Greek Immigrants Research Articles

The perceptions of Greek immigrants in Germany about the health illness and pain in the context of mental health

AimThis study aims to investigate the perceptions of health, disease and pain issues among Greek immigrant, living in Germany, as they were formed through their previous experiences, their immigration routes and their experiences in a new sociocultural environment, while taking under consideration their varying cultural backgrounds.Material-methodThis research was based on the personal interpretations of ten Greek immigrant (6 women and 4 men). As to methodology, qualitative research was employed. The methodological tools used for the collection of the material were semi-structured interviews (face to face), participant observation and a field diary. Finally, the method of analysis used for the empirical material was content thematic analysis.ResultsAll participants experienced immigration as an especially stressful period of their lives that changed their state of health (these changes extend from physical complaints to manifestation of depression). Most person describe life in Germany as difficult due to various problems (loss of relatives and friends’ social networks, poor language knowledge, isolation, etc.). However, the public health system's organization (regardless any flaws), which ensures their access to health services, positively contributed in changing their attitudes regarding the issues under question. Lastly, the reference to psycho-traumatic situations, transitional life phases, as well as to stimuli in the difficult everyday life feed person's meaning-makings about pain.ConclusionsThe research's results showed that health and disease are not only biologically determined phenomena. They also are socially determined situations, given that they are not only related to changes in the individual's psychology but are influenced by the broader sociocultural environment in which the individual lives and works.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

The deportation of greek settlers to siberia in the 17th century: routes and destinies

This article is devoted to the exile of Greeks to Siberia during the first half of the 17th century. Siberia’s colonisation by voluntary immigrants and exiles gave rise to a complex ethno-cultural environment characterised by a mixture of cultures and traditions. It may seem surprising that Greek immigrants lived in such a severe climate, but a colony was formed in Tomsk in the 17th century: it consisted of exiles sent from Moscow to Siberia for various crimes. Exiles would often have unusual fates, which is illustrated here by four biographies. Two exiles (Stepan Aleksandrov and Nikolay Petrov son Skularikov) were false monks who had come to Moscow to collect donations: they then practised alchemy with the help of a magic crystal in an attempt to make gold. The other two came from Trebizond and might have been related. Yuri Trapezundsky had served as an Algerian corsair and as a Dutch and English soldier. In Moscow, he rose through the ranks to become a captain in the Inozemsky Prikaz (Office for the Affairs of Foreigners). Manuil Konstantinov had been taken from his homeland by Don Cossacks during a raid and then sold to a German goldsmith in Russia. The fact that he was an Orthodox Christian helped him regain his freedom. During the Smolensk War (1632–1634), these two Greeks found themselves behind enemy lines and provided the Polish commanders with important information about the state of the Russian troops. Managing to leave Poland, they decided to return to Russia to serve in the Inozemsky Prikaz. During a major conflict in the Greek community a decade later, Yuri Trapezundsky and Manuil Konstantinov were denounced. They were charged with treason and exiled to Siberia. In Tomsk, they met Stepan Aleksandrov and together participated in numerous activities, such as uprisings, the exploration of new lands, and the construction of jails. They also helped subject indigenous Siberian peoples to Russian rule.

Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War

Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War. By Joy Damousi (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp.274. AU$145.00 (cloth).

Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1980 by Alexander Clarkson (review)

