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

Abstract: this paper explores the dialectic interrelations between space, place, culture(s), and identities(s) of the working-class refugee neighborhoods of Piraeus during the Interwar Period. Piraeus was the Greek city that had the highest population increase during the years 1920-1928, its population increasing by 88 % according to the censuses. In 1928, displaced populations from Asia Minor, Pontus, Istanbul, and Thrace and numbering 101,185 persons settled in the city. In this context, notions of space, place, culture, and identity are examined through the socio-spatial processes that occurred. To this end a hybrid methodological approach that draws from critical and cultural geography, urban studies, anthropology, and oral history is employed.