Ph.D.

Symposium

Ph.D. Symposium
in the context of the winter school

in the context of the winter school

Migration in the Margins of Europe

Organized by the Netherlands Institute of Athens and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam

Thursday, 9 January 2014

09:30-17:00
Netherlands Institute at Athens
Makri 11, Athens Metro Akropolis

Symposium Organizing Committee

Dr. Tryfon Babilis St. Antonys, University of Oxford Dr. Barak Kalir University of Amsterdam Dr. Flip Lindo University of Amsterdam Dr. Manolis Pratsinakis University of Amsterdam

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Attendance is free but places are limited, so registration is required.
To register, please email Emmy Makri (nia@nia.gr). For further information or any queries email Ioanna Tsoni (ioanna.tsoni@mah.se).

Theme
Greece became a major destination for immigration during the 1990s, when the immigrant population more than quadrupled in size becoming a crucial factor of societal change. The steep increase in immigration during that decade was closely connected to the disintegration of the former Eastern bloc and was caused by undocumented immigration from the Balkans and immigration of people of Greek descent. However, more than 20 years later Greece is entering a new phase in its migration history. Facing a severe economic and political crisis characterized by uncertainty and austerity measures resulting in rising unemployment and steep decreases in salaries and welfare allowances, young and highly skilled Greeks are emigrating. At the same time immigration from the Balkans is in steady decline, or it even appears to be taking a reverse course with several Balkan immigrants returning home, while asylum seekers and undocumented migration from Asia and Middle East and Africa is reaching significant proportions as Greece has emerged as a major entry point for undocumented migration to European Union. The new immigrants are clustering in the centre of Athens living in poor conditions in deprived areas, which become centre-stage of negative discourses about illegal migration (lathrometanstefsi), and are represented as nogo areas and the dump (skoupidtopos) of Athens and Greece in general. Research on the impact of those developments on the trajectories of settled immigrant communities as well as the experiences of new immigrants arriving to Greece at a period characterized by shrinking job opportunities and rampant xenophobia is limited. This symposium is aiming to partly cover this research gap by presenting new evidence from ethnographic research on the lives of immigrants in crisis-ridden Greece.
9:15 9:45 9:45 -10:00 10:00-11:15 Registration Symposium Opening

Program

1st session: TRANSGRESSING BORDERS MAKING SENSE OF HOME Chair: Dr. Manolis Pratsinakis Discussant: Dr. Barak Kalir Ioanna Tsoni: African border-crossings in a city of Others: Constellations of irregular im/mobility and in/equality in the everyday urban environment of Athens Elina Kapetanaki: In the name of the crisis: what home means. Experiences and perceptions of home while moving back-and forth from Greece to Albania

11:30-12:45

2 session: PRESENTING AND NEGOTIATING IMMIGRANT IDENTITIES Chair: Dr. Katerina Rozakou Discussant: Dr. Flip Lindo Martha Bouziouri: Immigrants at the epicenter of artistic creativity: a reflective insight into the Athenian stage perceived as a locus for fluid transformations Dora Papadopoulou: Homogamy through religious conversion in mixed ChristianMuslim couples in Greece

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14:00-15:15 3 session: EVERYDAY COEXISTENCE AND TRAJECTORIES OF THE SECOND GENERATION Chair: Dr. Tryfon Bampilis Discussant: Dr. Panos Hatziprokopiou Spyros Papadadonakis: Selling Fruit in-between Strangers: The Sociocultural Experience of Otherness in Athenian Street Markets. Aggelos Tramountanis: The impact of education on employment prospects: A case study on second-generation immigrants in Greece 15:30-17:00 Concluding session

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Abstracts and biographical notes ! !

Ioanna Tsoni (ioanna.tsoni@mah.se) is a Ph.D. Student at Malmo University with a background
in urban geography. Her current research ethnographically examines the phenomenon of irregular migration from West Africa towards Europe, through Greece, and the materialities and performativities of multiscalar borders between a variety of actors.

Elina Kapetanaki (elekapeta@gmail.com) is a school teacher and Ph.D. Candidate at the

department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University. She holds an MA in Political Science and History and her research interests include mobility, borders, crisis and post-transnationalism. She has conducted fieldwork in Albania (Tirana and Kuk!s) and Greece (Thessaloniki), about crisis in Greece and the intention of Albanian citizens for mobility from Greece to Albania (2009-2013). She has also conducted extensive field research in deportation prisons/camps (2005-2006).

