2.1.1Homogenization in the western states

It is well-known that the structure and the composition of the western nation-states are based on the principle of linguistic and cultural homogeneity suggesting that within their territory there should be a single national culture and a single national language (see, among others, Piller 2001Piller, Ingrid 2001 “Naturalization Language Testing and its Basis in Ideologies of National Identity and Citizenship.” International Journal of Bilingualism 5(3): 259–277. ). Anderson (1991)Anderson, Benedict 1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd edition. London: Verso. maintains that the advent of print capitalism strengthened this principle contributing drastically to the massive production of texts, written in vernacular languages, so that they could be read by everyone. Thus, people were able to imagine themselves as members of the same “limited and sovereign” national community (ibid., 6). Moreover, adopting Said’s (1983)Said, Edward W. 1983 The World, the Text and the Critic. London: Verso. perspective on “interpretive communities”, Billig (1995Billig, Michael 1995 Banal Nationalism. London: Sage., 70) very aptly points out that “nations not only have to be imagined, but also have to create their own histories, or interpretations of themselves”. He adds that

[o]ne of the essential characteristics of modernity was vital to state-making: the intolerance of difference. The new states were to be centralized polities, which flattened traditional regional, cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences.(Billig 1995Billig, Michael 1995 Banal Nationalism. London: Sage., 130)

Hence, the national homogenizing discourse attempts to delimit the nation-state and present it as a pure entity with internal (linguo-cultural and historical) coherence within its state borders. In order to avoid potential mixtures, racist behaviors are activated. As a result, when the coexistence of immigrant groups and majority populations takes place within national territories, immigrant people are quite often forced to develop assimilative strategies through accepting the values, beliefs and behaviors of the majority. This means that the racist behaviors against them have achieved their goal.

2.1.2Racist behaviors

Here, we define racist ideology and behaviors mostly following van Dijk’s (1998van Dijk, Teun A. 1998 Ideology: An Interdisciplinary Approach. London: Sage., 2008van Dijk, Teun A. 2008 Discourse and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ) approach. First, a point of clarification is necessary in relation to van Dijk’s conceptualization of ideology: He maintains that “[i]deologies are not merely defined in cognitive terms, but also in terms of social groups (…). They are social constructs shared by a group” (van Dijk 1998van Dijk, Teun A. 1998 Ideology: An Interdisciplinary Approach. London: Sage., 9). He adds that ideologies are “socially shared mental representations (…) [(partly) controlling] social practices (…) by which they are constructed” (ibid.). In this context van Dijk perceives racism as “constituted by social practices of discrimination (…) and relationships of power abuse by dominant groups, organizations, and institutions” which all have “a mental basis (…) rooted in racist prejudices and ideologies”, i.e. in “socially shared and negatively oriented mental representations of Us about Them” (2008van Dijk, Teun A. 2008 Discourse and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. , 103). Discussing racism in Spain and Latin America, van Dijk illustrates his theoretical conceptualization of racism as follows:

if ‘whites’, as a group, have more economic, political, social or cultural power22.Power involves “having preferential access to and control over scarce social resources” (van Dijk 2005van Dijk, Teun A. 2005 Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 2). in society, and they abuse of such power by keeping non-whites ‘down and out’, out of the country, the city, the neighborhood, the company, the shop, the university, the job, the position, the newspaper or the scholarly journal, then we are dealing with manifestations of racism(van Dijk 2005van Dijk, Teun A. 2005 Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 2)

In view of the above, “manifestations of racism” maintain the social inequality between majority and minority people (ibid., 2). These manifestations are rooted in negative ideological stereotypes and prejudices for minority people resulting in their marginalization and exclusion (ibid., 3, 7). Majority people who opt for racist behaviors tend to present foreign outgroups in a negative manner (see e.g. van Dijk 1993van Dijk, Teun A. 1993 Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. , 2005van Dijk, Teun A. 2005 Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; van der Valk 2003van der Valk, Ineke 2003 “Political Discourse on Ethnic Minority Issues: A Comparison of the Right and the Extreme Right in the Netherlands and France (1990–97).” Ethnicities 3 (2): 183–213. ; Augoustinos and Every 2007Augoustinos, Martha, and Danielle Every 2007 “The Language of ‘Race’ and Prejudice: A Discourse of Denial, Reason, and Liberal-Practical Politics.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 26 (2): 123–141. ; Every and Augoustinos 2007Every, Danielle, and Martha Augoustinos 2007 “Constructions of Racism in the Australian Parliamentary Debates on Asylum Seekers.” Discourse & Society 18 (4): 411–436. ; Wodak and Richardson 2013Wodak, Ruth, and John E. Richardson eds. 2013 Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. London: Routledge. ). They perceive the usual (linguistic and cultural) differences between majority and minority people as weaknesses of the latter. Thus, they not only sustain, but also “justify” and “rationalize” the unequal treatment of immigrant groups in case immigrant people do not comply to the dominant norms of the majority group (Hanson-Easy and Augoustinos 2012Hanson-Easy, Scott Alen, and Martha Augoustinos 2012 “Narratives from the Neighborhood: The Discursive Construction of Integration Problems in Talkback Radio.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 16 (1): 28–55. , 29). As a consequence, immigrant people are forced to marginalization unless they adjust to assimilative homogeneity.