Reviewed by: Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1980 by Alexander Clarkson Patrice Poutrus Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1980. By Alexander Clarkson. New York: Berghahn, 2013. Pp. xiv + 231. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-0857459589. In Fragmented Fatherland, Alexander Clarkson analyzes the ways in which West Germany’s political institutions and intelligence agencies dealt with the political activities of ethnic groups in the Cold War. He divides the book into five studies that highlight West Germany’s varying approaches to immigrant groups: Ukrainian, Croatian, Algerian, Spanish/Greek, and Iranian exiles. By not focusing exclusively on members of a single nation-state, Clarkson moves beyond traditional scholarship on immigration research. Furthermore, he extends the concept of immigrant to refer to a wide variety of groups whose residency status in West Germany differed considerably, including displaced persons, political refugees, guest workers, and foreign students. In all cases, the political activities of these diverse groups brought conflicts from within their home countries to the attention of the affluent West German postwar society. Clarkson offers intriguing examples of the complex interactions between institutions and immigrant groups. Ukrainian émigré organizations, for instance, successfully reactivated their wartime contacts with influential West German elites. These networks helped secure West German institutional and financial resources for Ukrainian activist groups as allies in their fight against communism. This anticommunist coalition broke down with Konrad Adenauer’s decision to establish diplomatic relationships with the Soviet Union. With the sociopolitical changes in the Federal Republic, including the new SPD/FDP coalition government of 1969, Ukrainian emigrants lost West Germany’s political backing. In contrast, Croatian exile organizations [End Page 224] were unable to reestablish meaningful collaboration with their Nazi-era contacts. In the 1950s, the alliance with the radical nationalists opposing Tito had already turned into a political and moral burden, and their—sometimes violent—activities could not be sanctioned by the Federal Republic. Clarkson’s overview of the conflict surrounding Algerian refugees in West Germany demonstrates the increasingly supportive position of the Social Democrats, then in the opposition, to immigrant organizations during the 1960s. Because the majority of Croatian and particularly Spanish and Greek immigrants were skilled or semiskilled laborers, the Social Democrats saw a domestic and foreign policy opportunity to distinguish their party from the CDU-led government. Contact to Spanish and Greek laborers was part of party chair Willy Brandt’s foreign policy platform in order to consolidate the Socialist International and strengthen the southern European democratic Left while also hindering a shift toward Soviet-style communism. When the SPD finally took over the leadership of the new government in 1969, they had established strong contacts to fledgling leftwing democratic movements in Spain and Greece. Yet this support of leftist activism among Southern European groups in West Germany did nothing to improve the Social Democratic leadership’s understanding of the larger plight of migrant workers in the Federal Republic. Even under the Brandt and Schmidt governments, it became evident that domestic policy, state institutions, and the public were either unprepared or unwilling to confront the political, social, and cultural challenges posed by foreign workers. Here, Clarkson’s work implicitly reiterates the conclusions of established scholarly literature on the subject without explicitly framing it within that historiography. Similarly, it is unclear why Clarkson placed the case of Iranian activist groups as the final chapter and thereby broke the chronological flow of the book. The public protests against the Shah regime at the end of the 1960s served as both a forerunner and a beacon of hope for the Extraparliamentary Opposition (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, APO). In contrast to the other exile groups, the Federal Republic openly opposed the Iranian activist community, viewing the Shah regime as an indispensable ally against the Soviet Union. Moreover, West German intelligence agencies suspected that the Iranian relationship with the APO was a cover for informal connections to East Germany’s Ministry for State Security (MfS or the Stasi). Clarkson concentrates almost exclusively on the state’s actions, particularly those of the intelligence agencies that monitored the activities of the various migrant communities. In his conclusion, Clarkson...

Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt by Philippa Lang (review)

