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Resistance and Compliance inImmigrant–Native Figurations: Albanianand Soviet Greek Immigrants and TheirInteraction with Greek SocietyManolis PratsinakisPublished online: 19 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Manolis Pratsinakis (2014) Resistance and Compliance in Immigrant–NativeFigurations: Albanian and Soviet Greek Immigrants and Their Interaction with Greek Society,Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40:8, 1295-1313, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2013.859071

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Resistance and Compliance inImmigrant–Native Figurations: Albanianand Soviet Greek Immigrants and TheirInteraction with Greek SocietyManolis Pratsinakis

Focusing on two immigrant populations and their relationships with their nativeneighbours in Thessaloniki, Greece, this paper highlights that immigrant–nativerelations are not only cultural relations but also power configurations unfoldingthrough a symbolic contestation over defining the nation and who belongs to it. Ineveryday interaction, immigrants’ behaviour is judged by natives according to thedegree of their compliance to the native norms. Immigrant categories are endowed withdifferent resources in resisting the pressure exerted by the native society. Categories thathave more resources in symbolic and substantial terms are less eager to comply, thusappearing more ‘different’ in the eyes of the natives.

Keywords: Immigrant–native Relations; National Belonging; Symbolic Struggle; EthnicDifference; Ethnic Stigmatisation

Introduction

The steep increase in immigration to Greece during the 1990s was closely connectedto the disintegration of the former Eastern bloc and was caused by two distinctpopulation movements: undocumented immigration from the Balkans and immig-ration of people of Greek descent. The perception and regulation of those twopopulation movements has been markedly asymmetric. The inflow and settlement ofnon-Greek immigrants was treated as an undesired development; while the migrationof Greek descent immigrants was treated much more positively. In particular, thesettlement of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU), whom for reasons of

Manolis Pratsinakis is a Research Fellow at IMES, AISSR, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, TheNetherlands. Correspondence to: University of Amsterdam, Het Spinhuis, Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185, 1012DK Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: e.pratsinakis@uva.nl

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2014Vol. 40, No. 8, 1295–1313, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.859071

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

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simplicity, I will refer to as FSU Greeks,1 was facilitated and indeed encouraged bystate policies during the early years of migration.

The difference in the Greek state’s policies was closely linked to the nation’s self-perception as a community defined by descent. According to this perception, onlyimmigrants of Greek descent are an important permanent resource for the country, incontrast to non-Greek immigrants whose entry and prolonged stay is viewed as athreat to both the social cohesion and the cultural homogeneity of the nation. Thisdifferentiated approach has not only characterised the design of Greek immigrationpolicy but has also prevailed in public and political discourses and in mediarepresentations (Triandafyllidou and Veikou 2002). Pavlou (2001) identified a cleardivision in immigrants’ representations in the local press in the city of Thessalonikiduring the 1990s. FSU Greek immigrants were positively represented, while Albanianimmigrants were negatively stereotyped.

Focusing on those two immigrant categories in the same city, I here concentratenot on their reception at the macro level but rather on their day-to-day interactionswith natives at the neighbourhood level. Ideologies of Greekness have been crucial indetermining inclusion and exclusion of immigrants both in the implementation ofpolicy and in the representational sphere. But how are those ideologies experienced ineveryday life and how do they influence the power configuration between immigrantsand natives? Considering the positive framing of FSU Greeks’ immigration, onewould expect the development of positive interaction between them and locals, atleast more so in comparison to other immigrants. Paradoxically, evidence fromThessaloniki’s neighbourhoods suggests that representations of natives about theirFSU Greek neighbours are negative and interaction with them minimal, whileAlbanian neighbours are viewed more favourably. This paper seeks to explore andresolve this paradox.

Power and the Symbolic Dimension of Culture in Immigrant–Native Relations

In sociology, the relation between immigrants and natives has been traditionallyconceptualised as a matter of cultural adaptation. This conceptualisation has beencommonly informed by normative ideas about whether immigrant populations,described as conglomerates of ethnic groups, should retain their supposed culturaldistinctiveness. On one hand, classical assimilation theory has favoured and predictedthe ceasing of ‘ethnic difference’, perceived not as a relational phenomenon but as anattribute of immigrant groups. On the other hand, cultural pluralism has challengedthe assimilationist expectations for the dissolution of ‘ethnic difference’ and hascalled for equal recognition of the cultural expressions of immigrant groups.

Both theories have been rightfully critiqued for essentialising culture as a propertyof ethnic groups (Faist 2000; Turner 1993). Yet, overcoming the fallacy of groupism(Brubaker 2002) and conceiving culture in more processual and relational terms(Barth 1969) is not sufficient to fully grasp the dynamics which characteriseimmigrant–native relations. To do so, we need to shift our attention from culture,

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as the embodied social knowledge and habitual dispositions of people, to perceptionsof culture, as a signifier of belongingness (for an analogous distinction, see Sewell1999). That is not to deny the existence of actual cultural differences betweendifferent immigrant categories and different strata of the native population. Neither isit to deny the significance of such differences in their encounters. Rather, it is meantto suggest that immigrant–native relations are not solely mediated by culturaldifferentiations. They are also power configurations that unfold through a symboliccontestation to define what is the nation and who belongs to it. In this context, notonly state actors but also native citizens attribute symbolic significance to certaincultural practices which they view as preconditions for the acceptance of immigrantsas part of the national community.

