The name is absent

52

and illegal goods being confiscated were common in print and broadcast news in 2006/07.
In cafés and other public areas conversations about undocumented migrants usually
drifted towards the 2005 Paris riots; although locals generally dismissed this as a “French
phenomenon”, certainly not something Greeks would ever have to deal with since, they
thought, there were not so many undocumented migrants living in the city. Still, however,
a kind of revolt or upheaval driven by “foreigners” seemed to be a common concern.
Legalization also came up in these conversations with most people in support of
government initiatives to document the undocumented migrant population, although
general consensus had it that such a project would never be undertaken effectively due to
bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of political will. However, perhaps the most
interesting theme that arose from these conversations was a sentiment that undocumented
migrants should be recorded and monitored, but not treated to the same rights and
privileges of locals. Implicit in these statements was a vision of the migrant as non-
citizen, sojourner, and potentially dangerous other - an individual that did not, and
probably could not fit the current category of citizen. Their movement into the country
was accounted for as a byproduct of Greece’s attractive path toward modernization and
its increased fame internationally⁵², and as a phenomenon which could be addressed by
increasing border security and setting stiffer punishment for those who come through
illegally. I will argue in the following chapters that this sentiment is tied to a popular
understanding of both the contemporary political reality and risk-cosmopolitanization,
ultimately playing a part in subjective political identity formation.

⁵² The 2004 Athens Olympic Games were broadly credited for this supposed international fame.

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