LIVING AND CARING BETWEEN TWO CULTURES

Abstract

The ethnic minority home has often been described as the starting point where the ethnic language, the cultural values and norms are initially passed on through the family hierarchy, gender relations and kinship networks. Indeed, many studies refer to the traditional family unit as the basic unit of support for Greek Diaspora communities around the world. The home has often been seen as the women's domain, with gender relations playing an important role in reproducing social capital, reinforcing the cultural norms of the historic ‘homeland’ and negotiating the provision of care. The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary exploration of these issues in relation to Greek communities in Britain and their transnational family networks with particular emphasis on a Greek-British family. Furthermore, I will examine the meanings attached to the notion of ‘home’ in a transnational context and the management and reproduction of ethnic identities between home and host constructions. Narrative life-story data of one female participant will form the empirical basis of this discussion.

Le foyer de l'immigré a souvent été décrit comme le point de départ de transmission de la langue, des valeurs et des normes culturelles de sa minorité ethnique dès lors liée à la hiérarchie familiale, aux rôles féminins et masculins et aux réseaux de parenté. Beaucoup d’études font référence au noyau familial traditionnel en tant que référence première pour la Diaspora à travers le monde. Le foyer est souvent vu comme le domaine d'action de la femme, les rapports homme/femme jouant un rôle important dans la reproduction du capital social. Tous ces éléments renforcent les normes culturelles de la ‘patrie’ d'origine et fournissent l'essentiel des ressources affectives. Le projet de cet article est de donner une première approche de la question fondée sur l'approche des communautés grecques au Royaume Uni et celle de leurs réseaux familiaux transnationaux, le cas d'une famille ayant été plus particulièrement approfondie. L'article examine le sens attaché à la référence au ‘chez soi’ dans un contexte transnational ainsi que la manière de gérer l'identité ethnique et de la reproduire entre construction du pays de départ et du pays d'accueil.

ethnicité, identité, diaspora grecque, genre, récits, obligations familiales

Keywords:

• ethnicity, identity, Greek Diaspora, gender, narratives, family obligations

Notes

1. This work was carried out as part of the Ethnicity strand of the Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group at London South Bank University.

2. Among other places I visited the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at City University of New York, the Department of Sociology at Harvard University in Boston, the Center for European Studies at the University of Connecticut, the Department of Sociology at UCLA in Los Angeles, the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) in Athens, Greece.

3. The Symposium was jointly organized by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and La Trobe University, Australia.

4. From interview with Dr Anastasia Christou during my fieldwork in Athens in May–June 2004.

5. From interview with Dr Anna Karpathakis during my fieldwork in New York in October–November 2003.

6. From interview conducted with Dr Anastasia Panagakos during my fieldwork in California in October-November 2003.

7. From interview conducted with Dr Maratou-Alipranti during my fieldwork in Athens in May–June 2004.

8. To protect anonymity her name has been changed.

9. It is important to mention here my own position not only as a sociologist and interviewer but also as a Greek woman living in the UK and therefore sharing some common cultural understandings with the interviewee.

10. In all of our discussions we talked in Greek. Here I provide the exact translation in English but in some parts I have also included some of the phrases or expressions in Greek because they showed sentiment that was difficult to translate in English.

11. The question of whether people identify themselves and others as English or British represents an interesting issue in its own right. Anna characterized her children as British (rather than English) due to their dual cultural and ethnic heritage (Greek-English).

12. Nevertheless, studies of second and third generation Greek migrants in America have shown that although the Greek language played an important role, a sense of ‘Greekness’ was also maintained and experienced through other important identity signifiers and practices like religion, food and ethnic networks (Orfanos, 2002; Tsemberis et al., 1999).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Venetia Evergeti

Venetia Evergeti (formerly Families Group, LSBU) is Senior Research Fellow in Ethnicity and Social Policy at Middlesex University, London. Her academic and research interests are in interactionist sociology and the ethnographic study of ethnicity and identity. Within this field she has explored identification processes among Muslim communities in Greece; the relationship of ethnicity to family and kinship; and Greek communities in the UK and their transnational networks