Energy Injustice in Refugee Camps in Thessaloniki

In recent years, there has been a growing literature on energy poverty, vulnerability, and deprivation of households both at the European and Greek levels. These studies highlight energy as a critical issue for households and examine energy services, prices, technologies, and challenges of energy transition as well as possible recommendations and measures for fulfillment of households’ energy needs. However, the issue of energy in relation to the housing of refugees appears to have been neglected and ignored until now. Our research aims to fill this gap by focusing empirically on state-run refugee camps in the wider area around Thessaloniki in North Greece examining the existing energy conditions, the infrastructures of energy, the policies, programs and approaches of state authorities and the perceptions, feelings, and daily practices of the residing refugees. Camp residents - refugees are forced to live in a spatial and built environment that is characterized by temporality, low-quality housing units – (containers) in isolated locations far from urban environments. Our research depicts the camps as places of energy injustice, poverty, and vulnerability. In particular, our research emphasizes that the poor energy conditions, the mismanagement of energy, and the poor maintenance of outdated infrastructures, combined with imposed controls of energy use in the camps constitute an additional means of discipline, punishment and exhaustion of the refugees during their long journey to the desired destinations. At the same time, the residents of the camps may exercise silent, everyday, or hidden forms of resistance as well as forms of energy solidarity and mutual support. Thus, this presentation, which is based on ethnographic research conducted from July 2024 to January 2025, aims to show how energy as a social and power relation oscillates between practices of silent resistance and imposed injustice.