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Crisis and Chimeras; an Anthropological investigation of the stories and lives of young, Greek professional migrants living in post-referendum UK

CHALCRAFT, HOLLY,ALICE,KATE (2022) Crisis and Chimeras; an Anthropological investigation of the stories and lives of young, Greek professional migrants living in post-referendum UK. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.

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Author-imposed embargo until 31 May 2024.

Abstract

This PhD thesis is based on my ethnographic study of Greek professional migrants living in London, England. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork between 2018-2020, using methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviewing, my thesis explores the stories and lives of Greek migrants living in London, in the context of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union; a process known as ‘Brexit’. My thesis explores the impacts of the financial crisis and Brexit on my informants’ hopes for the future, which I explore through the lens of temporality and affect. In the context of financial crisis, some of my informants felt that life in Greece had become miseri (miserable); they felt that Greece’s potentiality for modernist success had become a chimera- illusory and impossible to achieve. In my thesis I apply theories of crypto-colonialism to explore these informants’ view of Greece as ‘behind’ the rest of Europe, and I argue that many modernists are now post-ambivalent in relation to the disemia (Eastern/Western sides) of Greek identity because they no longer consider Greece to be their home. In my thesis I explore emplacement and displacement beyond a spatial framework and contribute to anthropological understandings of the ‘abject’ and the ‘uncanny’. I reform existing approaches to xenitia (misery and hardship abroad); I view xenitia as a trope rather than a topological register. Throughout my thesis I explore the affective, (micro)material and sensory aspects of migration and belonging and I demonstrate the value of a negative methodological approach.

Item Type:Thesis (Doctoral)
Award:Doctor of Philosophy
Keywords:crisis; migration; Brexit; Greece; temporality; affect; negative methodology; rhizomatic; abject; uncanny; ethnographic; hopes; chimera; crypto-colonialism; East; West; identity; Europe; home; emplacement; displacement; materiality; xenitia; miseria
Faculty and Department:Faculty of Social Sciences and Health > Anthropology, Department of
Thesis Date:2022
Copyright:Copyright of this thesis is held by the author
Deposited On:01 Jun 2023 08:27

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