Reviewed by: Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt by Philippa Lang A. Rosalie David Philippa Lang. Medicine and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt. Studies in Ancient Medicine, vol. 41. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013. xiv + 318 pp. Ill. $151.00 (978-90-04-21858-1). Medicine in ancient Egypt has traditionally been studied either as an important aspect of pharaonic culture (from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period), or from the perspective of Greek medicine practiced in Egypt during the Greco-Roman Period. However, scholars have generally made little attempt to examine the exchange of influence between Egyptian and Greek medical systems, or to study the impact that demography, agriculture, botany, and magico-religious practices had upon medical practice. This book sets out to address these issues within the context of Ptolemaic Egypt, using evidence from Egyptian and Greek medical texts, as well as archaeological and artifactual material, to consider disease occurrence and healing methods in this period. Patterns of immigration to Egypt over the millennia are discussed in chapter 1, with special emphasis on the historical background of Ptolemaic Egypt. The effects of geography, climate, demographics, and biological conditions upon disease occurrence are considered, particularly with regard to changed epidemiological environments resulting from the influx of ethnic groups during this era. A sizeable number of Greek immigrants would have posed unprecedented medical challenges: possibly new disease strains (although there is no evidence of large-scale epidemics among new arrivals or indigenes); health hazards due to changes in diet and foodstuffs, as well as exposure to local bacteria, viruses, and parasites; and new concepts and treatments introduced by foreign medical practitioners associated with the immigrant communities. The extent to which medicine was regarded as part of ethnocultural identity is explored: did Greeks and Egyptians each pursue healing processes exclusive to their own communities, or was there any overlap or interchangeability between the two systems? In chapter 2, the role of the gods within the two traditions is considered, with particular emphasis on the oracular and medical practices at religious sanctuaries in Egypt and Greece. Chapter 3 discusses Egyptian and Greek theoretical perspectives (the perceived nature and causes of illness, which dictate the principles of diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy), and how disease may be differently understood and interpreted by medical professionals and the lay population. A crucial difference was that, whereas the Egyptians believed that divine intervention played an essential role in treating a patient, the Greeks, although mindful of the gods’ power to heal, generally attributed ill health to the impact of environmental and dietary factors on naturally occurring bodily substances. The modern differentiation of Egyptian medicine as “irrational” and Greek practices as “rational” is [End Page 741] also discussed, as is evidence for the transmission of medical ideas and practices between the two traditions during the Ptolemaic period. The next chapter explores the responses of the patients and medical practitioners to illness, and the methods of treatment that were utilized by professional and folk healers in both traditions. Chapter 5 identifies the practitioners of Egyptian and Greek medicine, and defines their roles in healing; it also considers and compares patients’ opportunities for seeking treatment in pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt. Further important issues are addressed in chapters 5 and 6. These include whether Egyptian pharaonic medicine had any impact on the naturalistic and highly theoretical medicine practiced by Greek physicians at Alexandria, whether the Alexandrian system had any real influence beyond the royal court and related circles, and whether the tradition of human mummification in Egypt facilitated opportunities for high-status Greek practitioners to undertake human dissection and vivisection in Alexandria. There is an extensive bibliography. However, important references have been omitted regarding the history of opium use in Egypt (p. 169)1 and pharmaceutical quantification (pp. 181–82).2 Typographical errors occur on pages 230 (repetition of the words “and resources”) and 49 (“bowels of water”). The book effectively addresses two levels of readership: as a scholarly work, it fulfils a long-standing need among Egyptologists, classicists, and medical historians for a readily accessible discussion of medical practice in Ptolemaic Egypt; and for the wider general readership, it provides well-evidenced information about various aspects of the subject area. A...

Greek Immigrants in Australia: Implications for Culturally Sensitive Practice.

This exploratory research examined adjustment challenges, resiliencies, attitudes, emotional health, economic stability, criminal involvement, victimization and service experiences, and some cultural propensities of Greek Immigrants (GIs) in Australia using a convenient multi-generational sample (n = 123; response rate = .5). Data were collected via surveys, telephone, and personal-interviews in four major Australian cities. Among other things, the study revealed that Greek identity and cultural customs are often significant to first generation GIs. Adjustment challenges upon entry include primarily language, housing, and transportation difficulties, nostalgia for relatives and the motherland, unfamiliarity with socio-cultural systems, unemployment, money challenges, and lack of friendships. Christian faith, the extended family, family values and traditions, cultural pride for ancient Greek achievements, and a hard 'work ethic' are notable resiliencies that support GIs in their struggles and solidify their pursuit for happiness and success. Financial concerns, aging, and nostalgia for relatives and the motherland were the primary causes of socio-emotional instability. Attitudinal differences in the respondents based on age, gender, and socio-economic status, cross-cultural comparisons, and recommendations for culturally-sensitive practice with GIs are analyzed and methodological limitations illuminated. Future research needs in the field are also highlighted.