Elias and Scotson’s established–outsider model (1994) provides an insightfulheuristic metaphor to explore the power dimension of immigrant–native relations(Pratsinakis 2013). Immigrants are turned into outsiders as soon as they crossnational borders and start building their life abroad, away from their previous‘national home’. In most cases, they lack citizenship, which formally attests theiroutsider position and blocks them from equal participation in ‘the host’ society.Their outsider’s status is also experienced in their everyday interactions withmembers of the native society. Even if citizenship rights are acquired this does notnecessarily bring about their acknowledgement as equal members of the nationalcommunity by the native citizens who consider themselves as representing thenational core.

Natives maintain an established position due to their ability to present themselvesas the norm by which immigrants have to abide. They view immigrants as candidatemembers of the nation and they ask them to prove their belongingness by attestingthe ‘practical nationality’ they have accumulated. Practical nationality is the sum ofnationally sanctified and valued social and physical cultural styles and dispositions(Hage 2000). According to Hage (2000), the recognition and legitimacy given to aperson or a group for their stock of practical nationality is translated into differentdegrees of national acceptance.

Thinking along these lines, we may reassess acculturation as solely the process ofacquisition of social skills that are functional within a cultural system. Acculturationis also a process whereby immigrants, as outsiders, adopt the standards of judgementof the established—that is, the very standards according to which their culture iscommonly devaluated (Waldinger 2003). The immigrants’ display of growingattachment to the native society is an attempt to achieve approval as respectablemembers of the national community. It is also a practice of de-stigmatisation, anattempt to distance themselves from the stigma of the national outsider, and as suchit is more pressing for groups and individuals at the bottom of the national hierarchy.

Adopting this theoretical framework, in this paper, I explore how immigrant–native relations unfold through an unequal power struggle—a struggle which isshaped by native perceptions about how immigrants should behave and what theirposition should be. My analysis is focused on the (counter)-strategies of immigrants

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and the influence of those strategies on native representations. Attempting to explainthe paradox of the reception of FSU Greeks and Albanians at the local level, I aim tocritically review the notion of ethnic difference in immigrant–native relations.

The empirical base of the paper draws primarily on my ethnographic research inthe working-class neighbourhood of Nikopoli, in Thessaloniki, where I lived for 14months in two stretches in the period September 2007 to September 2009. I also usedata from 20 interviews I conducted in 2004 in Thessaloniki with Albanianimmigrants. Finally, I use data collected in the context of the GEITONIESinternational neighbourhood survey.2 This survey was carried out in 18 neighbour-hoods in 6 European cities, including Thessaloniki, among a randomly selectedsample of 200 respondents (100 immigrants and 100 natives) in each neighbourhood.

Ideologies of Greekness and the Differentiated Policy Approach

The Reception of Albanian Immigration

The immigration ‘boom’ of the 1990s found the Greek administrative structure ill-prepared, as its legislative framework was based on an archaic law from 1929. Untilthat time, the country had not experienced significant inflows of non-Greekpopulations. The ‘Aliens’ Law of 1991 set ‘zero immigration’ as the policy goal.This was attempted through stricter boarder controls, criminalisation of illegal entry,and simplification of expulsion procedures. Albanian migration, which comprised byfar the largest part of the inflow, was related in public discourse to disputed bordersand ethnic minority contests between Albania and Greece (Triandafyllidou andVeikou 2002). Albanian immigrants, although they were initially welcomed with amixture of curiosity and compassion, were soon brought centre stage in discourses on‘the migration invasion’.

The police logic of the exclusionary legal framework contributed to the construc-tion of the stereotype of the ‘criminal Albanian’ which was widely reproduced inmedia (Karydis 1996; Droukas 1998). Albanians were the most stigmatised immigrantgroup in Greece during the 1990s, stereotyped by characteristics that rendered theminferior in the eyes of most Greeks (Lazaridis and Koumandraki 2001). The word‘Albanian’ itself acquired a negative meaning: it became a derogatory adjectiveconnoting poverty, being uncivilised and prone to criminality.

Deportations, so-called sweep operations, have been conducted on a regular basissince the opening of the Greek–Albanian border in 1991. The word ‘sweep’, (σκoύπα)which evokes the ideals associated with keeping a clean home, was used metaphor-ically to refer to the state’s attempts to establish public order and expunge malignant‘foreign dirt’ (Papailias 2003). Thousands of Albanian immigrants have beendeported, only to swiftly re-immigrate along the same path through the mountainousborder area to Greece.

Six years after the 1991 Immigration Law, the vast majority of the approximately700,000 immigrants living in Greece were irregulars. The official line continued to bethat ‘Greece is not a country of immigration’. However, having failed to restrict

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undocumented immigration, in 1997, the Greek state adopted a regularisationprogramme. A second regularisation was applied in 2001, followed by a third in 2005and a fourth in 2007. In 2001, a new law established more favourable provisionsregarding the right to family reunification and the acquisition of long-term residencepermits, though still restrictive in comparative perspective. Naturalisation proceduresbecame even more cumbersome. It has been almost impossible for immigrants ofnon-Greek descent to acquire citizenship, as illustrated by the fact that only 13,500people managed to naturalise in the period 1985–2003 (Christopoulos 2006). It wasonly in 2010 that citizenship acquisition became more open to immigrants, with the3838/2010 law—which was, however, withdrawn in 2013.

