Sunday 24 November 2019 4:30pm to 7:00pm
Buckingham House Conference Centre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF
About
Sunday, 24 November, 2019 - 16:30 to 19:00 - for more details, click here.
As part of its new series of seminars and lectures on Greek and Byzantine issues, Greek Dialogues, The Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies, together with The Cambridge Hellenic Learned Society, presents a seminar on the development of the Greek diaspora.
To book, please email: camlearnhelsoc@gmail.com.
The Great Migration features presentations by two leading figures in the field of Greek and Byzantine Studies:
Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature
A Forgotten Migration: Greek Child Adoptees Sent to the USA in the 1950s and 1960s
"My talk offers a first introduction to a Greek American adoption history and migration movement, set against the backdrop of the global Cold War. It is the first project to study the biopolitics of the adoption movement from Greece to the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The vehicle of the mass international adoptions of Greek-born children symbolically (and no less physically) marked the transition to a new political and ideological status quo that sought to balance the democratic West against the communist East--but at what cost? This overseas adoption movement places a fitting lens on American as well as Greek foreign policies, security concerns, refugee and migration provisions, and other external affairs, which were integral parts of the Cold War project. The mass adopting-out of Greek children to America proves to be the most concrete example of the politics of dependence on the United States. The Greek adoptees’ (shaken) identities have infused the lived experiences of their descendants, and they co-exist, in multiple ways, with American and European transnational identities. Similar experiences play out again in the current migration crisis."
and
Director of South East European Studies (SEESOX)
Rethinking Greek diaspora-homeland relations, in the wake of the Greek economic crisis.
"My presentation will present some highlights from a “Greek Diaspora Project” which we have been operating at SEESOX (South East European Studies of the University of Oxford) since 2016. The project focuses on the links between Greek diaspora and homeland during the period of the country’s recent economic depression. Drawing from this project, I will touch upon some general recent diasporic trends, such as the impact of brain drain on the Greek economy and society, or the Greek diaspora’s political engagement with Greece, including the issue of vote. My talk will then focus on the empirical study of the Greek diaspora in the UK and how this has evolved following the recent surge in the number of people emigrating from crisis-ridden Greece. I will discuss issues such as reasons for leaving, integration of Greeks into the UK environment, links with homeland and the impact of Brexit. This empirical study draws from a recent survey conducted by our team, based on a scientifically tested, representative sample of Greeks across the UK. "