ABSTRACT
How do people’s memories of forced relocation affect their identities, values, and attitudes towards contemporary migrants and refugees? In this chapter, I examine the potential effects of refugee memory through the historical parallel between the Greek-Turkish population exchange (1923) and the contemporary migration and refugee flows (2015). More specifically, while focusing on the case of the Greek island of Lesvos, the question that I aim to address is: how do people with family memories of forced relocation relate to contemporary migrants and refugees? To unpack the fluid relationship between history, memory, and identity and values, as well as the way they inform assistance to migrants and refugees, I used evidence drawn from primary sources, including oral testimonies from my fieldwork on Lesvos, and archival evidence.