The Reception of FSU Greek Immigration

The immigration of FSU Greeks, which became numerically significant from 1989onwards, was termed ‘repatriation’ by state officials, although neither the migrantsnor their ancestors had ever lived in Greece.3 The selection of the term is symbolic. Itaims to differentiate their inflow from that of non-Greek populations and highlighttheir rightful belonging to the nation. The ‘return’ of FSU Greeks was conceptualisedas an asset for the state. Governmental officials addressed an official invitation to FSUGreeks to take up permanent residence in the fatherland and organised a repatriationpolicy plan. This plan aimed at their settlement in the rural areas of the north-easterngeographical department of Thrace, home to the Greek Muslim minority. It wasexpected that the presence of the FSU Greeks in rural Thrace would economicallyrevitalise the area, as well as alter its religious and ethnic composition. The policy wasinspired by the 1923 rural refugee settlement, which is collectively perceived as asuccess (Voutira 2003).4

However, the expectations of the policy-makers were not met. The settlement planfailed, due to a lack of employment opportunities in the area, the inability of theGreek state to carry out the plan efficiently, and most importantly because thenewcomers did not consider rural Thrace an appealing destination. They were notwilling to tolerate the difficult and makeshift conditions the Greek state providedthem in Thrace, and preferred instead to settle in the big cities. To prevent theclustering of Soviet Greeks in Athens and Thessaloniki, state officials adopted a moreflexible model of self-settlement that promoted the placement of FSU Greeks in awider area in Northern Greece (Voutira 2004). Yet, this plan failed too, andeventually the support of the Greek state materialised in subsidised housing loanswhich were prescribed for a four-year period (2001–2005) and were extensivelyutilised by FSU Greeks.

Regarding citizenship acquisition, a ministerial decision in 1990 eased andregulated the process for FSU Greeks; citizenship rights were granted on proof ofthe applicant’s descent through documents certified by the Greek consular authoritiesin the country of origin. The process became somewhat stricter in 2001 with theintroduction of the investigation of the applicant’s ‘Greek national consciousness’

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and the requirement of further documents for the proof of an applicant’s Greekness(Voutira 2004). Those measures were not supposed to pose obstacles to theattribution of citizenship to FSU Greeks but were undertaken to curb immigrationof non-Greek migrants and the prevention of attribution of citizenship to ‘false co-ethnics’. Although the Greek governments gradually reconsidered the policy goal ofinviting FSU Greeks, the right of the latter to settle in Greece was not questioned inpolitical discourse and law. Nor was the self-perceived moral obligation of the state tooffer them what was, in comparison to non-Greek immigrants, a privilegedreception.5 FSU Greeks remained officially welcome in ‘the fatherland’ should theyaspire to ‘return’ to it.

Albanians and FSU Greek Immigrants in Thessaloniki6

According to the 2001 population census, Albanians and FSU Greeks are present inapproximately equal numbers in Thessaloniki, constituting together more than half ofthe 112,000 immigrants recorded as living in the greater area of the city. Albaniansare spread out across the city while FSU Greeks are more clustered. FSU Greeksfollowed family migration patterns involving the entire household. Their populationhas a more balanced demographic structure in comparison to the Albanianpopulation, which has a larger share of working-age people. Education levels alsoappear to be higher among FSU Greeks. However, for Albanian as well as FSU Greekimmigrants, their education level is not translated into a position in the labourmarket that matches their qualifications. The work FSU Greek and Albanianimmigrants do is mainly manual, physically demanding, often of a servile character,and, for the majority, in low-skilled positions irrespective of their educationalattainments. Excepting a minority of FSU Greeks who have achieved high incomes bymeans of entrepreneurial and transnational economic activities, and a restrictednumber of people who have accessed positions in the public sector, the majorityfound themselves occupying the lowest position in the labour market together withother immigrants. Moreover, in 2001, they exhibited a higher unemployment ratethan both natives and Albanians (17.1% as opposed to 11.3% and 8.4%, respectively).

The Paradox: Immigrants in the Eyes of Their Native Neighbours

Nikopoli is a working-class neighbourhood on the north-western outskirts of the cityof Thessaloniki, Greece. It developed in the early 1960s through processes ofunauthorised construction by internal immigrants that came to the city fromneighbouring villages and expanded rapidly after 1995 largely by and for FSUGreeks. At the time of my ethnographic research, it housed approximately 10,000people, the majority being FSU Greeks, followed by native Greeks, and a smallnumber of Albanians and other non-Greek immigrants.

FSU Greeks and native Greeks are spatially segregated within the neighbourhood,to a large extent as an outcome of Nikopoli’s history of expansion (Pratsinakis 2013).

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The majority of FSU Greeks live in the northern part of the neighbourhood and thenatives in the southern part. There are two churches, one for each community, andnorth–south division is also reflected in the spatial organisation of open market thattakes place on Thursdays. Moreover, natives and FSU Greeks do not intermingle inthe public space of Nikopoli nor in the few taverns and cafeterias of the area.

Most native Greeks living in Nikopoli talked in a negative way about their FSUGreek neighbours. Negative attitudes were inferred from the stories people heardfrom others, usually concerning FSU Greeks’ alleged aggressiveness and delinquentbehaviour, or were supported with reference to how they saw them use theneighbourhood’s public spaces. Partly because their low income does not allow forfrequent outgoing and consumption, and also due to different habits towardrecreation, FSU Greeks develop leisure practices mostly in the neighbourhood publicspace. They gather on streets and pavements just outside their private domain ofresidence, or outside small shops to play cards, drink, eat, and chat. Withoutpermission from the local authorities, they also have built shacks from all kinds ofmaterial (wood, sheet iron, cardboard). These shacks are erected in proximity to theirhomes and also further afield, in the plentiful free space of the neighbourhood.

The shacks form meeting places and are also used to store the chairs and sofas thatpeople use outside. They bring together the elderly FSU Greeks, who spend much oftheir days there. During wintertime, on cold days, people stay inside them, whileduring the rest of the year they take the chairs and sofas outside. Middle-aged FSUGreeks meet and socialise outside their houses, or in front of convenience stores,where they can purchase alcohol. Youngsters also use the public space extensively,meeting in the playgrounds and sport fields.

