these communities come together. The first case concerns the cooperation of members of
the undocumented African migrant and Roma communities in the transportation and
selling of various illegal and gray-market goods. The second case concerns the
spontaneous coalescence of anti-establishment youth, undocumented migrants, and the
Roma during the December 2008 civil unrest in Athens. Through these ethnographic
accounts and case studies I develop the conceptual and theoretical framework that
supports the central arguments of this work.
In conclusion I demonstrate that citizens are turning away from state-sanctioned
discourses descriptive∕prescriptive of a nation-centered citizenship and, crucially, are
beginning to reconsider modem civic identity and democratic engagement in relation to
the influence unconventional citizens are having on the various public and private spaces
where these are negotiated and enacted.