Fragmented fatherland: immigration and Cold War conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980

Introduction: New Neighbours, New Challenges: Recognising Diversity Chapter 1. Old Allies in a New World: The Relationship between Emigres and the German Political Establishment Chapter 2. Support or Suppress?: Croatian Nationalists and the West German Security Services Chapter 3. 'Subversive' Immigrants and Social Democrats: Shared Memories of a 'Romantic' Past Chapter 4. A Battle on Many Fronts: Greek Immigrants and Political Violence Chapter 5. Both Losers and Winners?: The Iranian Community and the Student Movement Conclusion: Nation and Fragmentation: Managing Diversity Bibliography

A Greek culinary odyssey to New Zealand, the furthest shore

New Zealand is perhaps the furthest shore that the influence of Greek cuisine has reached, after receiving Greek immigrants in their largest numbers as part of the general diaspora of Greeks before and after the Second World War. Strong connections were formed between New Zealand and Greece, perhaps none more so than during the Battle of Crete in 1941, where ‘kiwi’ soldiers fought to defend Greeks. The majority of Greek immigrants to New Zealand settled in Wellington, the capital and then the most cosmopolitan of the small nation’s cities, where a major form of employment was in the food and hospitality industry. This paper reflects on the culinary impact of these immigrants on New Zealand after the war, and identifies some of the stories they tell of migration, work and identity though the food they ate at home.

A Longitudinal Study of Interethnic Contacts in Germany: Estimates from a Multilevel Growth Curve Model

Interethnic ties are considered important for the cohesion in society. Previous research has studied the determinants of interethnic ties with cross-sectional data or lagged panel designs. This study improves on prior research by applying multilevel growth curve modelling techniques with lagged independent variables, which provide better estimates of causal relationships than methods previously applied. Longitudinal data are used from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), covering a 15-year period. The study analyses within- and between-person differences in contacts with native Germans for Turkish, (ex)Yugoslav, Spanish, Italian and Greek immigrants in Germany. Immigrants who learn the German language and get employed are more likely to subsequently establish contacts with Germans. Furthermore, immigrants who intend to settle permanently in Germany develop more interethnic ties than those who intend to return. No evidence is found for investments in education. The multilevel growth curve models not only confirm some of the earlier established determinants, but also question the causal impact of others.

Nazis

Nazis Kathryn Starbuck (bio) April 1944. After he locked up the café at eight o’clock each night, my father would put me in the car to take us for a short drive before going home. Sometimes we’d head down Algona’s one diagonal street, imaginatively called Diagonal Street, toward the train station to watch the night train come in. One night the regular train did not arrive. Instead a military train came loaded with Germans. Prisoners of war. Enemies. Nazis. Plain soldiers. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. It was the spring of 1944, and they had come to live among us in the flat, beautiful, rich, and private family farmlands of northern Iowa decades before agri-business was born. I was not yet five years old. My eyes almost popped out of my head as I saw these big men jump out of the boxcars to form up as [End Page 136] ordered by American soldiers shouting at them in the station’s dim lights. Then they marched off in the darkness toward the camp that had recently been built just outside town. They would have gone north, down one of the few hills in town, crossed the Upper Des Moines River, then headed west and up another hill, past a wealth of corn and soybean fields, grain elevators and silos, along the highway toward Emmetsburg, before finally turning south onto a gravel road that ushered them into Camp Algona. Not all of them arrived that night, of course. Fully ten thousand prisoners of war were housed in the camp at various times from April 1944 to February 1946. Algona itself had only about five thousand residents. My father, Alex Dermand, was a Greek immigrant. He had come to Ellis Island in typical fashion, steerage class, in 1914 when he was eighteen years old, part of the great wave of Mediterranean immigrants. He was penniless, had no English, no formal education, and nothing but his wits to guide him. By 1944 he had become a successful businessman in a small midwestern farm town. He owned a few commercial buildings in town. He owned Dermand’s Café. He was the only Greek in Algona. My mother was not Greek. He felt the full brunt of World War ii more than most in Algona because his entire Greek family remained in war-torn Greece. By the time the pow camp opened, the Nazis had been carrying out their worst atrocities for months in his village, in Athens, and throughout the country. Starvation was widespread. My father had held two Greek war-relief days at the café, sending the day’s receipts to the cause. He dressed my older brother, Leonidas, in the Greek fustanella—the elaborate white full-skirted uniform worn by Greek soldiers who stand guard outside Parliament in Syndagma Square in Athens even today. At age four I was sent to kindergarten, and I also started working at the café. As soon as morning kindergarten was over, I would run the two blocks from school, turn left down the alley, and enter the café’s back door, kiss my father in the kitchen, and then start working the busy lunch hour in the front of the café. I was a miniature waitress. Commander Lobdell, the American commander of Camp Algona, and the commandant of the German pows came into town to have lunch at our café most Fridays. Two or three military officers accompanied them. They always sat in the big round booth at the front of the café. When the commander and the commandant arrived, I would rush to deliver their setups, which consisted of water, silverware, bread for their bread plates, butter on their individual butter dishes, individual creamers for the coffee that soon would come, and white cloth napkins. Commander Lobdell always patted my head and told me how pretty my brown hair was. “Katerina, how are you today?” Commander Lobdell would ask. “I’m fine,” I’d reply. “My father has fixed a nice meal for you today.” [End Page 137] Often I took cash, which meant I stood at the cash register. My parents had a two-step wooden stool...

