Challenging Mobilities in and to the EU during Times of Crises

This open access book offers a cross-disciplinary view of challenging mobility issues for migrants and refugees in Europe and particularly Greece during the last decade when the economic and refugee crises coincided. It offers new analyses and data on a diverse range of topics concerning new emigrants as well as refugees and mobilities in Greece. The book covers themes which are not only related to refugee and immigrant integration and governance challenges, but also describes host attitudes, solidarity, political and protest claims in the public sphere, as well as the changing emigration environment in Greece within a European context. With contributions from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, geography and linguistics, this book provides a unique resource for students and scholars, but also for policy-makers and social scientists working on migration-related issues within and beyond Europe.

“Based on the premise that migration cannot be detached from the wider economic and political context in which it takes place, this carefully scripted edited collection on Greece addresses Europe’s most dramatic case of migration linked to times of crisis. In addition to its longer history of labour migration and brain drain, Greece was on the front line of two major crisis epochs: the post-2008 financial meltdown and the mass influx of Syrian and other refugees during 2015–16. This book contains a rich menu of interdisciplinary analyses of various aspects of these migration episodes, the foretaste of more to come with the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine exodus. The volume will be a unique resource for scholars, students and policy-makers alike.” (Russell King, Professor of Geography, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, co-author of Young EU Migrants in London in the Transition to Brexit (Routledge 2022), co-editor of Handbook on Return Migration (Edward Elgar 2022) and Onward Migration and Multi-Sited Transnationalism (Springer 2022)) 

“The salience of ‘crisis’ for contemporary democracies has become a key issue in current debates. Challenging Mobilities in and to the EU during Times of Crises: The case of Greece addresses in full the long-lasting and ‘ubiquitous’ crisis through which Greece has been going since 2008, facing worldwide shocking events such as global recession, war in Syria and Covid. An impressive multidisciplinary team of contributors provide a pathbreaking collection that, albeit focused especially on Greece, tells us so much on the world around us.” (Manlio Cinalli, Professor of Sociology (University of Milan and Sciences Po Paris)

“This superb collection stands out from the many books about the Greek migration and refugee experience due to its multi-disciplinary approach and its firm anchoring in the socio-economic framework of the crises faced by Greece over the last decade. The diverse perspectives and levels of analysis adopted serve to highlight the complexity of mobility processes and the contested, constantly shifting landscape on which strategies and decisions are shaped by people on the move and by related actors such as humanitarian organisations and government authorities. The volume at hand very effectively illuminates the immensity of the challenges posed by migration and asylum-seeking, along with the high stakes in play for social cohesion. A must-read for academics, policy-makers, and actors on the ground.” (Jennifer Cavounidis has researched various phases of the migration experience of Greece, beginning with the massive inflows of the 1990s. She has published dozens of articles in international journals (most recently in the Journal of Refugee Studies) and numerous books (most recently The Emigration of Greeks and Diaspora Engagement Policies for Economic Development))

“Coordinated by Maria Kousis, Aspasia Chatzidaki and Konstantinos Kafetsios, this volume offers a very timely, impressive and competent compilation of exemplary research addressing the current state of migration and asylum studies in Greece in times of crises and beyond. This publication not only captures the moment of migrant and refugee research in a country that has been and continues to be at the epicentre of European interest, but is also destined to become one of the reference works for future migration researchers.” (Apostolos Papadopoulos, Director of the Institute for Social Research, National Center of Social Research and Professor at Harokopio University, Athens)

“Crisis related mobilities are without doubt, one of the most burning issues of our time. The complex and multi-faceted migrations that Europe has experienced over the last decade are not just episodic events linked to particular regions, countries or populations, but one of the major challenges contemporary Europe and the world are facing. Opening a perspective from the South Europeanperiphery, this thought-provoking collection of studies offers a much deeper investigation of the so-called refugee crisis in the context of the economic and financial crisis and more recently also the health crisis. The book collects fresh insights and theoretically driven explanations from Greece, a country that was already the epicentre of the Eurozone crisis after 2008, and has since then become one of the main-gates of migration to Europe. It is a must-read for everyone who wishes to deepen their understanding of the history and path dependencies of the European crises and migrations.” (Hans-Joerg Trenz, Professor at Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Florence)

