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clothing, and counseling more established members of various subaltern communities
and sympathetic illegal importers who could be called upon to provide work or economic
help. They looked out for each other and shared money and resources like cars, phones,
and clothes. Perhaps most importantly, however, the group also provided its members
with a sense of belonging and worth. Christos explained that selling and taking drugs
was bad and that he always feared his younger brothers would follow his example. In
moments of doubt, and what sounded to me like depression, his friends would step in to
reassure him that the path their lives had taken was due to the social violences they
endured. In times of sadness and fear, the group would remind Christos of his
responsibility to the network, would take him drinking138, and keep him busy with work
and travel. In his mind Christos saw himself as a troubled hero.
*
I was surprised when I discovered that, beyond a core of Roma blood brothers
Christos had been close to since his childhood, his broader friend group also consisted of
several African immigrants and Middle Easterners. Besides some Albanian Roma, close
non-Roma work contacts, and a small number of poorer Greeks of non-Roma descent
who find their way into larger Roma compounds, outsiders are usually excluded from
Roma social circles. However, Christos explained that his circle of friends was quite
permeable: anyone victim to the same difficult reality he was, or who pursued the same
or related economic activities and engaged in the same or compatible survival strategies,
were welcome within his group. There was a deep sense of impermanence and forced
Iiminality among the people he surrounded himself with: they moved along the borders of
138 Drinking in a group is an important identity-strengthening and health-making activity among the Roma
(Alexandrakis 2003).