Summing up, racist behaviors imply a “submissive living” for immigrants and “the[ir] exclusion from public and social benefits or the unequal access to them” (Tsiakalos 2011Tsiakalos, George 2011 A Guide for Antiracist Education. Thessaloniki: Εκδοσεις Επικεντρο [Epikentro Publications]., 75). In our analysis, we focus our attention to racist behaviors against immigrants and, in particular, against the immigrant students of our sample. Racism is mainly identified in their discriminating and unequal treatment by their classmates, teachers and neighbors. As the analysis will show, this unequal treatment takes the form of devaluation, insults, exclusion and violence.

2.1.3The hybrid resistance to racist homogenization

In the previous two sections we demonstrated that the principle of homogeneity on which western nation-states are based, is often pursued and attained via racist attitudes and assimilation practices.

Every national territory that may host immigrants is strictly linked with conventions and norms which (directly or indirectly) regulate linguistic, social and cultural behaviors. However, as Duchêne et al. aptly point out,

[m]igration and the mobility of citizens (…) pose important challenges to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that nation-states still rely on for defining their physical boundaries, their language and identity as well as the rights and obligations of their citizens.(Duchêne et al. 2013Duchêne, Alexandre, Melissa Moyer, and Celia Roberts 2013 “Introduction: Recasting Institutions and Work in Multilingual and Transnational Spaces.” In Language, Migration and Social Inequality: A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work, ed. by Alexandre Duchêne, Melissa Moyer, and Celia Roberts, 6–21. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. , 6)

We could elaborate on the challenges to national homogeneity posed by immigrants by drawing on the distinction between legitimizing identities and resistance identities proposed by Castells (2010)Castells, Manuel 2010 The Power of Identity. 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.. Legitimizing identities aim to the assimilation of out-groups like immigrants and “are introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalize their domination vis à vis social actors” (ibid., 8). Resistance identities

are generated by those actors who are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society.(Castells 2010Castells, Manuel 2010 The Power of Identity. 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell., 8)

Thus, the coexistence of diverse groups within a national territory and the relationships between them might be more complicated than the proponents of the homogeneity principle would have expected. In the era of globalization and de-regularization of mighty structures of the past (e.g. the breakdown of the Eastern-Communist Block or of the regimes of North Africa), the mass immigrants’ flows could even challenge the established national order of normativity.

Post-colonial studies draw our attention to the complex and hybrid ways via which people from different cultural backgrounds and in inferior social positions manage to construct resistance identities against homogenizing impositions. In particular, Bhabha (1994/2004)Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. argues that when people from different origins and hierarchical statuses, such as majority and immigrant people, come into contact, they might not either get assimilated or being marginalized. Immigrants could instead create a “Third Space” (ibid., 53), a “cultural hybridity” (ibid., 5), “an in-between reality” (ibid., 19) of “mixed and split texts” (ibid., 161) that “unsettles any simplistic polarities or binarisms” (ibid., 76). From this perspective,

[h]ybridity is the sign of (…) shifting forces and fixities; is the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal (that is, the production of discriminatory identities that secure the ‘pure’ and original identity of authority).(Bhabha 1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 159)

Thus, “[t]he paranoid threat from the hybrid is finally uncontainable because it breaks down the symmetry and duality of self/other, inside/outside” (ibid., 165).

This conceptualization of hybridity helps us understand the complicated ways resistance identities and practices can actually be exercised against homogenizing impositions. As Bhabha points out,

[r]esistance is not necessarily an oppositional act of political intention, nor is the simple negation or exclusion of the ‘content’ of another culture, as a difference once perceived. It is the effect of an ambivalence produced within the rules of recognition of dominating discourses (…).(Bhabha 1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 157–158)

As already mentioned, in the analysis of our data we focus on descriptions of racist behaviors against immigrant students in Greece included in some of their essays. The fact that a few immigrant students deviate from majority’s legitimizing expectations and describe racist behaviors against themselves, reveals that immigrants do not form a unitary category in process of assimilation (see also Section 2.1.4.). Moreover, it reveals that these immigrants choose to construct hybrid identities (Bhabha 1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 55), i.e. identities that are not aligned with the stereotypical categorical assumptions of inferiority and submissiveness, but identities that are built on a resisting “counter-gaze that turns the discriminatory look (…) back to itself” (ibid., 67). In other words, the analysis will show how some immigrant students from our data can be turned from “objectified others (…) into subjects of their history and experience” (ibid., 255).

