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unconventional citizens bring to both public and private spaces. This complex,
sometimes subtle sometimes sudden, feathering into various subjective and
inter subjective spaces where political identity is made means that Xmconventional citizens
are shaping social reproductions of a future-oriented political contemporary. What this
means is that as unconventional citizens participate and reconfigure Greek politics in a
multitude of often subtle ways, they are effectively furthering the de-linking of the
political subject from ethnicity and nationality on various fronts; in effect, they are
helping to remake the demos. Through their participation, and in the context of a
critically reflexive mainstream, citizenship is expanding150 and democracy is becoming
de-nationalized: we are witnessing the rise of a constituent politics whereby Greek
society, that is the inclusive totality of Greek society, is putting itself into question and
coming to institute itself anew151.
The intensity driving this change, the front of the political reconfiguration in
question here is located at the unconventional citizen. It is important to underscore that
this change is not being spurred by one particular group. Up to now, much attention has
been paid to the influence undocumented migrants, and immigrants specifically, have had
on various levels of European law and on the political consciousness of individuals living
in various European states (see for example Kastoryano 1998; 2005; Sassen 2006). This
work demonstrates that not just one, but various diverse groups of unconventional
citizens152 interact with each other and with the political mainstream to inspire broader
change, not just at the level of policy and law, but at the level of individual subjectivity.
150 See Kastoryano on extending political rights to those outside the conventional category of citizen (2007).
'ɔ1 See Castoriadis (1987) and Kalyvas (1998) constituent politics and for the conceptualization of
democracy as the self-institution of society.
152 Again, that is groups that share a sense of belonging, or aspiration to belong to a collective whole, but
which are barred from, or themselves reject, traditional modes and categories of citizenship.