Resistance and Compliance in Immigrant–Native Figurations: Albanian and Soviet Greek Immigrants and Their Interaction with Greek Society

Focusing on two immigrant populations and their relationships with their native neighbours in Thessaloniki, Greece, this paper highlights that immigrant–native relations are not only cultural relations but also power configurations unfolding through a symbolic contestation over defining the nation and who belongs to it. In everyday interaction, immigrants' behaviour is judged by natives according to the degree of their compliance to the native norms. Immigrant categories are endowed with different resources in resisting the pressure exerted by the native society. Categories that have more resources in symbolic and substantial terms are less eager to comply, thus appearing more ‘different’ in the eyes of the natives.

Informatively missing quality of life and unmet needs sex data for immigrant and Anglo-Australian cancer patients and survivors

Although cancer can seriously affect peoples' sexual well-being, survivors and patients may be reluctant to answer questions about sex. This reluctance may be stronger for immigrants. This study aimed to investigate missing sex data rates and predictors of missingness in two large studies on immigrants and Anglo-Australian controls with cancer and to investigate whether those with missing sex data may have worse sexual outcomes than those with complete data. We carried out two studies aimed at describing the quality of life (QoL) and unmet needs amongst Arabic, Chinese and Greek immigrants versus Anglo-Australians cancer survivors (n=596, recruited from cancer registries) and patients (n=845). Logistic regression was used to model the probability of having missing sex data in either of the questionnaires. We compared the mean of the unmet sex needs responses of those who had missing QoL sex data (but not needs) to those who had completed both, and vice versa. Missing sex data rates were as high as 65%, with immigrants more likely to skip sex items than Anglo-Australians (p=0.02 for registry study, p<0.0001 for hospital study). Women, older participants and participants with more advanced disease had increased odds of missingness. There was evidence that data were informatively missing. Additionally, the questionnaire which stated that the sex questions are optional had higher missing data rates. High missing data rates and informatively missing data can lead to biased results. Using the questionnaires that state that they may skip sex items may lead to an underestimation of sexual problems or an overestimation of quality of life.

독일 거주 이주민의 사회통합 유형

독일 거주 이주민의 사회통합 유형

Les communautés grecques dans les cités africaines: les cas de Carthage, Cirta, Thuburnica

The documentation about Hellenophones’ communities located in Africa is very limited, in particular documents providing information on their conditions of integration into African cities. Two literary passages (Diodoros of Sicilia, XIV, 77, 5 and Strabon, XVII, 3, 13) and a little inscription found in Baal-Hamon/ Saturn sanctuary close to Thuburnica (CIL, VIII, 25736) describe juridical and religious conditions which frame the welcome for Greek immigrants in Cartago, Cirta and Thuburnica from the 4th to the 1st centuries B. C.

