South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

The period following the 1990s has been characterized for calling into question previous understandings of social, economic and political identity in Europe. Greek accounts of national identity seem to be informed by a number of recent forces, of which migration from the Balkans is one. The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which elements of Greek identity have taken on board the presence of ‘new’ migrant populations from the Balkans in Central Northern Greece. It does so through the consideration of national identity as a social construct negotiated, produced and reproduced in interaction, as a form of life by appealing to spatiotemporally available discourses. These discourses, though, comprise polarizations, stereotypes, binaries and ideological dilemmas and become analytically relevant in exploring the uses put to them, the strategies of these uses, the dynamic interaction between strategies and their function(s) and the positioning process and content of Greek participants, (other) Greeks and migrants. The overall approach of participants in this study is one of justification and reasoning. In particular, there seems to be a recurrent interplay between factual reasoning and discrimination and a readiness to justify behaviour in those terms.