2.1.4The Greek national discourse of xenophobia and homogenization and the hybrid resistance to it

Since 1990, Greece has received immigrants from different countries, both inside and outside Europe. The majority of them came from Albania and started flowing into Greece at the beginning of the 1990s due to the intense social and economic changes that took place in their country of origin. They were immediately faced with an intense xenophobic and racist discourse, as attested by the following facts (among others):

• the formation of the slogan “You will never be Greek, you Albanian”;

• the violent reactions of local communities to the possibility of students of Albanian origin carrying the Greek flag in national parades;33.On Greek national holidays, student parades usually take place, where the best student from each school is the head of the parade and carries the Greek flag.

• the employment of immigrants mainly – if not exclusively – in manual, low prestige jobs;

• the circulation of many negative stereotypes for Albanians via the media: they are represented, for example, as undermining the national coherence and financial prosperity, addicted to delinquent behavior, responsible for the low educational level in Greek schools, etc. (see Kapplani and Mai 2005Kapplani, Gazmend, and Nicola Mai 2005 “ ‘Greece belongs to Greeks!’: The case of the Greek flag in the hands of an Albanian student.” In The New Albanian Migration, ed. by Russell King, Nicola Mai, and Schwander Sievers, 153–172. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.; Gogonas 2010Gogonas, Nikos 2010 Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in Greek Education: Investigating Ethnic Language Maintenance among Pupils of Albanian and Egyptian Origin in Athens. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing., 72–78).

In brief, the racist discourse produced about immigrants (from Albania and elsewhere) is based on the sharp, binary distinction between the foreign immigrants and the indigenous majority people. Due to their cultural and linguistic difference, foreign immigrants have been singled out and constructed as an “abnormal” and “suspect community”, as constituting a “security risk” and “an existential threat” for national homogenizing ideals (see Charalambous et al. 2016Charalambous, Constadina, Charalambous, Panayiota, Khan, Kamran and Ben Rampton 2016 “Security and Language Policy.” Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 194: 1–19.).

In the public sphere, the ‘violent disturbance’ caused to the ‘homogeneous’ majority is described with some vivid and particularly telling metaphors. Reference is thus made to εισβολή των μεταναστών “immigrants’ invasion”, to the Greek society being transformed into a ξέφραγο αμπέλι “unconfined space”, ένα απέραντο γιουσουρούμ Τουρκαλβανών και Βουλγαροπακιστανών “an endless mess full of Turco-Albanians and Bulgaropakis”, due to the fact that with unbelievable easiness the official authorities ανοίγουν ‘κερκόπορτες’ για τη δεύτερη και οριστική άλωση του Ελληνισμού “open ‘backdoors’ for the second and final fall of Hellenism” (see Boutoulousi 2005Boutoulousi, Eleni 2005 “Hidden Images in Journalistic Discourse.” In Workshop of the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communication “Image and Discourse in the Media” 4.112005, Thessaloniki. Cd publication.). Via this projection of ‘foreign immigrants’ as ‘an existential threat’ against the national culture, the majority’s intense wish for their exclusion from the national body and from the national rights is highlighted.

Particularly revealing is the way immigrant students and their heritage languages are treated by the Greek school and the Greek state. Although the Greek educational system responded to immigrant flows with a ‘cover up’ of ‘progressive’ laws involving reception classes, intercultural schools and even courses on immigrants’ heritage languages (Boutoulousi 2002Boutoulousi, Eleni 2002 “The Multicultural School: Critical Approaches and Cultural Awareness.” In Discovering the Wealth of Diversity through Art: Meeting Proceedings of the Comenius and Education without Borders Programs 28 March–2 April 2001, ed. by Avra Avdi, and Anastasia Chrysafidou, 39–88. Thessaloniki: Πήγασος [Pegasus]., 56), everyday educational practices exhibit a totally different orientation. All this legislation did not lead to maintaining immigrants’ heritage languages, but to their exclusion and to the absolute dominance of the Greek language as both a teaching subject and the only teaching language (see Kiliari 2005Kiliari, Angeliki 2005 Multilingualism and Language Education: A Sociolinguistic Approach. Thessaloniki: Βάνιας [Vanias]., 130–133). It seems that for the Greek curriculum, teaching the Greek language and teaching exclusively in Greek are considered the appropriate pedagogical methods despite the fact that Greek classrooms are now multicultural and multilingual (see Boutoulousi 2002Boutoulousi, Eleni 2002 “The Multicultural School: Critical Approaches and Cultural Awareness.” In Discovering the Wealth of Diversity through Art: Meeting Proceedings of the Comenius and Education without Borders Programs 28 March–2 April 2001, ed. by Avra Avdi, and Anastasia Chrysafidou, 39–88. Thessaloniki: Πήγασος [Pegasus].; Gogonas 2010Gogonas, Nikos 2010 Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in Greek Education: Investigating Ethnic Language Maintenance among Pupils of Albanian and Egyptian Origin in Athens. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.).

