Conferences, workshops, and seminars

Homeland-Diaspora relations in flux

The Greek Diaspora Project at SEESOX is organizing a conference "Homeland-Diaspora Relations in Flux: Greece and Greeks abroad at times of Crisis" on June 22-23, 2018 at St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

Diaspora and development: The case of Greece

The workshop gathered a number of highly distinguished scholars, mostly non-Greek from the field of diaspora studies, and from an interdisciplinary perspective, including history, politics, international relations, law, economics, anthropology and sociology, to discuss conceptual, methodological and comparative perspectives, within which the study of the Greek diaspora and its relationship with the Greek crisis can be contextualised.

Programme Report

Diaspora entrepreneurs and contested states

This presentation introduces findings from the European Research Council Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” directed by Dr. Maria Koinova at Warwick University (2012-2017). Under what conditions and by way of which causal mechanisms do different diaspora entrepreneurs mobilize in contentious and non-contentious ways, when connected to contested states?

(Ir)regular states of migration: Contested sovereignties on Europe's margins

How do state agents who guard the Greek and the European border experience the collapse of the border? This seminar by Katerina Rozakou (university of Amsterdam) is concerned with how the lived experiences of people governing irregular migration help us understand broader processes regarding sovereign power and the state.

Contesting Greekness: Soviet Greek migrants and the Pontic identity

In this presentation Manolis Pratsinakis (University of Oxford) explores the reasons why and the processes through which the Greeks from the former Soviet Union altered their self-identification after immigration to their perceived national home. Responding to their labelling by the native-born Greeks, most Soviet Greeks choose to introduce themselves as Pontians despite the fact that the area of Pontos was not a marker of identification for them in the Soviet Union.

Social constraints and the decision to leave: Emigration from Greece at times of crisis

In this presentation Manolis Pratsinakis (University of Macedonia) discusses how the crisis in Greece has altered everyday discourse on emigration and loosened up social constraints towards long distance mobility. Exploring migrants aspirations, the social networks abroad and the reactions of friends and kin back home on their decision to leave, it highlights the paramount significance of “the social” in migration decision-making.

Greek-American radicals: The Untold Story (2013)

A film documentary focusing on the history of the ethnic Left in the United States from the early 20th century until the 1950s.