Anastasia Christou

Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism: Return Mobilities to and from the Ancestral Homeland

Abstract This paper introduces the special issue on return mobilities. Return movements have been relatively ignored in migration and mobilities research, despite their scale, frequency and variety across time and space. This special issue is part of an overdue but now growing interest in return visits, return migration and transnational circulation which lays special emphasis on ‘ancestral returns’ of the second generation and beyond. The main purpose of this paper is to develop an explanatory framework for locating return mobilities within three conceptual domains: the mobilities paradigm, the transnational approach and diaspora studies. A typology of return mobilities is then developed, onto which the following papers in this issue are mapped.

American dreams an European nightmares: experiences and polemics of second-generation Greek-American returning migrants

The article addresses how spaces of inclusion and exclusion encountered during the relocation and adjustment processes of second-generation Greek-Americans to the ancestral homeland produce multiple constructions of self and nation as well as fragmented discourses of ‘Greekness’, ‘Americanness’ and ‘Europeanness’ in forging a narrative of belonging. Narratives of (be)longing express competing discourses of cultural disruptions and ruptures of identity in the interactive space of ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries. Furthermore, the transformation of Greece from sending to receiving country as well as the politics of European integration and identification pose additional challenges to the current metamorphosis of Greek society. Interestingly, the ambivalent character of Greek national identity provides an additional layer of subjectivity through which second-generation Greek-Americans attempt to redefine their sense of self and belongingness to the ancestral homeland.

Deciphering diaspora – translating transnationalism: Family dynamics, identity constructions and the legacy of ‘home’ in second-generation Greek-American return migration

Abstract The article explores through the phenomenon of ‘return migration’ in Greece the settlement and identification processes of a second-generation Greek-American ‘returning migrant’, as a heuristic narrative to examine the meanings attached to the experience of return migration as they relate to and impact on the returnees sense of self (ethnic) and sense of place (national). The concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are central in the return migratory project which entails (re)location and (dis)placement as well as adjustment and alienation. Furthermore, the article considers the multiple interactions (social, cultural, political) between the place of origin and the place of destination, the role that family plays in migrant lifeworlds as well as the gendered and ethnic expressions of migrant identification.

‘Racism’, intersectionality and migration studies: framing some theoretical reflections

The concept of ‘racism’ has faced many difficulties in migration studies. Depending on definitions, islamophobia is a form either of religious discrimination or of racism. The same is true in contemporary debates in Europe about xenophobia against immigrants from the Global South. This article provides an alternative way of thinking about racism and its relationship with questions of intersectionality and discusses the relationship of these issues to migration theory. In the first part, we discuss intersectionality in relation to Fanon’s definition of racism. Then, we establish a dialogue between the work of de Sousa Santos and Fanon that could enrich our understanding of intersectionality in the framework of modernity and the capitalist/imperial/patriarchal/racial colonial world-system. Finally, we analyse this discussion’s implications for migration theory, highlighting how migration studies tend to reproduce a northern-centric social science view of the world that comes from the experience of others in the zone of being.

‘Diverse Mobilities’: Second-Generation Greek-Germans Engage with the Homeland as Children and as Adults

Abstract This paper is about the children of Greek labour migrants in Germany. We focus on two life-stages of ‘return’ for this second generation: as young children brought to Greece on holidays or sent back for longer periods, and as young adults exercising an independent ‘return’ migration. We draw both on literature and on our own field interviews with 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans. We find the practise of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Adult relocation to the parental homeland takes place for five reasons: (i) a ‘search for self’; (ii) attraction of the Greek way of life; (iii) the actualisation of the ‘family narrative of return’ by the second, rather than the first, generation; (iv) life-stage events such as going to university or marrying a Greek; (v) escape from a traumatic event or oppressive family situation. Yet the return often brings difficulties, disillusionment, identity reappraisal, and a re-evaluation of the German context.

Diasporic youth identities of uncertainty and hope: second-generation Albanian experiences of transnational mobility in an era of economic crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT This paper explores various dimensions of ‘gender’ and ‘mobility’ among immigrant youth from a transnational perspective in an era of economic crisis. The extent and parameters of continuity, contestation and change in migrant youth identities are analysed and we suggest that neither gender nor identity are stable categories but are embedded in sociocultural particularities both in the country of residence (Greece) but also in the country of origin (Albania). Through in-depth interviews with 52 participants, all second-generation Albanian immigrants in Greece born to two Albanian parents, the paper addresses youth identification in relation to gendered representations of belonging. The narrative accounts that we have selected and analysed reflect the emotional challenges, constraints and creativity of Albanian youth.

Ageing masculinities and the nation: disrupting boundaries of sexualities, mobilities and identities

This article draws from a large-scale comparative project to focus on ‘ageing masculinities’ of second-generation Greek-American returnee migrants. In deconstructing multiple hegemonies (ethnicity, nation, patriarchy), the article explores how narratives of longing, belonging, family and kinship, as both experiential and storied accounts of self-imaging, become entangled through migration with social and personal his/stories, childhood upbringings and life-course stages. The analysis aims to explore the tensions and dynamics between structural, individual and cultural factors with respect to masculinities, and to elaborate on the contextualisation of masculinities in specific relational settings in later life. It is suggested that theoretical insights gained from a hermeneutical phenomenological analysis that is attentive to both the emotional/affective and gendered meanings of being and self-identity are important in empirically grounded studies of gender and migration. Such an analytical lens allows issues of masculinity and hegemony to be addressed and contributes to understanding transnational accounts of gendered power relations.

Timespace and International Migration

Furthering understanding of the temporalities and spatialities of how people move across international boundaries, this book analyses how timespace intersects with migrant journeys as an integral aspect of the rhythms of daily lives. Individual chapters engage with these concepts by analysing a broad spectrum of migrations and mobilities, from youth mobility, to refugee migration, to gentrification, to food and to the political geography of the border.

The “Wretched of Europe” Greece and the Cultural Politics of Inequality

This article focuses on narratives of the crisis in contemporary Greece and aims to understand the current context of austerity as a trope, symbolic signifier, and construct of inequality beyond austerity and in its manifestation as new social morphology in Europe. While the future recovery of Greece will require an extensive understanding of both economic and historical narratives which have sustained and fueled the Modern Greek state, a deeper analysis of structural and societal cultural codes mirrored in the public sphere is paramount in comprehending the cultural politics of inequalities in academic and public discourse. In a changing political and social environment, youth in Greece face the consequences of the debt crisis and, at the same time, reexamine their identity, values, and aspirations. Drawing from narrative, visual, and ethnographic data, this article explores stories of the crisis in grounding an account of inequality as narrated by those experiencing dispossession and austerity.

Links to the diasporic homeland: second-generation and ancestral ‘return’ mobilities

Return movements have been relatively ignored in migration and mobilities research, despite their scale, frequency and variety across time and space. This special issue is part of an overdue but now growing interest in return visits, return migration and transnational circulation which lays special emphasis on ‘ancestral returns’ of the second generation and beyond