Join us for the next session of the Migration Working Group with these presentations:
Greek diasporic communities in Belgian Congo, South Rhodesia and Tanganyika: The instability of whiteness and the ambivalent placement of Eastern Mediterranean migrants in colonialism, 1890s-1960s by Fotis Papadopoulos, PhD Researcher, Department of History and Civilisation, EUI
Discussants: Ioannis Chalkos, PhD Researcher, Department of History and Civilisation, EUI & Maria Adamopoulou, Doctor of History from EUI
Abstract
In the early 20th century, Greek migration to Africa was sporadic, individually planned -sometimes even a result of a shipwreck- and very small in numbers. During the interwar period and until decolonisation, these communities grew steadily through colonial networks or what has been described in academic literature as chain migration, meaning that a person after would bring their family to the host country economically establishing themselves. Most Greeks in Sub-Saharan Africa were originally from the Dodecanese Italian colonies (united with Greece after 1948), Cyprus and Egypt, which suggests a kind of colonial network or accommodation to colonial institutions. On the contrary, migrants from Greece originated from impoverished village communities in Ionian and Aegean Islands.
This paper seeks to demonstrate how migration trends of Greeks to Africa changed from the colonial era until the first years after decolonisation. Until the Second World War, this migration was unplanned and more to the interest of already established Greek business in Africa as well as colonial administration rather than to the Greek state. This changed in the post-war years. Greece suffered from significant economic problems and unemployment after the civil war (1946-1949). The Greek political elite believed that mass migration would solve the problem of unemployment, which was associated with the spread of communism in Greece. Thus, there was more active engagement of the Greek state to Africa. Specifically, Greek policymakers aspired to boost the Greek economy by establishing Greek migrant communities all over Africa, which would have more access to resources and cheap labour for the manufacturing industries.
The effect of human values on attitude towards immigration in Denmark and Sweden by Anne Sofie Cornelius Nielsen, PhD Researcher, Department of Political and Social Sciences, EUI
Discussants: Ioana Elena Oana, Research Fellow, EUI & James Dennison, Professor, Migration Policy Centre, EUI
Abstract
In February 2016 the Danish minister of Integration Inger Støjberg issued a press release stating that asylum seeking couples where the female is under-aged should automatically be separated, even in cases where they had children, in order to protect the under-aged partner. This press release is incredibly interesting as it plays on two different and contradicting human value dimensions ‘Conservation’ and ‘Self-Transcendence’. On the one hand the separation of asylum-seeking couples is an anti-immigration measure, as it imposes on their rights to be individually assessed and can cause couples to not seek asylum in Denmark. On the other hand, separating them can potentially protect girls who have been forced into marriage. An individual’s attitude towards this issue will therefore depend on which human value dimension an individual prioritises, meaning identifying the most important values is essential to understand an individual’s political behaviour.
Values are an essential part of our choices and attitudes, as an individual, when determining their attitude, will seek towards whichever direction supports the realisation of their prioritised values. Using a linear regression model with data from the European Social Survey between 2008-2018, this paper therefore shows how the 10 different values presented by Schwartz (1992) affects our attitude towards immigration in the cases of Sweden and Denmark. Despite these two countries being extremely comparable in most aspects they diverge on which values are important for an individual’s attitude to immigration, with individuals from Denmark relying heavily on conservation and universalism values, and individuals from Sweden relying on a much broader spectrum of values.
Chair: Alexandra Karaiskou, PhD Researcher, Department of Law, EUI