Globalization, Transnationalism & Diaspora

Βεντούρα, Λίνα και Λάμπρος Μπαλτσιώτης, Επιμ. [Ventoura, Lina and Lambros Baltsiotis, eds.] Το Έθνος Πέραν των Συνόρων: «Ομογενειακές» Πολιτικές του Εληνικού Κράτους. [The Nation Beyond Borders]. Αθήνα: Βιβλιόραμα, 2013. [Athens: Vivliorama, 2013].

Βεντούρα, Λίνα & Λάμπρος Μπαλτσιώτης. «Εισαγωγή – Κρατικές πολιτικές για ομοεθνείς μειονότητες και πληθυσμούς της διασποράς: Η σύγκλιση των προσεγγίσεων», στο Λίνα Βεντούρα & Λάμπρος Μπαλτσιώτης (επιμ.), Το Έθνος Πέραν των Συνόρων: «Όμογενειακές» Πολιτικές του Ελληνικού Κράτους. Βιβλιόραμα, (2013): 9-30.

Βόγλη, Ελπίδα [Vogli Elpida]. «Το ‘Ετος Αποδήμου Ελληνισμού’ (1951): Η ελληνική ομογενειακή πολιτική στις απαρχές του Ψυχρού Πολέμου», στο Λίνα Βεντούρα & Λάμπρος Μπαλτσιώτης (επιμ.), Το Έθνος Πέραν των Συνόρων: «Όμογενειακές» Πολιτικές του Ελληνικού Κράτους. Βιβλιόραμα, (2013): 345-372.

Βόγλη, Ελπίδα [Vogli Elpida]. «Η ελληνική πολιτική απέναντι στους απόδημους Έλληνες κατά το πρώτο μισό του 20ού αιώνα». Greek Research in Australia: Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial International Conference of Greek Studies, Flinders University June 2009. Ed. M. Rossetto, M. Tsianikas, G. Couvalis, and M. Palaktsoglou. Adelaide, South Australia: Flinders University Department of Languages-Modern Greek, 2011. 661-671.    Το άρθρο είναι διαθέσιμο στο διαδίκτυο

Βόγλη, Ελπίδα [Vogli Elpida]. «Το έθνος και η ελληνική διασπορά στον πολιτικό λόγο του Κωνσταντίνου Τσάτσου», στο Κωνσταντίνος Τσάτσος, φιλόσοφος, συγγραφέας, πολιτικός (Πρακτικά Διεθνούς Επιστημονικού Συνεδρίου, Αθήνα, 6-8. Νοεμβρίου 2009), Γρανάδα-Αθήνα: Κέντρο Βυζαντινών, Νεοελληνικών και Κυπριακών Σπουδών, Εταιρεία Φίλων Κ. και Ι. Τσάτσου (2010): 667-682.

Bucuvalas, Tina.“The Greek Communities of the Bahamas and Tarpon Springs: An Intertwined History.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 38.1-2 (2012): 29-70.

Christou, Anastasia. “American Dreams and European Nightmares: Experiences and Polemics of Second-Generation Greek-American Returning Migrants.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 32, no. 5, 2006, pp. 831-845.

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.

Christou, Anastasia. “Deciphering Diaspora – Translating Transnationalism: Family Dynamics, Identity Constructions and the Legacy of ‘Home’ in Second-Generation Greek-American Return Migration.” Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 29, no. 6, Nov. 2006, pp. 1040–1056. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01419870600960297.

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 returnee’s 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.

Christou, Anastasia and King Russell. Counter-Diaspora: The Greek Second Generation Returns ‘Home.’ Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Dounia, Margarita. “Transnational Practices and Emotional Belonging among Early 20th-Century Greek Migrants in the United States.” Genealogy, vol. 4, no. 90, 2020, pp.1–20.

Fakiolas, Rosetos. “Οι Ελληνες twn ΗΠΑ”[The Greeks of the United States]. Ελληνισμός της Διασποράς, Τόμος G [The Hellenism of Diaspora, Vol. C]. Eds. Antonios Kontis and Rosetos Fakiolas. Patras: Greek Open University, 2002.

Gotsi, Georgia. Η διεθνοποίηση της φαντασίας: σχέσεις της ελληνικής με τις ξένες λογοτεχνίες τον 19º αιώνα (The Internationalization of Imagination: Relations of Greek with Foreign Literatures in the 19th Century.) Gutenberg, 2010.

“Greek Diaspora Intellectuals Reflect on Cavafy.” C.P. Cavafy Forum, University of Michigan Modern Greek Studies, 2013.

