Piraeus' becoming-hub as a process of logistical production

: spaces, subjectivities, environments

Abstract

Following its partial concession and whole privatisation, the port of Piraeus in Greece has emerged as a logistics hub and a critical node within the Belt & Road Initiative. This thesis examines the transformation of the port into a global space as a process of logistical production, tracing how spatial arrangements, labouring subjectivities, and port-city socio-ecologies are reconfigured through this shift. Moving beyond narrowly economic or institutional analyses, it explores logistics as a techno-political apparatus that produces space, organises life, and shapes environments. Through an ethnographic engagement with the port’s container terminal and its surrounding urban fabric, the thesis approaches Piraeus as a site where global logistical operations intersect with local interests, situated struggles, and material infrastructures.

Building and expanding on insights from the “critical logistics” literature, the study unfolds along three interwoven trajectories. It begins with an investigation of logistical spaces, focusing on the introduction of digital logistical media and advancing the concept of the information space to probe the ways that information reproblematises the production and governance of global spaces. It then turns to subjectivities, examining how logistics reshapes labour through technological mediation and managerial practices, while exploring the processes of antagonistic subjectivation in the port. Finally, it investigates logistical environments as terrains of circulation and infrastructural failure, tracing the entanglement of fossil logistics and urban life and reflecting on how pollution is registered, monitored, and experienced in and around the port.

Combining contributions from critical and political geography, infrastructure studies, political ecology, and media/software studies, the thesis offers a situated study of logistics not as a background process but as a productive force in contemporary global and planetary transformations. It contributes to ongoing debates on logistics, infrastructure, power, and the politics of circulation by proposing new concepts and tools drawn from the specificity of the Piraeus context.

Date of Award	2 Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Antonis Vradis (Supervisor) & Michael Simpson (Supervisor)