Many native Greeks criticised the FSU Greeks’ use of public space, and especiallytheir habit of drinking in the street. They judged this practice to be indicative ofalcohol problems rather than a form of socialising, and related it to their views ofpeople from Russia as heavy drinkers. The shacks also constitute a major disturbancefor several native residents. A man in his thirties living close to one of the shacksobjected:

I went to the Mayor and asked him to take the shacks down… he didn’t… mostprobably for the votes, you know…. And then them [the FSU Greeks]…. they do notadapt, what’s all this with the shacks? Where do they think they are? What are thoseshacks?

Native residents are also critical about FSU Greeks speaking Russian. FSU Greekcommunities have been characterised by an immense linguistic heterogeneityreflecting the diversity of their origins and the influences of different localpopulations among which they lived. However, Russian, being the lingua franca inthe Soviet Union and the dominant language in education, gradually prevailed as theprime language of the Greek diaspora. In Greece, although the vast majority learnedto speak Modern Greek,7 their Russian language skills are usually more developed

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than their Modern Greek. As a result, first-generation FSU Greeks prefer speakingRussian among each other.

Hearing FSU Greeks speak Russian and other non-Greek languages makes nativeresidents doubt their Greekness. Their mistrust is further fed by the satellite discs onthe balconies of the apartments and the rooftops of FSU Greek houses, the presenceof Russian newspapers in local convenience stores and kiosks and the posts andbanners in Russian language. Most native Greeks felt that they were separated fromFSU Greeks by a cultural gap. In their view, it was this gap, and what they claimed tobe the FSU Greeks’ sullen attitude and lack of manners, that prevented theirintermingling. Panagiotis, a native in a kafenio in the older part of the neighbourhoodtold me:

They do not go out [to cafeterias and restaurants] they stay out on the streets or in thesurroundings of their houses […] they have different habits. They do not go out so asnot to pay. They also drink a lot, what to do with them?… we do not drink much here.They can’t have enough so they put their drink in the water glasses… how can we keepcompany with them?

Giannis, the owner of another local kafenio, went further, stating that FSU Greekcustomers are not welcome in his shop.

What to do with them?… they have a different culture, ok a few of them do feel likeGreeks… but why would I want a Georgian? To come here and ruin my business?[να µoυ χαλάσει τo µαγαζί]. To flash his pistols?

Giannis clarified that he was not referring to the whole FSU Greek community butto the non-Greeks among them, namely those people who had immigrated withforged passports, or the families of non-Greek partners of FSU Greeks. In hisperception, they constitute 80% of the Russian-speaking population in Nikopoli.However, according to the randomly selected sample of the GEITONIES survey, non-Greek Russian speaking immigrants in the neighbourhood account for approximately10% of the total population while those who had gained the status of homogeníswithout Greek descent constitute an insignificant part of the population. Thosefindings are also congruent with my field experience.

The native residents mostly called FSU Greeks ‘Russo-Pontics’, ‘Russophones’, orsimply ‘Russians.’ The words ‘Russians’ and ‘Russo-phones’ were used synony-mously as generic labels to refer to people of various FSU nationalities rather thanRussians per se. ‘The Russo-Pontic’ is a rather dubious label. As opposed to ‘theRussian’, it was occasionally evoked (in a positive manner) to discern the Greek fromthe non-Greek FSU immigrants. However, most commonly, it was used as an all-inclusive label for the whole Russian-speaking community in the neighbourhood inexpressing doubt about their Greekness. The Russo-Pontic label is also widely used bynative Greeks outside the neighbourhood. It was originally employed as a term todistinguish the Pontics who immigrated from the FSU from the ‘native-Pontics’, the

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descendants of the 1920s refugees who originated in Pontos.8 However, the labelgradually acquired a pejorative meaning, indicating doubt about the Greekness ofthose so categorised. Furthermore, in its more common usage, it signifies a low-classstanding and also embodies the stereotypes of the FSU immigrants’ allegedaggressiveness and criminality.

The image of the FSU Greeks in Nikopoli as aggressive people was strong,sustained and augmented through gossip and the spread of rumours (Pratsinakis2013). Nikopoli had not attracted much media attention and was not represented as anotorious district in local and national media. However, several native residentscharacterised their neighbourhood as an unsafe area because of the many FSU Greeksliving there. In my talks with people living in adjacent areas, I noted that such ideaswere widespread there too. Several people warned me that ‘I should take care there’or described Nikopoli as a no-go area.

Interestingly, natives in Nikopoli generally told me they had good relationshipswith their Albanian neighbours, whom they described as peaceful, hard working, and‘causing no problems’ in the neighbourhood. Others explicitly compared them totheir FSU Greek neighbours to express their negative perception of the former group.For instance, Roula commented as follows with reference to parents’ attitudes:

Russo-Pontic boys speak Russian at home and when they come to school they havedifficulties. It is natural as the children have no help from their parents. They also usebad language. Those issues depend on the environment in which you are raised […]. Onthe contrary I have a close Greek friend who I visit regularly. He has an Albanian friend.I have an excellent opinion about her as a mother. She tries to provide for her childrenwhatever they need. They are a very good family and nice people; you can drink yourcoffee with them and have a nice time.

Albanians residents visit two of the kafenia in the older part of Nikopoli which areowned by native residents. They go there after work, drink a beer or two, chat andmake jokes about politics with locals, discuss the neighbourhood news, and in theevenings watch the Greek football league, place bets, or play cards. They keep a lowprofile and show a willingness to fit in. When I asked them about their Albanianneighbours, the kafenia patrons painted a favourable image. As Nikitas said ‘No, withthe Albanians we have no problem. They have been in the neighbourhood for severalyears. They did never cause any problems. They are good guys’.