Kaloudis, George. Modern Greece and the Diaspora Greeks in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.

Kaloudis, George. “The Influence of the Greek Diaspora on Greece and the United States.” International Journal on World Peace 25. 3 (September 2008): 29–59.

Kaloudis, George. “Greeks of the Diaspora: Modernizers or an Obstacle to Progress?” International Journal on World Peace 23.2 (June 2006): 49-70.

Kindinger, Evangelia. Homebound: Diaspora Spaces and Selves in Greek American Return Narratives. Heidelberg: Winter University Press. 2015.

Home is where the heart is’ – but where is the heart of the daughter or the grandson of a Greek immigrant living in the United States? In the American imagination, immigration ends with the successful integration into American culture and society. Yet, the routes of immigration are not straight, but circular. The home outside America appeals to immigrants and their descendants. It inspires them to return and not to stay put. Returnees keep moving back and forth between homes, creating diaspora spaces in which they cultivate transnational ties. In this volume, for the first time, autobiographical accounts of return are conceptualized as a distinct and important sub-genre of travel and life writing, as ‘return narratives’. Exemplified by eight Greek American texts about the challenges and benefits of coming home, the motif of return is explored and defined in a diasporic and Greek American context. This motif has played a central role in Greek American writing, especially after the 1960s; it mirrors the complex formulation of a Greek American identity. This volume uses Greek American studies, diaspora theory, transnational studies, and gender studies to offer a new analytical framework in American and Literary Studies for thinking about home, the nation-state and identity today.

King, Russell, Anastasia Christou, Ivor Goodson, and Janine Teerling. “Tales of Satisfaction and Disillusionment: Second-Generation ‘Return’ Migration to Greece and Cyprus.” Diaspora 17.3 (Summer 2008 [published 2014]): 262–87.

This article examines “the comparative “return” experiences of second-generation Greek-Americans and British-born Greek Cypriots who have relocated to their respective parental homelands of Greece and Cyprus. Sixty individuals, born in the United States or the United Kingdom yet now living in Greece or Cyprus, were interviewed and detailed life narratives recorded. We find both similarities and differences between the two groups. While the broad narrative themes “explaining” their returns are similar—a search for a “place to belong” in the ancestral homeland linked to what is, or was, perceived to be a more relaxed and genuine way of life—the post-return outcomes vary. In Greece there is disappointment, even profound disillusionment, whereas in Cyprus the return is generally viewed with satisfaction. For Greek-Americans, negative experiences include difficulty in accessing employment, frustration with bureaucracy and a culture of corruption, struggles with the chaos and stress of life in Athens, and pessimism about the future for their children in Greece. As a result, some Greek-Americans contemplate a second return, back to the United States. For the returnee British Cypriots, these problems are far less evident; they generally rationalize their relocation to Cyprus as the “right decision,” both for themselves and for their children. Greek-Americans tend to withdraw into a social circle of their own kind, whereas British-born returnee Cypriots adopt a more cosmopolitan or “third-space” cultural identity related, arguably, to the small scale and intimate spaces of social [End Page 262] Second-Generation “Return” Migration to Greece and Cyprus exchange in an island setting, and to the colonial and postcolonial history of Cyprus and its diaspora.”

Kitroeff, Alexander. 2018. Review of Anastasia Christou and Russell King, Counter-Diaspora: The Greek Second Generation Returns “Home.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Department of the Classics (2014); and George Kaloudis, Modern Greece and the Diaspora Greeks in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. 24 December.

Kitroeff, Alexander. “Emigration Transatlantique et Strategie Familiale: La Grèce” [Transatlantic Emigration and Family Strategy: Greece]. Espaces et Familles dans l’ Europe du Sud à l’âge moderne [Space and Families in Southern Europe in the Contemporary Era]. Ed. Stuart Woolf. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’ Homme, 1992. 241-70.

Kontis, Antonios and Rosetos Fakiolas. “Εννοιολογικές αποσαφηνíσεις” [Clarification of Terminology]. Ελληνισμός της Διασποράς, Τόμος Α΄ [The Hellenism of Diaspora, Vol. A]. Eds. Antonios Kontis and Rosetos Fakiolas. Patras: Greek Open University, 2002.

Koundoura, Maria. The Greek Idea: The Formation of National and Transnational Identities.  London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007.

Koundoura, Maria. Transnational Culture, Transnational Identity: The Politics and Ethics of Global Culture Exchange. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Kourelis, Kostis. “Three Elenis: Archaeologies of the Greek American Village Home.”Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 38, no.1, 2020, pp. 85–108.

