The name is absent

154

while this strategy for dealing with unwanted local populations is rooted in
nationalist∕soveriengist discourse that can be traced to the foundation of the
contemporary Greek state, its deployment in the repression of particular groups was
refined over decades of dealing with the Roma. In this way, the state has divided Greece
into a nation of citizens and quasi-citizens: individuals who satisfy the criteria of
belonging established and enforced by the state and its agents, and those who self-
identify as members of the civil public but who are unrecognized as such by the state.
This latter population is just starting to find a public voice. As mentioned above,
politically enabled со-ethnic returnees and immigrants of Greek descent are beginning to
speak and act publicly, as are large communities of domestic workers from the
Philippines and some groups of Albanian migrants - sometimes on their own, and other
times through various organizations like: cultural and sports groups, women’s
associations, trade unions, other professional organizations, human rights NGOs, or
NGOs active in the protection of refugee and asylum seeker rights (see Gropas &
Triandafyllidou 2009). However, like the Roma, undocumented migrants remain
woefully underrepresented.

Groups from this population are coming together in the Iiminal space formed by
the moving and selling of illegal material of various kinds to support themselves and their
communities. Just as Christos can be seen to relieve the tension he feels between being
Roma and being part of the Iiminal network by conceptualizing the moving of illegal
material as supportive of the identity he seems to have drifted from, so too can the
involvement of members of the undocumented migrant population involved in the same
to include the maintenance of a low-wage informal workforce to sustain the agricultural and construction
industries.

<<   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   >>

More intriguing information