ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the connections between different places and their situatedness in articulating a sense of translocality among Greek migrants in Berlin and New York, and Greek return migrants in Athens. It focuses particularly on the experience of second-generation Greeks in these three cities of the Greek diaspora. The processes of ‘returning’ or ‘counter-diasporic’ migration of second-generation Greek-Americans and Greek-Germans suggest how different places are significant. This significance of place is correlated to the nation and how identities are embedded in migrants’ vision of the world and sense of territory and therefore constitute practical categories of perception and cognitive frames of reference. Migrants’ experiences are shaped by physical, cultural and symbolic distance as well as proximity to the nation. By exploring the interplay of these different types of ‘place sense-making’ (home/host societies) we understand how migrants simultaneously perceive and act upon their relationships with cities, nations and the homelands.
