Deserted Borderland. Demographic anxieties and the politicisation of emigration in northern Greece during the early Cold War
As a result of the Cold War dynamics, Greece found itself bordering the Communist Bloc, namely Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. When in the early sixties a mass exodus from the underdeveloped rural areas of Northern Greece towards West Germany acquired momentum, policymakers, experts and the media created a moral panic about the depopulation of the borderland with implications to the national security. Analyzing the media discourses and the experts' publications this article has two main ambitions. From the one hand, it aims to situate this moment of mass exodus to the long durée of forced displacement and mobility in this borderland and, from the other hand it contextualizes the politicization of migration as an oxymoron between the Greek state's aspiration to reach European standards of development through migration, and its sclerosis regarding demographic anxieties without sustainable sociopolitical solutions.
Maria Adamopoulou
Maria Adamopoulou holds a Doctorate in History from the European University Institute in Florence. Her monograph The Greek Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic of Germany (1960-1974) was published in 2024 by De Gruyter. She has pursued her postdoctoral studies at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest, at the New Europe College in Bucharest and at the IEG in Mainz. She has also been a visiting fellow at the NCCR-on the move in Neuchâtel and at the Zukunftskolleg in Konstanz.