ABSTRACT
Dominant narratives tend to conceive refugees either as victims or as impostors. Drawing from ethnographic research in Patras, the chapter explores the counter-narratives of settlement and mobility that refugees create and enact for their everyday survival and escape. It will do so by investigating (1) the general process of building of the commons that allows refugees to escape the dominant attempts of containing them in reception and detention centers, and (2) the specific process of production of knowledge that refugees contrive to evade or challenge the European border regime. Far from reproducing the dominant representation of victimization and criminalization, these counter-narratives continuously intertwine with and challenge the dominant ones, allowing refugees to enact their—real or imagined—freedom of settlement and movement.
