The Refugee Crisis and the New Right on the European Periphery Symposium
Spring 2016
10am to 6pm, March 16, 2016
Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 FLB
10am Welcome
Organizers: George Gasyna (Slavic) and Zsuzsa Gille (Sociology)
10:15-11:30 Outside Schengen: Russia and Serbia
AGNIESZKA KUBAL (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University)
Refugees or Migrant Workers? LM and Others (Syrian Nationals) v. Russia [ECHR 2015])
JESSICA GREENBERG (Anthropology, UIUC)
The Refugee Crisis in Serbia
11:30-12:00 Three Spinners [UIUC PhD student initiative]
1:30-3:00 KEYNOTE
JÓZSEF BÖRÖCZ (Department of Sociology, Rutgers University): Materialist Background to ‘the Migration Crisis in Europe.’
3:15-4:30 The Mediterranean
MAURIZIO ALBAHARI (Anthropology, University of Notre Dame)
Europe’s Refugee Question and the Politics of Crisis
MARINA TERKOURAFI (Linguistics, UIUC)
‘Golden Dawn’ and the Refugee Issue in Greece
4:30-5:45 The Other Visegrad Countries
CAROL LEFF (Political Science, UIUC)
Protecting against “Organized Invasion”: The Electoral Politics of the Migrant Crisis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
GEORGE GASYNA (Slavic & Comparative Literature, UIUC)
A Requiem for a Republic – Poland’s Parliamentary Election of 2015
5:45-6:00 Concluding Remarks
Speaker Bios and Abstracts
Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the anthropology of democracy, postsocialism, post-revolutionary and youth politics in the Balkans. Her book entitled After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia was published by Stanford University Press in 2014. Her work has appeared in American Anthropologist, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), Eastern European Politics and Societies, Slavic Review, Language and Communication, and Nationalities papers. Her new research looks at legal cultures and the judicialization of democracy in the European Union.
Marina Terkourafi is a linguist who specializes in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and Greek linguistics. Her fieldwork site is Cyprus, where she has conducted extensive research on the use of politeness markers, the interplay between local and standard codes, and processes of language change since the Middle Ages. She is the recipient of grants by the NSF, ESF, AHRC (UK), and intra-mural grants at the University of Illinois, where she is currently an Associate professor of Linguistics and directs the Discourse, Social Interaction and Translation Lab. Between 2008-2011, she co/directed the Modern Greek Studies program at the University of Illinois, which she helped co-found. She has taught at the Universities of Cyprus and Athens and has been invited to lecture in Europe, South America and in the US. Marina holds a BA in Greek Philology from the University of Athens, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge.
Abstract: ‘Golden Dawn’ and discourses about Immigrants and Refugees in Greece
A disconcerting outcome of the last two parliamentary elections in Greece has been the rise of the far-right party Golden Dawn and its entry into parliament. Analysts have identified a range of causes behind its recent electoral success: the economic crisis and record levels of unemployment; the clientelism of the Greek political system; the long historical roots of authoritarianism, patriarchy, and social conservatism for a segment of the population; and last but not least, parallel developments across Europe and the world. In this talk, I draw on statistical data from the last two decades to propose that the discourses of Golden Dawn are more extreme versions of broader societal discourses also manifested in ideologies about language in Greece over the 19th and 20th centuries and which have since become part of Greek “banal nationalism” (Billig 1995). While these discourses were a part of the nation-building process at the time, the lack of historical awareness and naïve ethnocentrism that accompanied them left Greek society vulnerable and ideologically “ready” to be swayed to political extremes when faced with extreme circumstances (the current economic crisis coupled with the influx of immigrants and refugees).
Maurizio Albahari is the author of Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World’s Deadliest Border (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). He teaches anthropology at the University of Notre Dame (Ph.D. UC Irvine; B.A. University of Florence, Italy). Recent articles focusing on human rights, citizenship, and democracy in light of the ongoing refugee crisis have appeared or are forthcoming in Anthropology Today, Anthropological Quarterly, Anthropology Now, Anthropology News, Social Research, and other interdisciplinary journals. Actively pursuing the intersections of public scholarship and engaged citizenship, Albahari has also published articles and editorials with venues including Perspektif, Fox News, History News Network, and CNN.
Abstract: Europe’s Refugee Question and the Politics of Crisis
Maurizio Albahari will sketch the geopolitical and human dimensions of the ongoing refugee crisis, referencing the specific challenges of maritime migration. In particular, this contribution explicates some of the often unstated questions on the crucial role of Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece, and Turkey, illuminating the burgeoning saliency of pan-European political paradigms that are no longer confined to traditionally Right-wing agendas. Finally, Albahari will highlight the analytical merits of attending to civic mobilization in European coastal locations.
Co-sponsors: Department of English; Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Center; Department of Sociology; School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics; Comparative & World Literature; Germanic Languages and Literatures; Slavic Languages and Literatures; Program in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies; Center for Global Studies; the Program in Jewish Culture and Society; Political Science.