Interaction between Albanians and natives should not be overstressed. Albaniansgenerally go unnoticed in Nikopoli due to their numerical under-representation. Yet,the ethnographic research by Andrikopoulos (2013) in a downtown neighbourhoodof Thessaloniki, where Albanians are more numerous than FSU Greeks, providessimilar evidence to that from Nikopoli. According to his findings, Albanians are theleast visible immigrant group, willing to adapt to the dominant norms in the use ofpublic space. At the same time, they are more involved in social interaction with localGreeks than are FSU Greeks. Opinions about Albanian neighbours are more positive.There too they are represented as good family people, hard-working, and peaceful, in

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contrast to FSU Greeks who are thought of as causing all the problems in theneighbourhood. Similar comparisons between Albanians and FSU Greeks were alsodrawn by some natives in the seaside suburban neighbourhood of Peraia.9 Therelationship between native and FSU Greeks appeared less polarised there than inNikopoli and in the neighbourhood where Andrikopoulos did his research. However,the views of most natives who drew comparisons between the behaviour of their FSUGreeks and their Albanian neighbours were again more negative about the former. Asa native resident mentioned:

Those from Russia came here to impose themselves, they make no effort to change, theydo not try at all, they speak Russian and they act like it is their country… the Albaniansare more friendly.

How are we to explain this contradiction between representations at the macrolevel and experience of coexistence at the local level, as recorded in the neighbour-hoods in Thessaloniki? One possible way is represented by the speculation thatAlbanian immigrants have more ‘cultural proximity’ with native Greeks than FSUGreeks do—something which would be contrary to official categorisations. However,such a culturalistic explanation is not corroborated by the field data. Native residentsdid not see their better relations with Albanians as being an outcome of culturalproximity, nor did they express an appreciation of Albanian immigrants’ culturaltraits. What they appreciated was the Albanians’ willingness to fit in, in contrast towhat they perceived as the disrespectful behaviour of the FSU Greeks. Answering thefollowing question thus seems central to explaining the paradox: Why are Albaniansmore eager than FSU Greeks to adopt social behaviour at the neighbourhood levelthat is better accepted by natives?

Albanian Immigrants: blurring the Boundary as a Response to Stigmatisation

During their early period in Greece, the Albanian immigrants adopted strategies ofdissimulation to avoid discrimination and escape the heavy burden of stigmatisationin their interaction with Greeks (Pratsinakis 2005). Conscious of the significanceattributed to ethnic descent by Greeks and the privileged position of the ethnic Greekimmigrants, their tactic entailed a certain blurring of the ethnic boundary betweenGreek and Albanian identity. A widespread strategy was that of name-changing.Albanians with a Greek name who also spoke Greek could pass as Albanians of Greekorigin in order to be treated better by the dominant society.10 Where such passing-offas Greek was not actively attempted, hiding vital elements of their identity such asreligion was also a tactic used to avoid mistreatment, especially for Muslims(Pratsinakis 2005). As Eda told me ‘In the beginning you could not say that youwere a Muslim, you would lose your job … that was the first thing that they askedyou. “What is your religion?”’

In many cases, Albanian immigrants, who were largely undocumented, did nothave that much room to present themselves in a way that was congruent to their own

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self-conception. A less widespread practice was that of baptism and religiousconversion. Immigrants who aspired to remain in Greece internalised the mainstreamGreek view that to be Greek is to be Christian Orthodox. Conversion to Orthodoxyby their children was deemed particularly important for the facilitation of theacceptance of their children in Greece. From the perspective of the Albanianimmigrant, the rite of baptism itself, a vital and obligatory religious practice for theOrthodox Christian tradition, served as cementing relations with a native, or as asymbolic verification of an already strong relation with a Greek person through theestablishment of spiritual kinship.

The Albanian immigrants, especially those who were oriented towards a morepermanent stay in the country, developed friendly ties with natives primarily in thefield of work and in the neighbourhood, where they had the opportunity to provetheir individual worth against stereotypes about their Albanianness. The phrase‘afterwards, we made some acquaintances …’ was echoed by many respondents inorder to illustrate that, from a certain point onwards, they started to feel more secureabout their standing in the country. Regularisation turned out to be a turning point intheir lives. Along with their growing familiarity with the country’s social environ-ment, support from their close-knit ethnic networks and their interpersonal relationswith Greeks helped them organise their lives on a more solid basis.

At the individual level, the improvement of their life conditions11 helped Albanianimmigrants retrieve their dignity and self-respect and became a source of empower-ment to renegotiate their social position. Albanian immigrants safeguard their self-esteem through incorporating and presenting a working ethos as part of their identityand taking pride in the achievements of other Albanian immigrants in Greece. Severalof my interviewees expressed a belief that ‘with work you can manage everything’and others denied that Albanian immigrants nowadays only take on jobs that Greeksreject. References were also made to the cultural proximity between Albanians andGreeks. In Lucas’s words: ‘In any case we are not different from Greeks. We are thesame people. We both share a common Balkan culture’.

Although the re-narration of their identity reflected a growing self-confidence andpossibly their faith that a respectable life in Greece is attainable, it did not entail abreak with their initial strategies. Their attempts to strive for social inclusion stillseem to be made through individual strategies aimed at blurring the boundary thatseparates them from Greeks. Those strategies do not always include the entireAlbanian immigrant community. For instance, several of my informants constructeda collective ‘we’ which referred to Albanian people with families or to those who hadhad a prolonged stay in the country. To their group, they ascribed the virtue of beinghard-working, honest, and trustworthy, in contrast to other Albanians who are to beblamed for the ‘bad name Albanians have acquired’. Even second-generationAlbanians distinguish themselves, as people whose upbringing took place in Greece,from those who came to Greece at a later age. They claim the latter carry ‘theAlbanian mentality’, which is considered to be backwards, conservative, andrepressive (Tentokalli 2010).

