European Mobility and Spatial Belongings : Greek and Latvian migrants in Sweden

How can we understand the significance of the nation in the current European context? And, how does the idea of a common European identity, as an aggregate based on national and regional afliation, work in practice?

Trough interviews, this study reconstructs the overlapping identifications of Latvian and Greek migrants in Sweden focusing on questions around integration, feelings of belonging and spatial identification of the migrants with their countries of origin and residence.

Furthermore, how migrants position themselves in relation to the Baltic Sea region and the Mediterranean as, but also compared to other, macro regional spaces is also explored. The study of migrants’ narratives about their social and everyday life, and their personal experience of coping with public authorities seeks to improve our understanding of the current phenomenon of internal European migration.

Vasileios Petrogiannis is a social scientist. This doctoral thesis, written within the research area of Politics, Economy and the Organization of Society (PESO), is part of the project “Spaces of Expectation: Mental Mapping and Historical Imagination in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Region” at the Institute of Contemporary History at Södertörn University.