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The (De)Europeanization of Greece: Experience from the Eye of the Storm

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Small States and the European Migrant Crisis

Abstract

Greece has been the member state that faced the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015–2016 in the eye of the storm. Such refugee crisis took place on the same time as the acceleration of the economic crisis. The aim of this chapter is: first, to explore the scope of Europeanization/De-Europeanization caused by the immigration and refugee crisis, second, to examine the relevance of foreign policy objectives and practices in Greek migration policymaking and third, to identify the strategies which the Greek government applied. The chapter consists of three parts: The first part offers a brief theoretical introduction to the small EU member states foreign policy from the perspective of Europeanization/De-Europeanization in the field of migration. The second part explores the extent to which Greek migration policy has been Europeanized during the period 2008–2015 and the third part examines how far the Greek migration policy has been De-Europeanized during the refugee crisis of 2015–2016.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In order to facilitate the conduction of research between the two extremes poles of Europeanization and de-Europeanization Angelos Chryssogelos is referring to a reflexive Europeanization which can become even more constraining, as nationalist re-politicization turns into societal re-politicization that challenges not just the alignment between national interests and European commitments, but the very legitimacy of the Europeanized state (Chryssogelos 2019: 610).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece

    Charalambos Tsardanidis

  2. Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, Greece

    Charalambos Tsardanidis

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  1. Charalambos Tsardanidis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of International Affairs, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Tómas Joensen

  2. School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, UK

    Ian Taylor

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Tsardanidis, C. (2021). The (De)Europeanization of Greece: Experience from the Eye of the Storm. In: Joensen, T., Taylor, I. (eds) Small States and the European Migrant Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66203-5_5

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