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The ways in which Albanian immigrants have reacted to their stigmatisation maypartly relate to their migration history as well as to the structure of their ethnicidentity. Dingo (as quoted in Vathi 2010) considers the lack of a single commonreligion as a historical factor that led to the creation of a rather flexible Albanianethnic identity—one that is based on the respect for the family, kinship, and onrespect for the given word. Possibly it is this characteristic of their ethnic identity thatenabled the strategies of dissimulation that Albanian immigrants followed in theirinitial period in Greece. Concerning their migration history, Mai describes thesignificance of a yearning for a ‘Western liberal-democratic normality’ and of a willto break with a collectivist and moralised national landscape, in shaping themigration decisions of younger Albanians. For younger Albanians, who comprisethe largest part of the immigrant population, such images of the Albanian nationwere associated with the renunciation to pleasure and individual self-fulfilment (Mai2005). In their attempt to fulfil their desires, Albanian immigrants found themselvesin the ‘West’, being stigmatised because of a world they themselves rejected; gettingrid of the stigma by dissociating themselves from this world thus appeared thesensible thing to do. The pursuit of this strategy was allowed by a fragmentedAlbanian immigrant community which comprises loosely interconnected kin-basedclose friendship groups and lacks ethnic leadership and organisation.12 Ethnicnormative controls, which can have significant impact on the strategies developedby immigrants with coherent communities (see Esser 1986), are weak for theAlbanians in Thessaloniki.

The specificity of the Albanian migration pattern to a certain extent explains thehigh aspirations for assimilation with which Albanians began their migration project.However, their persisting inability to present themselves in ways congruent with theirown self-conceptions, more than 20 years after the beginning of Albanianimmigration, points to the pervasiveness of the stigma.13 The 2004 victory ofAlbanian national football team over the Greek national team, after it won the Euro-cup, was an exceptional case which mobilised Albanians to demonstrate collectively.Albanian immigrants came out into the streets not only to celebrate victory in a gamewhich had gained symbolic significance but also to claim the right to be ethnicallyvisible. They were violently confronted by a mob of Greeks which included membersof a fascist group.14 Pogrom-like attacks then took place across the country. Thisevent highlights the difficulty which Albanian immigrants face in claiming any rightover their ethnic identity.

Similarly, in Nikopoli, Albanian immigrants may have managed to gain the respectof local Greeks as individuals, but this does not entail their acceptance as Albanians.This is graphically illustrated by the following account. One day during my stay in theneighbourhood, I was having lunch and chatting at a kafenio when a group of threeAlbanians came in. The Albanians joined an older man who was sitting alone, andthey started having a casual and friendly talk. Apparently they were working for him,renovating his house. One of the immigrants mentioned that his mother-in-lawwould be visiting next week. He also mentioned that she was single. Then his friends

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started teasing the old man, saying that he should come over to meet her and maybe,who knows, he could get lucky and develop a relationship with her. All of the sudden,the old man became very serious. He said that there was no way this would happen,because she is Albanian. The others seemed rather surprised and asked him why hesaid that. He replied, ‘Albanians are not trustworthy people’. The immigrants,surprised again, reminded him that they are Albanians too. Very intimately, the oldman reached for the shoulder of one of them and told them

I really have no problem with you all, you are very good guys [πoλύ καλά παιδιά], butstill I cannot trust the Albanians with all those things I hear everyday, you know whatpeople say: ‘It is better to lose your eye than your good name [καλύτερα να σoυ βγει τoµάτι παρά τo όνoµα]’

One of the Albanians continued complaining, but his friend advised him to stop;‘It is ok, don’t say too much’, he told him. The above incident provides evidence thatthe positive opinion endorsed by some of the native residents about their Albanianneighbours did not necessarily entail any change in their ideas about Albanians ingeneral. It is also an illustration of the pervasiveness of the stigma of ‘the Albanianimmigrant’ and the difficulty which Albanian immigrants face in coping with this ineveryday life.

FSU Greeks: Resisting Change—Claiming Equality

FSU Greeks in Nikopoli were not secretive about the Russian influence in theirupbringings. Many people told me stories or gave me information about the republicswhere they had lived and were eager to share with me their experiences in the SovietUnion. FSU Greeks in Nikopoli were also not willing to change their habits, even ifthese appeared foreign to native Greeks. The expectations of native Greeks, in theirview, had no bearing on how they should act. Drinking beer in the street with friends,watching Russian television, speaking in Russian, and building leisure shacks, werenot meant as public statements but were practices aimed at rebuilding the past in thepresent. It was the natives who viewed those practices as provocative anddisrespectful, as evidence of a lack of willingness ‘to integrate’ and of the FSUGreeks’ supposedly false Greek descent. Natives judged the everyday behaviour ofimmigrants by the degree of its compliance to the native norms. Their criteria ofjudgement were stricter in the case of FSU Greeks, due to their expectations about thebehaviour of ‘Greeks’. Interestingly, it is precisely because of their Greek descent andtheir official acceptance in the nation that FSU Greeks are less willing to conform towhat native Greeks expect from them. The official recognition of FSU Greeks as partof the nation empowers them to resist pressure from the dominant society. It alsomakes them unwilling to put up with any offences that the native population mightlevel at them.