‘Inclusion of Repatriated Greek and Foreign Immigrant Students in School Education’: a possible good practice for intercultural inclusion

Within the last 25 years, Greece has evolved from a country of emigration to a country that receives and hosts both returning Greek immigrants from abroad and immigrants with few ties to Greece (Ma...

Sensitive practice with Greek immigrants: a review of evidence

A series of research reports and other documents concerning Greeks are reviewed. These inputs combined with the author's direct knowledge of Greek culture form the basis for the development of a compendium of practical suggestions for working sensitively with Greek immigrants in multiple interventional contexts. The limitations of the review as well as future research needs in the field are highlighted.

Bloemfontein’s Greek community: historical background, emigration and settlement, ca 1885 - ca 1985

In this study a review is provided of the reasons why Greeks settled in Bloemfontein since about 1885, where these Greek immigrants came from, and how they travelled to Bloemfontein. Where possible, it is also indicated who they were. Their settlement in Bloemfontein is sketched against the background of the development of Bloemfontein as a city. In the light of the fact that thus far almost nothing has been written about the Greek community in Bloemfontein, and few archival sources could be traced, theresearch is primarily based on oral testimonies.Key words: Bloemfontein, Greece, Greek emigrations/diaspora, minority groups

Ethnic residential shifts: The Greek population of Akron, Ohio, 1930–2005

The purpose of this paper is to apply the framework of transnationalism to the study of the Akron, Ohio Greek community through the spatio-temporal changes in the residential patterns. Church records for the period 1930 to 2005 form the basis of the study. The first Greek immigrants arrived in Akron, Ohio in the latter part of the nineteenth century and settled around the commercial zone in the central city. Additional immigrants, mostly young males with little education, arrived during the early decades of the twentieth century to seek employment in the growing industries, especially the tire factories. The establishment of a sizable colony made it possible to form a parish church in close proximity to the place of work. In addition to the place of worship, ethnic stores, and coffee houses became foci of ethnic life. Although this central city cluster was undergoing minor residential shifts to the suburbs, it was identifiable until the early 1970s. By then most of its immigrant residents as well as their American born children moved to the suburbs, especially in the northwestern part of the city, because of economic improvement. Post-1965 immigrants bypassed the central city cluster and settled in the suburbs. Anecdotal information suggests that these immigrants, individually and collectively as a group, maintain a variety of economic, social, and cultural connections with their place of origin as well as the Akron Greek community. Thus, transnationalism is an appropriate framework to study recent immigrants who maintain concurrent connections to the United States and Greece.

Who Is Better Than Whom? Two Tales From Melting Pot Boils Over

Two tales about confrontations between Whites from different ethnic back-grounds that took place in Virginia during the twilight of the Jim Crow era are told here. In both tales, Pete Aegean, whose parents are Greek immigrants and who works as a counterman in a Greek-immigrant-owned café, gets into conflicts with the patrons who are White native Southerners. The conflicts turn violent after they trade ethnic slurs. Although Pete emerges as the victor, it creates a serious dilemma for him. On one hand, he maintains his pride and gains the begrudging respect of the White mill hands who patronize the café. On the other hand, Pop, the café's owner, fires Pete for placing his false sense of ethnic pride above their mutual economic interests. Pete's firing raises the question of what is the right and wrong way for immigrants and their offspring to win the respect and admiration of their host country's native inhabitants.

Problems in Greek-to-English Transliteration

AbstractThe language of the Greek immigrants' gravemarkers reveals their process of acculturation; in the initial stage, the markers are monolingual Greek; during the conflict stage, they are bilingual; finally, in the acculturation stage, they are predominantly monolingual English. The low literacy level of the early immigrants is revealed through morphological and spelling errors; the tension between the two languages is reflected in the various transliterations of Greek names; the increasing acculturation of the immigrants is evident in the abbreviation and translation of their original Greek names. In fact, close examination of the markers reveal the successive loss of overt ethnic variables (last name) and replacement by covert ethnic variables (such as first name since according to the name-giving cultural practices, children are named after their grandparents).