| dc.description.abstract | Migration and the new realities that it shapes is an ever-present concept that never seizes
to be relevant. As it is with one of its products, the second generation, the generation that
follows after the migrants settle somewhere. In a highly globalizing, mobile world, the issues
of citizenship and rights within societies are becoming highly debated. In Greece, second
generation is comprised by approximately 200.000 people who have yet no access to
citizenship and in addition have restricted rights in relation to their Greek ‘native’ peers.
This study investigates how lack of the Greek citizenship impacts the mobilities of the
second generation young adults in Greece, particularly their educational and working
opportunities. It does so by examining how second generation experiences the different
types of mobilities, namely the physical, the socio-political and the economic mobility in
relation to their parents’ generation and their Greek ‘native’ peers. To investigate the issue
at hand, the study gathers data through second generation narratives in Athens, Greece.
There is a distinct gap in the existing research on migration in Greece which so far is mainly
focused in the previous generations of migrants, the parents of the second generation.
Recent changes in the Greek migration policy granted access to the Greek citizenship to
second generation that is born or raised in the country and partakes in the educational
system. The new law has yet to be implemented resulting in second generation lying in a
perpetual limbo in a two speed society. All this under the immediate influence of an
economy in an ongoing crisis with no visible signs of recovery. Second generation aspires to
access equal rights looking beyond the national citizenship to an EU citizenship. The findings
of the research are highly relevant in the regional context of Southern Europe and the
broader EU context, where the existence of second generation with access to citizenship is
being highly contested and hyper politicized over the last years. | |