Migration to the fatherland did not provide FSU Greeks with the easy and socio-economically secure conditions of life to which they aspired and which they had

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expected to find in Greece. FSU Greeks expressed feelings of bitterness towards theirhistoric homeland for their socio-economic situation. Their disillusionment wasparticularly acute in view of their idealised perceptions of a ‘return to the fatherland’.Maintaining a Greek identity in the FSU, which had often come at a high cost, hadshaped their expectations of migration to Greece (Voutira 2003), and thoseexpectations had also been augmented by state promises.

The inability of the highly educated FSU Greeks to find jobs that matched theirqualifications was an experience that acquired symbolic significance within the FSUGreek community. Several FSU Greeks referred to it as proof of the exploitation thatFSU Greeks faced in ‘the fatherland’. This, together with incidents of mistreatmentby the local and national bureaucracy, was widely discussed, especially among thoseFSU Greeks who were more negative about their migration to Greece. Concerningtheir attitudes about native Greeks, at the time of my research FSU Greeks could beroughly divided in two groups: those who were critical towards their owncommunity, claiming that ‘their people’ were partly or primarily responsible forthe unfavourable image native Greeks attributed to them; and those who put all theblame on native Greeks, accusing them collectively of arrogant and disrespectfulbehaviour. The division reflected a polarisation within the FSU Greek immigrantpopulation over what their strategies in Greece should be, as well as over differentreactions to the native accusations. The more negative group among the FSU Greeksclaimed that natives are soft, lazy, and ignorant, and criticised those who hadextended relationships with them. However, most of my FSU Greek respondents werecritical of such attitudes. They claimed that such views locked them into anunprofitable contest with the natives and did not help them to progress in Greece.For instance, Petros, an FSU Greek from Russia, took a critical stance on what heconsidered as characteristically stubborn FSU Greek behaviour:

Albanians and Armenians are more cunning than we are and rightly so. Pontics arestubborn, I cannot even work with my father … we were working together reallyintensely and I was telling to him take a rest for a bit… nothing, a very proud person[εγωιστής]. At the worst time, when the boss came, he decided to take a rest. I told him,father you know it is not the right time to rest. He replied ‘Hey son, mind your ownbusiness! I am a human too – what do you think that I am made out of iron?’ Suchstubborn behaviour … I do not work with him anymore, he works with his son-in-lawand I work with my best man from my wedding and Albanian colleagues.I have been working with them for years and we are close friends. The Albanians arecunning and that is good for them.

Yet despite their differences, all FSU Greeks fiercely opposed the use of the Russo-Pontic label; they favoured being called Pontic or Greek, and indeed demanded this ofnative Greeks. This was because the label directly questioned the privileges conferredon their repatriate status, and also because it set them apart and once more assignedthem a subordinated minority status. Underlying the decision of virtually all FSUGreeks to migrate to the fatherland was the expectation that there they would

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eventually be able ‘to live among co-ethnics and be accepted by their own people’.Although they soon downscaled the initial high hopes for economic betterment inGreece, that did not mean that they were also willing to tolerate disrespectful attitudesfrom the native society that put them in an inferior social position. Being calledRusso-Pontics or simply Russians was completely unacceptable to them, and they didnot leave slurs on their origin unchallenged.

Interestingly, without underplaying their Greekness, FSU Greeks referred selec-tively to their experience as subjects under the FSU as a source of pride and as ameans to challenge the degrading attitudes of native Greeks towards them. A numberof FSU Greeks evoked a symbolically intriguing ‘we’/‘you’ distinction betweenthemselves, as related to a nation that is in effect a superpower, and natives in Greece.They spoke with admiration of the technological advancements achieved by theSoviet regime and the political influence of present-day Russia. A large segment of myrespondents presented the Soviet education system as superior to the Greek. Theyalso took pride in the rich Russian culture and cherished the state support for art andits popularity among people in the FSU. Stefanos, who had studied fine arts in theFSU, told me ‘there is no national fine arts tradition in Greece … here you only haveBouzoukia’.15 He told me further that a fine arts school close to his hometown inRussia had been founded by an FSU Greek—implying that FSU Greeks couldprogress in FSU despite their minority status, but not in Greece. Rather than positingthemselves as candidate members of the nation and seeking acceptance by displayingtheir practical nationality and renouncing their Soviet past, FSU Greeks asserted theirdifference in order to reinforce their superiority. In that context, they claimed theyare more Greek than the natives since they had kept their nationality despite thepersecutions endured in the FSU.

Conclusion: Difference as the ‘Privilege’ of the Similar

Immigrant–native relations are embedded in a power configuration wherebyimmigrants, especially when of low-class standing, are subordinate categories whose‘difference’ is questioned and devalued. Natives ascribe an established position tothemselves, due to their ability to present themselves as the norm by whichimmigrants have to abide. Immigrants are endowed with different material andsymbolic resources that help them resist the pressure exerted by the native society.Those resources are dependent on their individual socio-economic situation but alsoon the collective categorisations already imposed on them before they come incontact with the dominant society. National narratives and histories commonlycontain information about particular ‘others’. Moreover, migration policies, whichare designed to pursue the interests of the state, confer rights, construct statuses, andcreate differing expectations. National media also circulate information aboutimmigrants, who are judged according to the perceived interests of the state.