African border-crossings in a city of Others: Constellations of irregular im/mobility and in/equality in the everyday urban environment of Athens
Connecting urban theory, mobilities and border studies, this paper critically explores the bordercrossing experience of sub Saharan African migrants in Athens from a perspective of irregularity as a condition experienced by urban dwellers beyond the migrant/non migrant dichotomy in times of financial crisis. The way in which irregular migrants bodily engage with places and people through their everyday visibility and mobility in, out of, and across the city is viewed through a critical phenomenological and micro-sociological perspective centering on the migrants irregularity and border-crossing as a lived experience, while the saliency and effect of such practices on macro-societal issues is hypothesized. Migrants inevitable daily engagement with the sociospatial environment of Athens has subversive effects on current discourses and policies concerning migration, urban public space, citizenship and identity at a series of sociopolitical scales. The ways in which migrant im/mobility and in/visibility intersects with emerging, crisis-induced patterns of social in/equality in Greece makes them strategic actors that ultimately -and often inadvertedlyconstruct new understandings of self and other, indicate emergent political and social configurations and reassert daily their right to the city in the cities of Others.

In the name of the crisis: What home means. Experiences and perceptions of home while moving back -and forth- from Greece to Albania
For more than a decade since the fall of socialism, several Albanian citizens emigrated to Greece as a way to overcome the crisis that swept their country. Nowadays, mobility between the two countries often seems to be reverse or even regressive compared to the recent past. Economic crisis in Greece leads many Albanian emigrants to plan or imagine their return "home", that is, to move back to Albania. However, for the people who are on the move home seems to be a process that is constantly under construction. In this presentation, I will describe these peoples different concepts of home and thus their different and sometimes contradictory imaginings of their identities. Home is sometimes found in Greece, others in Albania, but it is mostly found through the borders of the two states, in an imaginary space between these two countries. This in-between space is an extension of the self and of the imaginary geography that the acting subject produces about what home could be. The aim of this analysis is to show that home is a mobile place in a constant transformation, part of ones identities that are equally dynamic. Further than that, this presentation aims to describe how this mobile place is produced in a period of debt crisis, as part of a space that exceeds geographical borders and is primarily generated by the mind.

Martha Bouziouri (martha@plays2place.gr) Martha Bouziouri is a multidisciplinary arts and

Dora Papadopoulou (d.papadopoulou@mdx.ac.uk) has diverse research interests in the fields

humanities practitioner, dividing her work into 3 overlapping fields: artistic direction & coordination of cross-cultural initiatives, anthropological research and acting for theatre & films. She is currently finalizing her PhD thesis in Social Anthropology at Panteion University of Social & Political Sciences while developing a research on the "Networks and Practices of Solidarity in Athens During Recession" for the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation.

of global religions and plural societies and the intersection between intercultural relationships, religions and migration. Her doctoral research in the School of Law, Middlesex University London, (cofinanced by the European Social Fund (ESF) and Greek national funds of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), 2007 2013) investigates how religious belief systems, cultural values and societal attitudes are negotiated within mixed Christian - Muslim intimate relationships in Greek society.

Immigrants at the epicenter of artistic creativity: A reflective insight into the Athenian stage perceived as a locus for fluid transformations
This paper investigates identity constructions and reconstructions within a specific - yet fluid - intercultural space of artistic expression: the theatrical stage. Based on an extended field research conducted from an auto-ethnographic, experimental perspective (as I am an actress myself), and additionally supported by archive material and documentation, I seek to identify the framework within which the artwork of immigrant theatre artists is contextualized and finally conceptualized. My primary aim is to depict the notion of diversity (being the other) as it takes shape on the theatrical stage over the last years, where the focus has been gradually transformed. What we witness is a shifting attitude of the modern Greek-based dramaturgy and consequently its performativity, as they gradually move their centre of attention from the Immigrant being the object of artistic creativity (the dramatic persona of the play) to the Immigrant being the subject of it (the creative professional actively involved in the artistic process either as performer [actor], director or playwright). At the same time, the study promotes the perception of theatre as a fertile ground for the production of anthropological knowledge and the consequent adaptation of the ethnographic methodological tools to the dramatic techniques. It further attempts to figure out whether there are evidences of an emerging hybrid theatrical genre in the tradition of the Third Space (Bhabha, 1994) challenging the dominant ideological sensibilities and representational modalities that delimit artistic creation under the label of a stereotyped migrant identity.

