Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on ideological debates and practices of dispossession in Greece by looking at legal transformations and political contestations on property protection and confiscation and the changing meanings of public/private property in relation to national/foreign capital and debt.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses meanings of public and private in Greece in relation to housing and company property confiscations. Indebtedness and foreclosures opened up debates raising moral and political concerns about the types of property to be under protection. Housing property and small-scale company property, commonly described as "property of the people" and "peoples' housing" is supported by a wide range of the political spectrum, as part of a national property threatened by banks' policies and by foreign capital investment. By looking at court cases on indebted households, cases of foreclosures and political debates about confiscations, this paper will discuss the relation of public/private property in its intertwinement with the national/foreign capital conundrum.