Homeland-Diaspora Relations in Flux

Political elites and diaspora party politics during the crisis years

Historically, the Greek homeland perceived and approached Greek diasporas as sources of philanthropic funding, economic remittances and lobbying on matters of Greek national foreign policy interest. Since the late 1970s, the Greek state, for its part, has attempted to formalise this interaction through the creation of concrete institutions with varying degrees of success. The Greek crisis and the recent wave of migration has added new meanings and dimensions to the Greek homeland-Greek diasporas nexus. We consider this period as a significant moment in the redefinition of the Greek diaspora’s role from the Greek state perspective for three reasons: first, there is new significant wave of migration, added to the already existing Greek migrants abroad, whose identity and functionality is different from the previous waves (new identity); second, the depth of the economic crisis has added new dimensions in the potential contribution of the Greek diaspora from a homeland perspective (new issues); third, the global context of state-diasporas engagement has been changing in terms of connectivity and communication beyond the strictly speaking state policies (new instruments). Our paper, seeks to look at the Greek homeland diaspora nexus, since the beginning of the Greek crisis in 2009, from an institutional, policy making and discourse (rhetorical/ideological) perspectives. In order to achieve the aforementioned goal, we focused on the position of political elites between 2009-2017, by scrutinising debates in the Greek parliament and conducting semi-structured interviews.

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