Contemporary European Regionalisms and Social Ties: : Recent Immigration, Neo-Rurality, and Opportunities for Ethnography in the Greek Countryside

Greece is currently experiencing an unprecedented influx of immigrants who are facilitating a repopulation and reterritorialization of rural areas in particular. The significance of this phenomenon has only recently been recognized in the agendas of Greek government policy or national discourse. This paper reviews relevant literature and suggests a research agenda that examines the roles immigrants, in conjunction with new agricultural markets, agro-pastoral production and consumption activities, and technologies, are beginning to play in the local reassessment of ethnicity, kinship relations, and rurality. Notably, despite exclusion from political citizenship in general, the civic integration of some immigrants is emerging vis-à-vis new socio-economic niches in this ‘neo-rural’ milieu. This integration should be examined alongside an acknowledgement of the generic xenophobia that prevails in Greece in order to thoroughly consider the new cultural boundaries that are defining Greek people and places in the new European context.