The reason for this discrepancy between the current educational laws and the dominant norms dictating the educational practices at school should probably be traced to a “securitizing discourse”, in Charalambous et al.’s (2016)Charalambous, Constadina, Charalambous, Panayiota, Khan, Kamran and Ben Rampton 2016 “Security and Language Policy.” Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 194: 1–19. terms, that seems to operate above and beyond the (progressive) laws. This discourse, as part of the national xenophobic discourse, aims at highlighting the risks of cultural and linguistic impurity that the nation-state runs from the very existence of the foreign others’ ‘suspect community’. In this context, many majority school teachers suggest that immigrant students and their parents learn Greek and use them as much as possible, even at home (Gkaintartzi et al. 2016Gkaintartzi, Anastasia, Kiliari, Angeliki, and Roula Tsokalidou 2016 “Heritage Language Maintenance and Education in the Greek Sociolinguistic Context: Albanian Immigrant Parents’ Views.” Cogent Education 3: 1–17. ).

The above description of the Greek social and educational context helps us understand that immigrants were faced with a xenophobic and racist discourse aiming at their homogenization. The host country seems to offer them two options: to become either marginalized or assimilated. However, as we have already pointed out in Section (2.1.3.) and we will see in more detail in the analysis below, some immigrant students dare to follow an alternative way through constructing hybrid identities of resistance. Consequently, despite dominant discourse’s expectations, immigrants in Greece do not form a unitary category in process of assimilation. The meticulous ethnographic research conducted by Papandreou (2013)Papandreou, Periklis G. 2013 Children of Immigration in Athens: The Politics of Belonging and the Dark Sides of Adjustment. Athens: Νήσος Εκδοσεις [Nissos Publications]. on the attitudes and identities of immigrant Lyceum students in the centre of Athens during 2004–2005, supports this claim. Papandreou maintains that the students of his study seem to position themselves in a complex manner, since most of them follow their own individual itineraries, being in a more stable and secure position than their parents were due to family support and to their parents’ urge to integrate. In particular, they go beyond traditional borderlines via adopting hybrid identities that include bonding both with the homeland and with the host country (cf. Papandreou 2013Papandreou, Periklis G. 2013 Children of Immigration in Athens: The Politics of Belonging and the Dark Sides of Adjustment. Athens: Νήσος Εκδοσεις [Nissos Publications]., 210, 216, 440). A student-informant of Papandreou’s study very aptly suggests the following: Nα είσαι Aλβανός στην καρδιά και να ζεις στην Eλλάδα (i.e. Be an Albanian at heart while living in Greece) (ibid., 209). Papandreou (ibid., 217–218, 441–442) thus identifies a few cases of immigrant students who insist on stressing their loyalty to their ethnic group without, however, belonging to a subculture juxtaposed to the majority population.

In a similar vein, Archakis (2014)Archakis, Argiris 2014 “Immigrant Voices in Students’ Essay Texts: Between Assimilation and Pride.” Discourse & Society 25 (3): 297–314. has more recently shown how some immigrant students seem to construct ambivalent identities via several versions of the disclaimer I am adjusting myself, but…. They attempt both to comply with assimilationist pressures so as to legitimize themselves as members of the host community, and to resist such pressures by highlighting aspects of their own immigrant experiences (see also Archakis and Tsakona 2016Archakis, Argiris, and Villy Tsakona 2016 “Legitimizing and Resistance Identities in Immigrant Students’ School Essays: Towards a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy.” Brno Studies in English 42 (1): 5–22. ). In particular, although these students indicate their willingness to align themselves with the dominant Greek national discourse, they simultaneously seem to be reluctant to overlook the racist behaviors they suffered from, and unable to forget their affection for their homeland and its people.44. Michail and Christou’s (2016)Michail, Domna, and Anastasia Christou 2016 “Diasporic Youth Identities of Uncertainty and Hope: Second-Generation Albanian Experiences of Transnational Mobility in an Era of Economic Crisis in Greece.” Journal of Youth Studies 19 (7): 1–16. research is also worth mentioning here, as they take into account youth and gender issues in the construction of immigrant identities in Greece. It is exactly such ambivalent identities that are at the center of the present study.

Finally, in the analysis and interpretation of our data we will take into consideration the fact that Greek xenophobic and racist discourses come into conflict with the orientation of many “liberal democracies in Europe and the US [which] have increasingly adopted laws and norms that presuppose or guarantee equality [between majority and minority/immigrant populations]” (van Dijk 1992van Dijk, Teun A. 1992 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” Discourse & Society 3 (1): 87–118. , 95). Generally speaking, extreme racist behaviors are hindered or banned (van Dijk 1992van Dijk, Teun A. 1992 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” Discourse & Society 3 (1): 87–118. , 89, 95–97). Thus, in the western world verbal racist attacks have acquired a mitigated form and are often produced via disclaimers such as I’ m not a racist, but…, I’m not against the black people, but…, All immigrants are not criminals, but…. Such disclaimers permit the recycling of established stereotypes for immigrants (e.g. that they are prone to illegal and violent activities) carefully disguised and rationalized (van Dijk 2008van Dijk, Teun A. 2008 Discourse and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. , 122–124). Simultaneously, in the western world the humanitarian and anti-racist values of tolerance and acceptance of difference are in wide social circulation (van Dijk 1992van Dijk, Teun A. 1992 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” Discourse & Society 3 (1): 87–118. , 95–97). All such conditions are relevant to the present discussion, as will be shown in the analysis of our data.

