Criteria of citizenship and social inclusion in immigrants’ discourse in Greece.

Abstract

Naturalization criteria play an important role in who can be accepted as a member of a national polity. In the political and social sciences often a distinction is drawn between the right of blood-jus sanguinis-and the right of soil-jus soli-as guiding principles for naturalization. This distinction corresponds to the two different types of nationalism and national belonging identified by Kohn (1945Kohn ( , 1955 namely "ethnic" nationalism and "civic" nationalism. In social psychology this distinction has been used to examine which type of national belonging is more often associated to prejudice against immigrants and their exclusion. Recently approaches informed by social constructionism and discourse analysis examine how citizenship and the exclusion of immigrants are articulated in talk and what interactional goals seem to serve in each occasion. In this paper we examine how immigrants in Greece construct naturalization criteria in talk and how these may relate to the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants. Participants were 25 immigrants who participated in an interview on the current situation in Greece and the new naturalization law. Analyzing the interviews using Rhetorical Psychology, Ideological Dilemmas and Discursive Psychology we argue that participants by ridiculing citizenship criteria they legitimated their own presence within Greece. At the same time, they seemed to exclude other immigrant groups using discourses of legality/illegality. A possible reason for this dilemma, we maintain, is the diverse ideological background of the notion of citizenship, which allows its mobilization towards different ends.

Citizenship deservingness justifies exclusive national boundary making: A socio‐dynamic mixed‐methods approach to social representations of citizenship

“…Participants evoked arguments such as ‘Grand‐parents came when we needed workforce’ and ‘their parents were already born in Switzerland’, but also ‘previous generations could have undergone the procedure for them’. Contrary to previous findings on the exclusivist function of ethnic criteria (Meeus et al, 2010; Pehrson & Green, 2010; Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2018), ethnic criteria based on descendants and inheritance were mobilized here more inclusively. As for the theme on proven assimilation, however, in a few cases, reference to ancestors was used to exclude third‐generation immigrants from the moral entitlement of citizenship for alleged faults that were not their own.…”

Dilemmas of sexual citizenship: A critical social psychological analysis of Civil Union law representations in Greek Cypriot newspapers

“…Nevertheless, relatively recent publications (Barnes, Auburn, & Lea, 2004; Condor, 2011) from a broadly social constructionist approach (e.g. Figgou, 2016; Gibson & Hamilton, 2011; Kadianaki & Andreouli, 2015; Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2017) have begun to develop a critical social psychological approach to citizenship (Andreouli, 2019). This approach, which is adopted in this paper, focuses on the ways that the concept of citizenship is constructed from the bottom-up.…”

Greek talk on migration: Constructions of modernity differentials and cultural hierarchy.

“…Discursive research has also focused, recently, on the politically thorny issue of granting citizenship status to immigrants (Kadianaki & Andreouli, 2015;Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2018). In Sapountzis and Xenitidou's (2018) study, immigrants would often argue against legislating citizenship testing, on the premise that this would prevent immigrants from entering Greece, a State that, they would argue, guarantees basic humanitarian needs, something that their country of origin could not provide. In doing so, they positioned themselves and their country of origin as premodern vis-à-vis the modern Greek State.…”

“…The data of this study were derived from six focus groups, in which 18 young male and female Greek students from a British university participated. The second study was conducted in 2012-2014 in Thessaloniki (Sapountzis & Xenitidou, 2018). In this study, individual and group interviews were conducted with both males and females-25 Greek citizens and 25 immigrants, mainly from Albania (n = 16).…”