Presentation of the Work of EKKE Team Member Timokleia Psallidaki
Timokleia Psallidaki is a member of the GAPs research team in Greece at the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE)
by: Timokleia Psallidaki | National Centre for Social Research, EKKE
Timokleia Psallidaki is a member of the GAPs research team in Greece at the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE). She is a PhD candidate in Migration Studies and Human Geography at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Her research interests include migration, border transformations, practices of migrants’ settlement in the city, socio-spatial inequalities, European migration policies, mobility, and precarity.
Timokleia Psallidaki
During my postgraduate studies in Urban and Regional Planning at NTUA, I engaged with critical geography perspectives that conceptualize space as a relational entity—one shaped by interconnections, multiplicity, and ongoing interactions between global and local dynamics. Perceiving space as constantly under construction, I focused on how it produces, but is also produced by identities, socio-spatial practices, power relations and contestations. Drawing from critical geography and its intersections with postcolonial studies and feminist critique, my research focused from the beginning on the geographies of migration and the lived experiences of migrants in the urban space. Through my work, I still aim to foreground the socio-spatial practices and narratives that are often marginalized in dominant discourses on cities and migration, despite the crucial role of migrant populations in shaping urban transformations.
My experience in the humanitarian sector at Greece’s southeastern borders during the so-called "refugee crisis" heightened my awareness of the spatial dimensions of migration governance and motivated me to further investigate these processes at broader scales. This led me to pursue my PhD research, titled "Routes to the 'Border' and the 'Impossible' Geographies of Migration", which focuses on the transformations in migration governance following the implementation of the EU-Turkey Statement.
My research explores how migration policies produce and reconfigure boundaries at multiple spatial scales—from the macro-geography of the external borders of Greece, to the micro-geography of the city, and even the bodies of migrants themselves. In my research borders are examined as fluid mechanisms that regulate inclusion and exclusion, mobility and immobility, and emplacement and displacement. By conceptualizing borders and boundaries as constantly shifting and contested, I seek to understand how they proliferate across various dimensions of everyday life, influence identity constructions, shape representations of "otherness", but also how they are challenged by socio-spatial practices.
For nearly a decade, I have worked in humanitarian organizations supporting asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees at different stages of their migration routes: from reception at Greece’s borders to accommodation and integration programs in Athens. In recent years, I have also worked as a researcher on migration-related projects and contributed to undergraduate courses at the School of Architecture in Athens as a Teaching Assistant and guest lecturer.
As a member of the GAPs project, I contribute to field research in Greece and the analysis of research findings, particularly concerning return migration policies and their effects on mobility trajectories. My engagement in GAPs provides an opportunity to deepen my understanding of return regimes and the ways in which forced, voluntary, and negotiated returns intersect with broader processes of migration governance. By situating return migration within the wider framework of (im)mobility and socio-spatial inequalities, I seek to critically examine the lived realities of returnees and the structures that shape their reintegration experiences. My work within GAPs allows me to explore return not as a linear process but as one embedded in shifting geopolitical landscapes, policy frameworks, and individual migration aspirations.
Contact:
Timokleia Psallidaki | Research Associate and Co-Principal Investigator, National Centre for Social Research, EKKE, | timokleia@gmail.com