2.2.1Analyzing majority racist behaviors using Bamberg’s model on the narrative construction of identities

We move on to the micro-level and to the presentation of the analytical tools chosen for tracing immigrant students’ positionings and their identity construction. Our basic assumption is that the immigrant students of our data construct their identities via the description of the racist behaviors they suffer from.

Investigating the narrative construction of identities, Bamberg (2011)Bamberg, Michael 2011 “Narrative Practice and Identity Navigation.” In Varieties of Narrative Analysis, ed. by James A. Holstein, and Jaber F. Gubrium, 99–124. London: Sage. proposes a model that attempts to explain this process on the basis of three dilemmatic positionings. The first dilemma involves constancy and change across time as observed in the lives of the represented characters. We can detect the diachronic maintenance of some (or all the) characteristics of the represented characters or the changes occurring to some (or all) of them, e.g. to their sexual preferences or to their place of residence due to migration.

The second dilemma involves the projection of sameness versus difference. We investigate the way a character or a group of characters is represented in comparison to others. That is, whether a character is classified with others or other groups, on the basis of specific shared attributes (e.g. common moral values), or whether s/he is distinguished form others – or other groups – having been placed in different social (or other) category. At this point, it is useful to introduce and exploit the ethnomethodological concept of membership categorization device (Sacks 1995Sacks, Harvey 1995 Lectures on Conversation, 2 vols, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. ). Such devices are socioculturally determined and include various categories of members. For example, the membership categorization device profession includes, among other things, the categories of doctors, patients, engineers, etc. among which we can discern similarities and differences. Each of these categories carries a set of category-bound predicates, i.e. typical characteristics and activities. For example, doctors heal patients, lawyers represent citizens in court, engineers construct buildings, etc. (Sacks 1995Sacks, Harvey 1995 Lectures on Conversation, 2 vols, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. , 40–48, 243–251, 259–266; see also Bamberg et al. 2011Bamberg, Michael, Anna De Fina, and Deborah Schiffrin 2011 “Discourse and Identity Construction.” In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, ed. by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, 177–199. New York: Springer. ).

The third and final dilemma concerns the agency of the represented characters, namely how they are positioned in relation to dominant discourses that are in social circulation. More specifically, we investigate whether the represented characters are presented as being aligned with the directives of the dominant discourses, thus their agency and initiative are low, or whether they are presented as resisting against these discourses, thus their agency and initiative are high. In other words, we concentrate on the ‘tension’ between the impositions entailed by the dominant discourses and the observed choices via specific discourse practices (see Bamberg et al. 2011Bamberg, Michael, Anna De Fina, and Deborah Schiffrin 2011 “Discourse and Identity Construction.” In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, ed. by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, 177–199. New York: Springer. ).

The above mentioned tools will help us understand and organize the narrative – biographical framework of immigrant students as emerging from their essays. Moreover, these tools allow us to account for the ways immigrant students encode the racist behaviors they suffered from in order to construct their identities. In particular, as we shall see, change is observed in the lives of the immigrants as they are forced (for various political, social, financial and other reasons) to move from their country of origin to a host country, that is Greece. Immigrants’ arrival forces the majority population to position themselves in relation to the differences detected in immigrants, including their languages and cultures.

At this point, the crucial research question involves how majority people deal with immigrants’ differences: Do they treat them as a stimulus for language and cultural mixture? Or do they treat them in a racist manner, aiming at the maintenance of national homogeneity? Similar questions can be posed in relation to immigrant students: Do they rush to adjust themselves to the directives of the dominant majority discourse (through constructing legitimizing identities)? Or do they attempt to resist against this discourse claiming their difference (and thus constructing resistance identities)?

In the data analysis (Section 4), we will show that some of the immigrant students of our data represent majority people as behaving in a racist manner against them. The majority people coexist with the immigrants but they see them as ‘foreigners’ due to their different languages and cultures. In other words, the immigrants’ arrival leads to the rearrangement of the structure of the membership categorization device living populations in Greece which includes immigrants but positions them in a different social category than that of the majority people. In order to eliminate such social division, some immigrant students represent majority people’s racist behaviors as forcing them to construct assimilative and legitimizing identities. On the other hand, however, we will argue that, via their references to majority people’s racist behaviors, immigrant students evaluate such behaviors negatively. We will show that such references and evaluations constitute a threat towards the face of majority people and eventually a means for immigrant students to construct identities resisting the directives of national discourse.

2.2.2The threat against majority people’s face

In order to analyze the threat against the face of majority people and, thus, the construction of resistance identities by immigrant students, we will draw on the concept of mimicry introduced by Bhabha (1994/2004)Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. as well as on aspects of politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . As already pointed out, young immigrants’ construction of resistance identities is traced in their school essays when they refer to racist attacks against them.

