During the recent refugee crisis, numerous solidarity initiatives emerged in Greece and especially in Mytilene, Athens and
Thessaloniki. Mytilene is the capital of Lesvos Island and the main entry point in the East Aegean Sea, Athens is the main
refugee transit city and Thessaloniki is the biggest city close to the northern borders. After the EU–Turkey Common Statement,
the Balkan countries sealed their borders and thousands of refugees found themselves stranded in Greece. The State accommodation
policy provides the majority of the refugee population with residency in inappropriate camps which are mainly located in isolated
old military bases and abandoned factories. The article contrasts the State-run services to the solidarity acts of “care-tizenship”
and commoning practices such as self-organised refugee housing projects, which claim the right to the city and to spatial
justice. Specifically, the article is inspired by the Lefebvrian “right to the city,” which embraces the right to housing,
education, work, health and challenges the concept of citizen. Echoing Lefebvrian analysis, citizenship is not demarcated
by membership in a nation-state, rather, it concerns all the residents of the city. The article discusses the academic literature
on critical citizenship studies and especially the so-called “care-tizenship,” meaning the grassroots commoning practices
that are based on caring relationships and mutual help for social rights. Following participatory ethnographic research, the
main findings highlight that the acts of care-tizenship have opened up new possibilities to challenge State migration policies
while reinventing a culture of togetherness and negotiating locals’ and refugees’ multiple class, gender, and religious identities.
