Abstract:

Is being a “refugee” a means of identification? Does it refer to a specific identity? Does it allow to become integrated, to merge into a society and a State? The case of the 1,3 million refugees from Turkey is unique : native from different regions of the Ottoman Empire, each group was structured in its own specificities, they are assuredly uprooted but they go to the State which is their “motherland” a priori. The State will implement various policies to integrate them. Processes are developed, but an identity, to be questioned, emerges between memory and adaptation in a construction of a “we” that is defined in relation to, or in opposition to “them”, but not to a global “one”. This raises the question of integration in the State and the Nation. How can a national consciousness be developed from a consciousness of identity? In a context of political and economic crises, we use some examples for argumentation : the period from 1922 to the end of the era Venizelos: in a Greece in search of itself, many of the refugees demonstrate the impossible denial of the “lost homelands”. But the last phase of integration and identity formation implies integration within the State: recognition by the State of the refugees’ interest; becoming citizens through the integration in politics and voting so as to achieve homogenization of the Nation-State in a “reduced” Hellenism inside the boundaries of Greece.

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