In Section (2.1.3.), we elaborated on the concept of hybridity in post-colonial contexts as a form of resistance against dominant homogenizing discourses. Bhabha (1994/2004)Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. suggests that mimicry is a particular discursive means for the construction of hybrid identities, i.e. a “ruse” that “terrorizes authority” (ibid., 165), an efficient means for “a counter-gaze that turns the discriminatory look (…) back to itself” (ibid., 67) (see also Section 2.1.3.). More specifically, “mimicry is at once resemblance and menace” (ibid., 123). It “emerges as the representation of a difference (…) that is almost the same but not quite” and “that is itself a process of disavowal” (ibid., 122). Thus, when mimicry applies to dominant figures, like majority people, its effect could be “profound and disturbing” (ibid., 123): “[T]he observer becomes the observed” and, thus, “the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined” (ibid., 127).

The concept of mimicry, carrying a component of menace, seems to fit well with the notion of threat in the framework of politeness theory. According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. politeness theory, individuals aiming to show or build solidarity bonds with the members of a (dominant) group resort to positive politeness strategies which, among other things, evoke shared values, common ground, and the mutual appreciation between group members, and also show speakers’ acceptance of common traits, wishes, aspirations, etc. On the other hand, when such strategies are not used or when speakers (directly or indirectly) keep a distance from a (dominant) group or even comment negatively on it and its members, mutual appreciation, namely their positive face, is threatened or damaged (Brown and Levinson 1987Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 66ff).

In the analytical Section (4), we will employ the concepts of mimicry and threat to analyze our immigrant students’ essays. We will show how majority people are represented as changing roles with immigrant students and how from racist “observers” of immigrants’ deviant behavior, majority people become “the observed” from the “displacing” and threatening perspective adopted by the immigrants.

4.2.1Introductory remarks

We propose a classification of the expressions with which immigrant students describe racist behaviors they themselves experienced. Thus, this section supports the claim that some immigrant students construct hybrid resistance identities through referring to racist behaviors coming from majority people. In Bhabha’s (1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 159) terms, some immigrant students attempt to “shift forces and fixities” in a “strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal”.

According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. theory (see Section 2.2.2.), when the positive traits of a group are not highlighted or, on the contrary, when speakers comment negatively on the group and its members, mutual appreciation, namely their positive face, is threatened or damaged. Thus, the descriptions of racist behaviors examined here constitute threatening acts against the collective positive face of the majority (see Sifianou and Bayraktaroğlu 2012Sifianou, Maria, and Arın Bayraktaroğlu 2012 “ ‘Face’, Stereotyping, and Claims of Power: The Greeks and Turks in Interaction.” In The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and Communication, ed. by Christina Bratt Paulston, Scott F. Kiesling, and Elizabeth S. Rangel, 292–312. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ). From Bhabha’s (1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 123) perspective, immigrant students activate the discursive means of mimicry which, representing majority people’s racist behaviors, is “at once resemblance and menace”. The majority racist “observers” of immigrants’ deviant behavior become “the observed” and their “look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined” (ibid., 127).

We suggest that the graded intensity of immigrant students’ descriptions reflects the intensity of the phenomenon and accounts for its assimilative effects. Among these effects is the limited number of racist descriptions as young immigrants tend to avoid writing about racist behaviors against them in the school essays under scrutiny (see Table 1).

4.2.2Descriptions of racist behaviors

In what follows, we analyze and classify the descriptions of racist behaviors identified in our data. According to Boutoulousi, racist practices form a continuum:

[O]n the one end, we could place the behaviors that seem to be positive, e.g. a compliment to an individual (see friendly racism: ‘you Gypsies sing very nice’); on the other end, we could place extreme violent behaviors, whereas in between (we could place) the denigration of a group, e.g. using a joke against it, avoiding physical contact, excluding it from rights and privileges, etc.(Boutoulousi 2004Boutoulousi, Eleni 2004 “Discourse and Racism: Linguistic and Social Developments.” Μελέτες για την Ελληνική Γλώσσα [Studies in Greek Linguistics] 24: 506–518., 512)

Following Boutoulousi’s (ibid.) proposal, we distinguish five descriptive categories of racist behaviors which could be graded on the basis of the degree of imposition on various aspects of the personality of immigrant people, as follows:

• denigrating behaviors

• verbal insults

• insults through eye gaze

• excluding behaviors

• abusive behaviors

Our continuum ranges from the description of general denigrating behaviors to specific insults (verbal or through eye gaze), to the avoidance of physical contact and, finally, to physical abuse. Such racist behaviors result from the superiority majority people feel in their social contacts with immigrants. It seems that (at least some) majority people are reluctant to live in harmony with immigrants and respect their personality (see Dynel 2012Dynel, Marta 2012 “Swearing Methodologically: The (Im)Politeness of Expletives in Anonymous Commentaries on Youtube.” Journal of English Studies 10: 25–50. ).

