The name is absent

148

main Roma population, Jigo relied on the collectivity for safety. As he detaches from the
collective, he may become a part of the larger network of the nearly-invisible that skirt
the landscape, under the radar, according to the ebb and flow of people, opportunity and
safety. Alternatively, he may pursue a life of emulated normality in which he will remain
detached from the collective, the Iiminal network, and also from the broader society. His
experiences, convictions, friends, and economic activities will influence the path he takes,
as they did for Christos.

The motion of the network and the access its members are granted to the
resistance strategies of the various subaltern populations from where they come provide
its members with a degree of protection and reinforce the socio-cultural intersubjective
complexity that define group membership. Christos has spent many nights in various
apartments and appropriated spaces under the protection of undocumented migrants. He
has also dressed in the clothes of his Afghani friends and used Gujarati words to secretly
communicate with his group when they were detained by police. Beyond the practical
strategic value of these interconnections, Christos also thinks of himself as partially
defined by the assemblage of diverse experiences, spaces and the people that connect him
to them: this plane Ofliminal existence and the intersubjective connections that shape
idiosyncratic identity negotiations might be taken as one of the few cosmopolitan social
phenomena in Greece (see Beck 2006; Ossman 2007b).

Christos’ complex sense Ofbelonging caused him endless anxiety. While Vasilo
negotiated a balance between a “Greek” and “Romani” being, Christos actively struggled
between a “Romani-Greek” and an “invisible/illegal other” identity. In his words:

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