Public Discourses and Attitudes in Greece during the Crisis


Book Description

This book presents the findings of new empirical research regarding shifts in public discourses and attitudes in Greek society as a result of the crisis. These findings have shown different shades of Euroscepticism and anti-German sentiments, but they have also revealed a normative conflict within Greek society itself. The book shows how economic crises and strict policy conditionality, causing or deepening economic recession in the countries receiving it, has the potential to set in motion a fragmentation process, which transcends standard material stratification and relates to broader political and even cultural rifts among the population. With this, the book serves as a case study of the impact of wider pressures and shifts weighing upon the European Union (EU) and the way European societies perceive the integration process. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU politics, Greek and Southern European studies and more broadly to cultural and comparative politics and political economy and European politics.




The "Greek Crisis" in Europe


Book Description

The "Greek Crisis" in Europe: Race, Class and Politics, analyses the publicity of the so-called "Greek crisis" by deploying critical theory and cultural studies perspectives. The study discloses racial and class media biases, and their associations with austerity.




South-North Migration of EU Citizens in Times of Crisis


Book Description

This open access book looks at the migration of Southern European EU citizens (from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece) who move to Northern European Member States (Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom) in response to the global economic crisis. Its objective is twofold. First, it identifies the scale and nature of this new Southern European emigration and examines these migrants’ socio-economic integration in Northern European destination countries. This is achieved through an analysis of the most recent data on flows and profiles of this new labour force using sending-country and receiving-country databases. Second, it looks at the politics and policies of immigration, both from the perspective of the sending- and receiving-countries. Analysing the policies and debates about these new flows in the home and host countries’ this book shows how contentious the issue of intra-EU mobility has recently become in the context of the crisis when the right for EU citizens to move within the EU had previously not been questioned for decades. Overall, the strength of this edited volume is that it compiles in a systematic way quantitative and qualitative analysis of these renewed Southern European migration flows and draws the lessons from this changing climate on EU migration.




New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought


Book Description

New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought brings to the light and discusses a strand in contemporary Greek public debate that is often overlooked, namely progressive religious actors of a western orientation. International - and Greek - media tend to focus on the extreme views and to categorise positions in the public debate along well known dichotomies such as traditionalists vs. modernsers. Demonstrating that in late modernity, parallel to rising nationalisms, there is a shift towards religious communities becoming the central axis for cultural organization and progressive thinking, the book presents Greece as a case study based on empirical field data from contemporary theology and religious education, and makes a unique contribution to ongoing debates about the public role of religion in contemporary Europe.




The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens


Book Description

This book unveils the significant impact of the European integration process on the political thinking of European citizens. With close attention to the interrelation between social and political divisions, it shows that an integrated Europe promotes consensus but also propagates growing dissent among its citizens, with both objective inequalities and the subjective perception of these inequalities fuelling political dissent. Based on original data sets developed from two EU-funded projects across eight and nine European countries, the volume demonstrates the important role played by the social structure of European social space in conditioning political attitudes and preferences. It shows, in particular, that Europeans are highly sensitive to unequal living conditions between European countries, thus affecting their political support of national politics and the European Union. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in Europe and the European Union, European integration and political sociology.




Revolt and Crisis in Greece


Book Description

In December 2008, the world watched as Greece plunged into-an unprecedented crisis, both social and economic, the effects of which would be felt around the world. In this new volume of essays edited and introduced by members of the Occupied London collective, over two dozen writers analyze the Greek uprising, contextualising the city and state from which it arose, exploring the waves of crisis that followed in its wake, and theorising the future of global revolt. Book jacket.




Challenging Mobilities in and to the EU during Times of Crises


Book Description

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.




Solidarity in the Media and Public Contention over Refugees in Europe


Book Description

This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception.




Crisis and Ontological Insecurity


Book Description

This book develops a novel way of thinking about crises in world politics. By building on ontological security theory, this work conceptualises critical situations as radical disjunctions that challenge the ability of collective agents to ‘go on’. These ontological crises bring into the realm of discursive consciousness four fundamental questions related to existence, finitude, relations and autobiography. In times of crisis, collective agents such as states are particularly attached to their ontic spaces, or spatial extensions of the self that cause collective identities to appear more firm and continuous. These theoretical arguments are illustrated in a case study looking at Serbia’s anxiety over the secession of Kosovo. The author argues that Serbia’s seemingly irrational and self-harming policy vis-à-vis Kosovo can be understood as a form of ontological self-help. It is a rational pursuit of biographical continuity and a healthy sense of self in the face of an ontological crisis triggered by the secession of a province that has been constructed as the ontic space of the Serbian nation since the late 19th century.




The Flight of Icarus


Book Description

This book provides a detailed analysis of the institutional transformations brought about by the financial crisis, focusing on the institution-building course of Europe and the Constitution-bending course in several Member States. It discusses the seemingly contradictory interplay between national and European institutions and the law resulting from the crisis, arguing that the anti-crisis exceptionality constitutes the matrix of the new normality of the reformed European economic governance. The author carries out a critical analysis of the new economic governance and its case-law with regular reference to relevant political episodes, key economic figures and to the hitherto lax modes and rules. The author also offers deep insights into the Greek adjustment programme and the crisis-related Greek and Portuguese constitutional case-law, presented in comparison with the German and French case-law. The book concludes with a critical overview of the profound mutations in the role of national Constitutions, instigated by the new European economic governance, and the emergence of a democratically deficient meta-constitutional mode of functioning of both the European institutions and national Constitutions.