We proceed with a detailed presentation of the above categories. We should bear in mind that the graded threat towards immigrants’ face attested in these categories is reversed in young immigrants descriptions and targets the collective positive face of majority people. A process of mimicry takes place where “the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined”, in Bhabha’s words (1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 127). As already mentioned, when the positive attributes of a group are not highlighted, or when negative comments are addressed to this group (or its members), its positive face is threatened. The degree of threat against the majority positive face depends on immigrant students’ linguistic and stylistic choices. Thus, in what follows we discuss the linguistic means used by immigrant students in each category. We also discuss the intensity of racism, as well as the source of racist behavior, wherever possible (e.g. we distinguish general references to majority people from specific references to peers, classmates, neighbors, teachers):

a.Denigrating behaviors

General references to denigrating behaviors:

(2)

They don’t treat me nice [primary school essay]

(3)

People react like they haven’t seen an immigrant before [primary school essay]

(4)

There are however racists that treat you like garbage [high school essay]

Specific references to denigrating behaviors by peers:

(5)

Kids don’t treat me so nice because I’m not like them I don’t belong to their place I don’t behave like them [lyceum essay]

(6)

Kids treat me in a hostile manner due to my origin [high school essay]

The above examples show that the category of denigrating behaviors includes descriptions coming from both majority people in general and peers in particular. Diversity is observed in relation to the intensity of the denigrating acts:

• Low intensity of denigrating behaviors: They don’t treat me (so) nice (Example 2, 5)

• Medium intensity of denigrating behaviors: People react like they haven’t seen an immigrant before (Example 3)

• High intensity of denigrating behaviors: Kids treat me in a hostile manner (Example 6), There are however racists that treat you like garbage (Example 4)

It is important to underline that such denigrating behaviors are directly related to immigrants’ different origin and habits (Example 5, 6).

Specific references to denigrating behaviors by immigrants’ teachers:

(7)

I don’t like the way that my teacher treats me at school. My teacher always punishes me and you know why? Because I can’t speak the language they use here [primary school essay]

(8)

All teachers and professors underestimated me and I had to prove that things are not the way they think they are [lyceum essay]

In Examples (7–8), majority teachers’ discrimination against immigrant students is reported. Such behavior is attributed to immigrants’ limited skills in Greek (Example 7). It is therefore very difficult for immigrant students to overlook their school teachers’ rejection. They seem to be trapped in a vicious circle where their limited knowledge of Greek results in a negative evaluation in class which further discourages them from trying (Example 8).

b.Verbal insults

General references to verbal insults:

(9)

People are making fun of you [lyceum essay]

(10)

The society in the beginning is making fun of you [high school essay]

(11)

Here everybody is making fun of me [primary school essay]

(12)

Many people are racists and make fun of the foreigners [high school essay]

(13)

People make fun of me all the time [primary school essay]

(14)

They laugh at me [primary school essay]

(15)

They blame me for every bad thing that’s happening here [primary school essay]

In this category, it is interesting to focus our attention to the source of the insult and its verbal encoding. To indicate the sources of insults immigrant students use (a) generic terms such as people (Example 9), society (Example 10), and (b) quantifiers such as everybody (Example 11) and many (Example 12). The act of insulting is mainly encoded through the verbal phrase make fun of (Example 9–13). Moreover, the synonym laugh at (Example 14) and the verb blame (Example 15) are used for the same purpose. In Example (13) the adverbial phrase all the time presents the insult as a recurrent act. The same effect is achieved with the use of simple present in Greek, which denotes, among other things, repetition and habituality. Through these linguistic means, verbal abuse against immigrant students is represented as being performed repeatedly and aggressively by many members of the majority.

Specific references to verbal insults by peers and classmates:

(16)

On the first day at school nobody wanted to sit next to me and they characterized me with some bad adjectives [lyceum essay]

(17)

Kids in Greece were making fun of us all the time because we are coming from another country [high school essay]

(18)

Kids were insulting us [high school essay]

(19)

Kids were making fun of us (…) were insulting us with vulgar and bad words [lyceum essay]

(20)

My classmates were making fun of me using various words which I do not want to tell you [lyceum essay]

(21)

Every day at school I receive racist comments – as far as I understand of course [lyceum essay]

(22)

Kids are making fun of me and I’m in a very bad psychological condition [lyceum essay]

When verbal insults are attributed to peers and classmates (Example 16–22), different verbs (and complements) are used to encode the insults:

• Low insult intensity: they characterized me with some bad adjectives (Example 16)

• Medium insult intensity: Kids were making fun of us (Example 17, 19)

• High insult intensity: Kids were insulting us (Example 18), Kids were insulting us with vulgar and bad words (Example 19), My classmates were making fun of me using various words which I do not want to tell you (Example 20), I receive racist comments (Example 21)

All this variety of verbal insults by peers and classmates seem to cause serious psychological problems to the immigrant students, as Example (22) shows.

