a reminder of the country’s key emblem of the country’s time, the Athens airport is (Cheliotis, 2017), bringing (Massey, 2005). era of economic growth and wealth in the early 2000s, a achieved modernization (Gefou-Madianou, 2018). At the same a product of the exploitation of illegalized migrant labor to the fore the complex power-geometry of spatial politics The space of the airport is thus not only constructed in this multiple simultaneity of social relations but also beyond the present and the local, through a “simultaneity of stories-so-far” (Massey, 2005: 24). It is informed by the past era of economic growth in Greece and the ongoing austerity crisis. The space of the airport is made (quite literally) through the exploited labor of illegalized migrants who, in this article, are voluntarily returned during the austerity crisis but also through countless stories that comprise the Athens International airport as a culturally and historically specific space. Chance encounters: throwntogetherness at the airport. Photo Katerina Rozakou, August 2021 3. Methodology 5 Between 2014-2016 I conducted research in registration, pre-removal and open reception centers for migrants, the Aliens’ Directorate of Attica and police stations,