 2018.

22  Kyramargiou 2019; Belavilas 2021.

23  Belavilas, 2021, p. 313.

24  Papastefanaki, 2009.

25  Papazoglou, 2003, p. 141.

26  Leontidou, 2001; Belavilas, 2018; Lamprou & Mourgou, 2020 and 2021.

27  Kyramargiou, 2019; Belavilas, 2018; Papastefanaki, 2009; Belavilas & Dimitropoulos, 2018

28  Galopoulou, 2013, p. 35.

29  I am referring to the “urban poor,” inspired by the book by Pizanias, 1993, mentioned in the bibliography.

30  Papastefanaki, 2009

31  Vaiou & Chatzimichalis, 1997α.

32  Kostis, 2015; Pizanias, 1993; Papastefanaki, 2007.

33  Industrial workers in Greece constituted a very small percentage (2.4 %) compared to other societies, such as the French (22 %).

34  Pizanias, 1993, p. 64.

35  Kyramargiou, 2019; Papastefanaki, 2009; Pizanias, 1993.

36  Pizanias, 1993; Kanetakis, Beneki & Sarigiannis, 2002.

37  Leontidou, 2001; Papastefanaki, 2009; Avdela & Psarra, 1985.

38  Papastefanaki, 2009; Pizanias, 1993, p. 70.

39  Papastefanaki, 2009; Avdela & Psarra, 1985; Pizanias, 1993.

40  Leontidou, 2001, p. 189.

41  Pizanias, 1993.

42  Pizanias, 1993, p. 71.

43  Wacquant, 1993.

44  Wacquant, 2014.

45  Wacquant, 2014 about “race making.”

46  Ahmed, 2000.

47  Zaimakis, 1999, p. 21.

48  Leontidou, 2001.

49  Mourgou, 2021.

50  Damianakos, 2001, p. 86.

51  Pizanias, 1993.

52  Leontidou, 2001.

53  Tsokopoulos, 1984.

54  Pizanias, 1993, p. 150.

55  Marx & Engels, 2015.

56  Pizanias, 1993.

57  Leontidou, 1999.

58  Leontidou, 2001, p. 201.

59  Belavilas, 2021; Pizanias, 1993.

60  Leontidou, 2001, p. 140-145.

61  Leontidou, 2001, p. 39.

62  Engels, 2009.

63  Massey, 1991, p. 29.

64  “And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs” and “Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms : embodied in traditions, value systems, ideas, and institutional forms,” Thompson, 1963, p. 9 and 39.

65  Hall, 1990, 1997 and 2003.

66  Pizanias, 1993.

67  Massey, 2005.

68  Kyramargiou, 2019, p. 97.

69  Jackson, 1989, p. 89.

70  Pizanias, 1993.

71  Hall, 1990.

72  Leontidou, 1999.

73  Anagnostopoulou, 2006.

74  Chaney, 2002.

75  Testimony of Vassilis Pismisis.

76  Leontidou, 2001, p. 185.

77  Vaiou, 2007.

78  Testimony of Stelios Vamvakaris.

79  Leontidou, 1999.

80  Testimony of Eleni Perivola.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Map 1 Working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus at the early 20th century.
Crédits Source: Mourgou, 2022, p. 137, Background map source Map of Piraeus Eleftheroudakis - Bart
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceb/docannexe/image/23306/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 268k
Titre Map 2 The Refugee settlements and their relationship with the center of the capital and the port. (12 main settlements and 34 smaller; in grey area built before 1922)
Crédits Source Sarigiannis, 2000, p. 105.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceb/docannexe/image/23306/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 83k
Titre Map 3 Refugee settlements of Piraeus, around 1930
Crédits Source Dimitropoulos & Belavilas, 2018 p. 189.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceb/docannexe/image/23306/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 269k
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Pour citer cet article

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Dr. Alexandra Mourgou, « Cultural interaction and identity-making between port and industries: Socio-spatial Readings of Piraeus’ Neighborhoods during the Interwar Period »Cahiers balkaniques, 51 | 2025, 69-98.

Référence électronique

Dr. Alexandra Mourgou, « Cultural interaction and identity-making between port and industries: Socio-spatial Readings of Piraeus’ Neighborhoods during the Interwar Period »Cahiers balkaniques [En ligne], 51 | 2025, mis en ligne le 11 avril 2025, consulté le 10 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ceb/23306 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13xwb

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Auteur

Dr. Alexandra Mourgou

Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow for research on Music, American School of Classical Studies At Athens, University of Thessaly

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