Specific references to verbal insults by old women:

(23)

Old women make fun of you, especially when they know that you are an Albanian [lyceum essay]

(24)

Old women are gossiping behind your back; they say look he is an Albanian [lyceum essay]

Apart from peers and classmates, old women are portrayed as sources of verbal insults against immigrant people. These old women – who are quite often immigrants’ neighbors – make fun of them (Example 23) and gossip about them (Example 24).

c.Eye gaze insults

Specific references to eye gaze insults by classmates:

(25)

when I entered the classroom for the first time, all kids were looking at me I felt so ashamed that I didn’t say anything and I went out of the classroom for a while [high school essay]

(26)

when I went (to school), I entered the classroom and everybody was looking at me in a very strange manner [high school essay]

Specific references to eye gaze insults by neighbors:

(27)

Everybody in the neighborhood, in the small store is looking at me in a strange manner [high school essay]

Insults through eye gaze constitute a category similar to the one of verbal insults previously examined. However, the semiotic medium used, i.e. that of eye gaze, is different. Immigrant students become the recipients of the insulting gaze of their majority classmates and neighbors. Thus, the verb is/was looking is complemented by the prepositional phrase in a very strange manner (Example 26) which indicates negative evaluation. This behavior of majority classmates probably explains why immigrant students feel so ashamed of their difference (see Examples 25).

d.Excluding behaviors

General references to excluding behaviors:

(28)

Society doesn’t accept you easily [high school essay]

(29)

At the beginning they were very close hearted and reserved, not for some particular reason but because we were from another country and they were afraid of us [lyceum essay]

The above examples describe the obstacles immigrants meet on their way to integration. These obstacles are usually related to the fear majority people fell due to the fact that immigrants have different origins (Example 29).

Specific references to excluding behaviors by peers and classmates:

(30)

Nobody wants me to be his friend [primary school essay]

(31)

Kids didn’t want to hang out with me because they didn’t know me [high school essay]

(32)

In my neighborhood no kid plays with me, because I come from another country [primary school essay]

(33)

Kids (…) didn’t play with us and they pushed us aside [lyceum essay]

(34)

The first day at school nobody wanted to sit next to me [lyceum essay]

(35)

Kids at my school ignore me [lyceum essay]

(36)

Kids didn’t like me and they avoided me “like I had done something (wrong) to them”. They didn’t even touch me [lyceum essay]

The excluding behaviors attributed to peers and classmates involve majority students’ reluctance to establish social relations with immigrant students, such as friendship (Example 30), fellowship (Example 31), playing (Example 32, 33), sharing the same desk in class (Example 34). This lack of social contact is highlighted by emotionally loaded expressions such as they pushed us aside (Example 33), Kids at my school ignore me (Example 35), They didn’t even touch me (Example 36).

Specific references to excluding behaviors by neighbors:

(37)

My neighbors don’t talk to me [primary school essay]

(38)

Tenants of the other apartments, when they realized that we come from Albania, started to collect signatures in order to kick us out of the house [high school essay]

According to the above extracts, intense excluding behaviors are attributed to majority neighbors as well, who live together with immigrant families but avoid talking to them (Example 37). Neighbors are represented to even collect signatures to evict them from the building where they all stay (Example 38).

e.Abusive behaviors

Specific abusive behaviors by peers and classmates:

(39)

Some kids are bullying me [primary school essay]

(40)

Kids in Greece (…) were hitting us [high school essay]

(41)

All students spit on me and they throw my bag away [primary school essay]

(42)

During the break boys were hitting me very hard [primary school essay]

This final category includes the most violent racist behaviors, i.e. those containing physical threat and abuse. In particular, we identify descriptions of majority students’ actions denoting body abuse or intention for body abuse: Some kids are bullying me (Example 39), Kids in Greece (…) were hitting us (Example 40), All students spit on me (Example 41), boys were hitting me very hard (Example 42). Violence is not only physical but also symbolic: In Example (41) an immigrant student mentions that majority students threw his bag away to humiliate him.

4.2.3Summary

In the previous section we classified expressions referring to racist behaviors included in the immigrant students’ essays of our data. We presented five categories of racist behaviors which exhibit graded intensity and threat against immigrant people. We argue that the graded threat against immigrants’ face is actually reversed and targets the collective positive face of the majority people when racist behaviors are described in immigrant students’ essays. In Bhabha’s (1994/2004Bhabha, Homi K. 1994/2004 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge., 123, 127) terms, immigrant students, activating the discursive means of mimicry, reverse “the look of surveillance” to a “displacing” and “menac[ing]” gaze. This results from the fact that, when immigrant students refer to threatening acts against them, they do not highlight the positive but the negative traits of majority people, i.e. their contempt and aggressiveness against immigrants. The intensity of the threat against the majority face depends on immigrant students’ linguistic and stylistic choices, as shown in our analysis. We will elaborate on the threat against the majority face in the following section.