Maria Kousis (Ph.D, The University of Michigan, 1984) is Professor of Sociology and former director of the University of Crete Research Centre for the Humanities, the Social and Education Sciences (UCRC) (9/2014-11/2021). She was coordinator or partner in European Commission projects including Grassroots Environmental Action, TEA, PAGANINI and MEDVOICES. Her publications consist of 16 edited volumes, books, or special issues, 43 journal articles and 39 book chapters. Recent publications include, Transnational solidarity in times of crises: Citizen organisations and collective learning in Europe, focused on the fields of migration, disability and unemployment (Eds.: C. Lahusen, U. Zschache and M. Kousis, Palgrave, 2021) and Transnational Solidarity Organizations in Times of Crises – Comparative European Perspectives (Eds.: M. Kousis and C. Lahusen, special section of Sociological Research Online, 2021). Her research centres on Social Change, Contentious Politics, Crisis and Society, Environmental Politics, Bioethics and Southern Europe. Recent work focuses on the socio-economic and political dimensions of hard times, especially in the context of the research projects ‘The Greeks, the Germans and the Crisis’ (GGCRISI, Greek-German Ministries Cooperation), ‘Living with Hard Times: How European Citizens Deal with Economic Crises and Their Social and Political Consequences’ (LIVEWHAT, EC, FP7), ‘European Paths to Transnational Solidarity in times of crisis’ (TransSOL, EC, Horizon 2020),  EURYKA (EC, Horizon 2020) and ‘Social and Solidarity Economy, Urban Communities and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups’ (Swiss Network for International Studies).

Aspasia Chatzidaki holds a BA in Greek Philology (University of Thessaloniki, Greece), an MA in Theoretical Linguistics (University of Reading, UK), and a Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium). She is Professor at the Department of Primary Education of the University of Crete and Director of the Centre for Intercultural and Migration Studies of the same Department. In addition, she served as member of the UCRC Board on two separate occasions (7/2012-8/2014, 9/2016-11/2021). Her research interests include the study of sociolinguistic and educational aspects of bilingualism as well as Greek as a second language both in Greece and in diasporic communities. In the past twenty years she has taken part in numerous educational intervention programmes and teacher capacity-building seminars regarding the education of immigrant and refugee students. She is the author of a book (‘Teaching Bilingual Students; theoretical issues and educational approaches,’ Athens, Pedio, 2020) and co-editor of a book on educational aspects of ‘new migration’ from Greece (Panagiotopoulou, A., Rosen, L., Kirsch, C. & Chatzidaki, A. (Eds.) (2019) ‘New’ Migration of Families from Greece to Europe and Canada ‒A ‘New’ Challenge for Education? Springer Verlag) and another one on refugee education (Chatzidaki, A. & Tsokalidou, P. Challenges and Initiatives in Refugee Education: the case of Greece. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020). Her recent research focuses on the reconceptualisation of Greek-language education abroad in the light of recent migration from Greece.

Konstantinos Kafetsios (Ph.D. Lancaster University) is a Professor in Social Psychology at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki and visiting Professor in Social and Organizational Psychology at Palacký University in the Czech Republic. He has held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge School of Social and Political Sciences, the Department of Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Crete, where he was also a member of the board of the University of Crete Research Center for the Humanities, the Social and Education Sciences (UCRC) (9/2016-9/2019). Research in his lab addresses emotional and social interactionphenomena across cultural and social-organizational contexts. This research has received research funding from the European Commission, EEA, the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, GACR, and the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and the European Journal of Social Psychology while on the editorial board of several international journals and as a reviewer for international funding agencies in the social and behavioral sciences