Homogamy through religious conversion in mixed Christian-Muslim couples in Greece

The presentation draws on my doctoral research on religious practices in mixed Muslim Christian intimate relationships in Greece. Data derived from in-depth interviews yields insight into the complicated dynamics between religions within intimate relationships under the influence of culturally embedded understandings of religion and gender roles. Intermarriage is sociologically relevant in its potential of mediation and re-negotiation of the social and cultural boundaries between immigrant groups and the native population. Many studies have established that intermarriage bears a strong relationship to the partners religious beliefs, practices and conversion. The research draws on interviews with Christian and Muslim participants of diverse socio-economic characteristics and national background. Muslim participants are discerned in three categories: Arab and East Asian Muslim - born immigrants of various nationalities, native Greek Muslims who are identified as members of the indigenous Muslim minority of Western Thrace and Greek Christian-born citizens who have converted to Islam. During the presentation, I am mostly going to focus on relationships between Greek Christian-born and Muslim immigrants of diverse national background that have become homogamous through religious conversion of the Greek partners from Christianity to Islam. I examine the effect of affectionate bonds on the decision to convert and other conversion motives revealed through the conversion narrative. Im also concerned with how the Muslim partner experiences the conversion process and the post-conversion impact on the intimate relationship. My research findings challenge the widespread perception that affectionate conversion is a typical procedure that has little to do with spiritual or theological quest.

Spyros Max Papadadonakis (s.m.papadantonakis@students.uu.nl) studied Interdisciplinary

Social Sciences at the University of Utrecht and completed a BA thesis on ethnic identity constructions by Greek immigrants in the Netherlands. His is currently conducting ethnographic research on the sociocultural experience of otherness in street markets as part of his MA studies in Cultural Anthropology: Sociocultural Transformations, at the same University.

Angelos Tramountanis (angelo.trm@gmail.com) is a researcher at the National Centre for

Social Research (EKKE). He holds an MA in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, and is a Ph.D. Candidate at Panteion University. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Diaspora (EMMEDIA) and has been recently appointed as Coordinator of the Observatory on Combating Discrimination. His main academic interests concern the study of Islam and the integration of immigrants.

Selling Fruit in-between Strangers: The Sociocultural Experience of Otherness in Athenian Street Markets.
Through an ethnographic study of four street markets in the 6th district of Athens lasting from July 2013 till January 2014 the cross cultural interdependencies between vendors, customers, assistants, middlemen, peddlers, itinerants and state workers are being researched. By living, working and participating in market life I have tried to comprehend the local point of view and document stories, opinions and claims of various actors assessing how coexistence and conflict unravel in everyday market life. My focus is on interpersonal contact and the general cultural aspects of market life in relation to the social developments that have been taking place in this specific district. The relationship between people from various cultural backgrounds who work and shop in street markets although initially appearing in contrasting ways, they can be characterised and described by segmentary tendencies. Segmentary tendencies, or segmentary dispositions, in people lay hidden behind stereotyping, cultural essentialism, violent forms of othering, cultural categorisations, xenophobia, racist discourse and discrimination. In my presentation, I am inquiring whether the prevailing ideology in these urban areas makes the presence of segmentary relations between selves and others explicit or attempts to suppress them. In this way my focus on the sociocultural experience of otherness tries to understand coexistence and conflict in Greek urban neighbourhoods in terms of a deeper or more general structure especially under rapid economic and political transformations.

The impact of education on employment prospects: A case study on secondgeneration immigrants in Greece
Education and employment constitute two of the key factors that both affect and define the integration of immigrants in a host society. Within this context, we will discuss research findings from a nationwide fieldwork, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) and other partners, regarding the linkage between educational qualifications and labor market integration of second generation immigrants in Greece. The performed research analysis highlights the differences between groups based on gender, ethnicity and others variables, while an econometric model of multivariate analysis is applied in order to further elaborate on the relation of education and employment. The presentation will conclude with a number of policy recommendations.