The Returnees

Abstract

This historical study examines the role that Greek immigrants in the United States played in the economic, social and cultural transformation of their communities of origin between the late 19th century and the outbreak of World War II. It highlights the ways and the means through which, as well as the sectors in and the extent to which, rural populations in Greek villages communicated with their migrant communities and were also influenced by their transatlantic mobility and by economic, material and cultural flows. Drawing on the growing academic literature on “transnational social fields” and “social remittances” it describes the transnational social space which was created between Greek agrarian provinces and American cities through translocal contacts and transborder exchanges maintained by migrants and non-migrants and facilitated by social networks, hometown associations and the technology of the era. The book analyzes systematically the economic, social and cultural impacts of migration in their home communities as well as in the urban cities in which many of the returnees settled. At the same time, it explores the power asymmetries that largely determined the scope of transformations, the negotiation strategies and the ruptures that occurred in the transnational field connecting migrants with non-migrants.