Greek migration to the United States in the period 1890–1924 produced two interdependent domestic environments, the Greek towns of urban America and the remittance villages of rural Greece. Both spaces experienced decline, abandonment, and demolition during the mid-twentieth century, which erased a unique spatial duality maintained across continents by material goods. With the progressive passing of Greek American lived memories, archaeology must take on the challenge of reconstructing the immigrant lifeworlds that are now a century old. Using the family histories of three contemporary Greek Americans, we explore how village houses can illuminate the bridging of transnational distances. We study the house careers of three Elenis from the Peloponnese, Epirus, and Central Greece. Each case study explores the materialities of a relationship between today’s Greek Americans and their lost familial domestic relics.

Roudometof, Victor. Globalization and Orthodox Christianity. London: Routledge, 2013.

Roudometof, Victor.  “From Greek-Orthodox Diaspora to Transnational Hellenism: Greek Nationalism and the Identities of the Diaspora.” The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present.  Allon Gal, Athena S. Leoussi, and Anthony D. Smith, eds. London: Brill/UCL, 2010.  139-66.

Roudometof, Victor. 2014. “Forms of Religious Glocalization: Orthodox Christianity in the Longue Durée.” Religions Vol. 5. 4 (2014): 1017-1036.

“The article advocates a ‘glocal turn’ in the religion–globalization problematic. It proposes a model of multiple glocalizations in order to analyze the historically constituted relationship between world religions and local cultures. First, the conceptual evolution from globalization to glocalization is discussed with special reference to the study of the religion. Second, the necessity for adopting the perspective of the longue durée with regard to the study of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is explained. Third, an outline of four forms of religious glocalization is proposed. Each of these forms is presented both analytically as well as through examples from the history of Eastern Christianity (from the 8th to the 21st century).  It is argued that this approach offers a model for analyzing the relation between religion, culture and society that does not succumb to the Western bias inherent in the conventional narrative of western modernization and secularization.”

Roudometof, Victor and Anna Karpathakis. “Greek Americans and Transnationalism: Religion, Class and Community.” Communities Across Borders: New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures. Eds. Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof, 41­­­­–54. London: Routledge, 2002.

Rozen, M. (ed.). Homelands and Diasporas. Greeks, Jews and their Migrations, New York, Tauris, 2008.

Tsaliki, L. “Globalisation and Hybridity. The Construction of Greekness on the Internet.” In The Media of Diaspora, K. H. Karim (ed.). London, New York, Routledge, 2003: 162-176.

Vogli, Elpida. “A Greece for Greeks by Descent? Nineteenth-Century Policy on Integrating the Greek Diaspora.” Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics and Culture. Ed. Dimitris Tziovas.  Surrey: Ashgate, 2009. 99-110.

Vogli, Elpida. “The Making of Greece Abroad: Continuity and Change in the Modern Diaspora Politics of a ‘Historical’ Irredentist Homeland.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17.1 (2011): 14-33.

b.) Reviews

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. Review of Anastasia Christou and Russell King, Counter-Diaspora: The Greek Second Generation Returns “Home.” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (2014). Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 35.1 (Spring 2017): 252–57.

Grafos, Christopher. Review of Modern Greece and the Diaspora Greeks in the United States, by George Kaloudis. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 38, no. 1, 2020, pp. 243–45. 

Kindinger, Evangelia. Rev. of Women, Gender, and Diasporic Lives: Labor, Community, and Identity in Greek Migrations, by Evangelia Tastsoglou. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37.8 (2011): 1291-1293.

Kitroeff, Alexander. Review of Λίνα Βεντούρα και Λάμπρος Μπαλτσιώτης, editors, Το έθνος πέρα των συνόρων: «Ομογενειακές» πολιτικές του ελληνικού κράτους
Journal of Modern Greek Studies 34:1 (2016): 214–216.

Mike, Mairi. Rev. of Η διεθνοποίηση της φαντασίας: σχέσεις της ελληνικής με τιςξένες λογοτεχνίες τον 19º αιώνα (The Internationalization of Imagination: Relations of Greek with Foreign Literatures in the 19th Century), by Georgia Gotsi. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 29.2 (2011): 300-2. [in Greek]

Patrona, Theodora. 2015. “Evangelia Kindinger, Homebound: Diaspora Spaces and Selves in Greek American Return Narratives.” European Journal of American Studies, Reviews 2015-3, document 8.