Following ideologies of Greekness, Greek immigration policy has been designedwith reference to an ethnic conception of nationality. FSU Greek immigration was

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officially considered an important resource for the country, whereas Albanianimmigration was viewed as threatening both social cohesion and the culturalhomogeneity of the nation. The different treatment of Albanian and FSU Greekmigration by policy-makers and the media impacted on the abilities of theimmigrants to resist pressure and to counter negative views from the dominantsociety. On one hand, Albanians, being a highly stigmatised category with aprecarious legal status, had no option but try to fit in in order to strive for inclusion.They had to actively attest their practical nationality in an attempt to show—counterto native perceptions—that they do not differ from native Greeks. They renegotiatedtheir identity as individuals, in some cases contrasting themselves to ‘the badAlbanians’ and even distancing themselves from their own ethnicity. On the otherhand, FSU Greeks, being more resourceful in both symbolic and substantive terms,due to their official recognition as de facto part of Greek society, were less eager tocomply. Their resulting visibility, together with their weak socio-economic position,gave rise to the prejudiced image of ‘the Russo-Pontic’. FSU Greeks fiercely reject thisimage. However, its mere existence, as well as the fact that FSU Greeks feel the needto react to it, proves that they are not yet fully accepted, despite their favoured imageby media and their privileged reception by the state.

Being from the outset assigned different positions, the members of the twocategories have in fact been striving for different goals. FSU Greeks have aimed atequality with other Greeks, while Albanians have striven for respect in the face oftheir stigmatised ethnic identity. In that context, immigrants who are officiallycategorised as part of the nation appear more different at the local level simplybecause they are more resourceful in their attempt to lead a life which theythemselves think is best for them.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at IMISCOE C7 cluster workshop in Helsinki, 2008and the fourth Hellenic Observatory PhD symposium LSE, London, 2009. The paper partly drawson my PhD research which was supported by an IKY postgraduate scholarship. I wish to thankVaso Papathanasiou and Roman Sevastov for their help in the field, Flip Lindo for his invaluableguidance and feedback in the writing of this paper, Hans Vermeulen for his comments on earlierversions, and the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments. Responsibility for allremaining errors is mine alone.

Notes

[1] The term is neither a term of self-identification nor an ascribed categorical label. It is anetic term whose validity is limited to the analytical treatment in relation to the subjectmatter of the present research, namely to differentiate people of Greek descent whoimmigrated from the FSU from the Greeks already living in Greece. The term ‘FSU Greeks’was preferred over the more commonly used term ‘Soviet Greeks’ because the latter mightbe taken to indicate that Greeks from the FSU collectively identify with the FSU, which isnot the case.

[2] http://geitonies.fl.ul.pt/.

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[3] The largest share of the Greek diaspora in the area that later constituted the Soviet Uniondeveloped through successive population flows from the late eighteenth to the earlytwentieth century. Immigration primarily concerned the Christian Orthodox populations ofEastern Anatolia, notably those of Pontos, a coastal area in the Southeastern Black Searegion.

[4] Even though the uprooting of refugees that followed the Asia Minor Catastrophe islamented as one of the most tragic moments in contemporary Greek history, theirsettlement in Greece is acknowledged as a major resource for development of the Greeknation state.

[5] One may compare the Greek with the German case in that respect. The privilegedmigration of Soviet Germans was meant to accommodate a unique historic event, theexpulsions and repressions that ethnic Germans suffered in the aftermath of World War II(Joppke 2005). Soviet Germans coming after 2010 are not entitled any of the privilegesconferred to their predecessors.

[6] All data presented here are drawn from the analysis in Labrianidis et al. (2008).[7] A considerable segment of FSU Greeks, especially the older generations, spoke the Pontic

Greek dialect in the FSU, but not Modern Greek.[8] Similarly to the majority of FSU Greek immigrants, a considerable segment of the native

Greek population in Nikopoli originates from Pontos. The question of how their commonorigin influenced their relation is too complex to be answered adequately here (seePratsinakis 2013). For our subject matter, it suffices to note that it did not facilitate theirmutual rapprochement.

[9] The data were collected in the context of the GEITONIES project.[10] A segment of the Albanian immigration to Greece concerned Albanian citizens, mainly

from southern Albania, of Greek ethnic origin and the Christian Orthodox religion. Thepolicy reception of ‘Albanian Greeks’ by the Greek state was less favourable than that ofthe FSU Greeks. The state balanced its policy between the proclaimed moral obligationtowards co-ethnics and political considerations whereby Greek Albanians are moreimportant for the state in Albania than in Greece (Pratsinakis 2008).

[11] The overall picture for the Albanian immigrants in Greece has been one of progress. Yetthat should not lead to an idealisation of their conditions. Currently, Greece is entering anew phase in its migration history. While facing an acute economic crisis, young and highlyeducated Greeks are emigrating, immigration from the Balkans are in steady decline, andasylum seekers and undocumented migration from Asia and Middle East and Africa isreaching significant proportions. Research on the impact of those developments on thetrajectories of settled immigrant communities is limited (for an exception, seeMichail 2013).

[12] Many studies have highlighted the low participation rates of Albanian immigrants inassociations (Hatziprokopiou 2003; Lyberaki and Maroukis 2005; Pratsinakis 2005).Moreover, the existing associations generally lack a socio-political character. The lack ofcoherence of the Albanian community is also reflected in their residential patterns(Kokkali 2011).

[13] Here, it is not implied that their stigmatisation is inescapable, but just that their strategieshave not yielded much in that respect so far. Their interpersonal relations with natives,together with their upward socio-economic mobility, may possibly play a positive role inthe long run. Even more important in reducing their stereotyping might turn out to be thehalt of their immigration and the inflow of other undocumented immigrants which aregradually given the role of scapegoats by the dominant society.

[14] Although mainstream media and political parties condemned the pogrom-like attacks,opinions expressed on talk shows and in tabloids such as Espresso, depicted the

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celebrations of Albanian immigrants holding the Albanian flag as unacceptable, or even asan uprising of a dangerous internal enemy (Eleftherotypia, September 18, 2004).

[15] The bouzouki is a Greek popular musical instrument. The word bouzoukia, the plural formof bouzouki, is also used to refer to the entertainment nightclubs where live contemporaryGreek music is performed.

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