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thoroughfares of transnational flows of various kinds. Voting for LAOS could be seen as
a form of local resistance to a perceived risk these flows bring; an analysis supported by
the fact that LAOS continues to perform poorly in immigrant-rich rural areas outside
these major thoroughfares and landing points. Whereas sudden inflows and influence of
immigrants and migrants may be perceived by locals as problematic, the stable and
productive presence of these populations is seen as unproblematic. A vote for LAOS
could therefore be seen as a vote for the stabilization of rapid changes, be they actual or
anticipated, articulated in terms of nation and conservative values evoking stillness or
stability. The LAOS success can therefore be interpreted not as a desire for a return to
1970∕80s nationalist politics or even as a decisive vote against foreigners, but rather as an
indication that the publics to which local people are attentive suggest the experiences
they are having are somehow potentially problematic. While the mainstream parties both
offered strategies to shape or manage flows of people in and through Greece, LAOS
proposed to stop and in some ways reverse this by suggesting the deportation of
unwanted outsiders.
Of course, analyzing voting patterns is notoriously problematic, but the recent
LAOS success suggests a broader reality relevant to this work and is therefore worth a
careful look here. Political support is shifting more readily among a public which is now
less entrenched in particular political ideologies and discourses and more attentive to
local realities and translocally-inspired publics. Some conflict between these publics and
local reality benefitted LAOS. As we will see in the following chapter, this conflict may
actually be the result of the survival strategies employed by particular marginalized
groups and the sense that the Cosmopolitanization of the local has moved from a factor