Heirs of the Greek catastrophe: The social life of Asia Minor refugees in Piraeus

The European Studies Centre (ESC) in collaboration with South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) held a book discussion on the experiences of the Greek population of Asia Minor who settled in Greece after the population exchange agreement through the 1923 Lausanne Convention. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, written by Professor Renée Hirschon, was first published in 1989, whilst its third edition was published to commemorate the centenary of the Lausanne Convention.

The discussion was held on 25 October 2023, and it was chaired by Michael Llewellyn Smith, Fellow at St. Antony’s College. Renée Hirschon – Senior Research Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford – presented the third edition of the book, while Robin Cohen – Emeritus Professor at Kellogg College, Oxford – and Başak Kale – Associate Professor at the Middle East Technical Institute – discussed the contributions of the book to the research on the topic and more broadly concerning questions of identity, belonging, nationalism, migration, and memory.

During the presentation of the book, Professor Hirschon provided some historical context to her research approach, discussed the key objective of the research, and presented some of the key themes. She first underlined some changes in the names of the locations where the field work had been conducted due to confidentiality concerns. The reader of the third edition should be aware that in the third edition “Nea Ephsus” is used instead of “Kokkinia” and/or “Nikaia”, while “Yerania” has replaced “Germanika”. The author then underscored that the research she was conducting in the 1970s was not part of what we may call today “refugee studies” or “migration studies”. The field did not exist at the time and in 1972, when Hirschon was conducting the research, the worldwide population of forcibly displaced persons was approximately 3.2 million. The purpose of the research conducted in the 1970s was to understand the interaction between the use of space and cultural values. But given the exponential growth of the worldwide number of forcibly displaced persons, she revisits her work and seeks to determine whether “we can learn something from the experience of people who were forcibly displaced in the early 1920s and whether that experience is relevant for us today”.

The unmixing of peoples

On 10 October, Lea Ypi visited SEESOX to discuss her forthcoming book, Indignity, and share a full chapter from it. The event provided a fascinating glimpse into Ypi’s latest work, which investigates historical injustice, the nature of dignity, and the interplay between truth and imagination.

Ypi began by recounting the inspiration for the book, sparked by the discovery of a 1941 photograph of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Italian Alps—an image posted by a stranger on social media. The photograph, which contradicted the family narrative that all records of her grandmother’s youth had been destroyed during the early days of communism in Albania, raised unsettling questions for Ypi.

In her talk, Ypi described how Indignity explores these questions through a reimagining of the past. The book takes readers into the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy in Salonica, the making of modern Greece and Albania, the horrors of World War II, and the rise of communism in the Balkans. She explained how her investigation drew on secret police archives, court depositions, and family anecdotes, blending fact and fiction to grapple with uncertainty and the fragility of truth.

Ypi also reflected on her grandmother’s enigmatic life. Why did Leman speak French if her family had lived in the Ottoman Empire? What drove her to Tirana, where she met a socialist sympathizer whose father led a collaborationist government? And, perhaps most intriguingly, why was she smiling in that 1941 photograph while the world was at war?

Schengen enlargement: Are Bulgaria and Romania second-class EU Member States?

SEESOX hosted its first seminar of the Michaelmas Term on 11 October, on the theme of Schengen Enlargement and whether Bulgaria and Romania are in fact second-class EU Member States. It brought together Dragos Tudorache (Member of European Parliament), Sophie in’t Veld (Member of the European Parliament – online) and Eli Gateva (Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford), and was chaired by Jonathan Scheele (SEESOX).

Tudorache began by pointing out that the current impasse was a symptom of the problems of the Brussels decision making process. He recalled the timeline of the issue, noting that the two countries had completed all the technical work necessary to join Schengen in 2011, as originally foreseen. The first delays were provoked by Romanian backsliding on 2009/10 on judicial reforms, leading the Commission to make a link between these and Schengen enlargement, thus providing a useful alibi for certain Member States. A new President and government in 2014/15 tried hard, in discussion with the Member States concerned (France, Germany, Netherlands) to resolve the issue and at the end of 2015 the first two were ready, but the Netherlands held out, principally for domestic political reasons. This situation continued until 2022, when everything seemed to be lined up for agreement in the autumn; however, Austria then raised concerns for the first time and Netherlands was then no longer ready to move, while other Member States preferred not to push the matter.

The consequences for Romania are significant; in economic terms, a two day wait for trucks on the border costs billions and threatens any just-in-time manufacturing processes. It also creates a two-tier system at Schengen borders for citizens of another Member State. Furthermore, it strengthens support for the (new) extreme right in Romania who exploit this as “a humiliation” of the country; this could have implications in the various elections in 2024. Hopes of isolation of Austria remained, but efforts at discussion had been rebuffed.