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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how the performance of ‘being European’ as experienced by Greek young adults impacts the sense of belonging in different spaces. It details how "failing to be European", succeeding to, or rejecting the performance altogether, polarizes the lived experience in different ways.

Paper long abstract

The paper starts by addressing the general lived experience of ‘post-failure’ Greek society, resulting from the discursive language that surrounds the 2008 economic crisis. This event, placing Greece as indebted to the EU and other Member States, sets the scene for the framework of escaping from failure or reaching success by inhabiting or performing ‘Europeanness’. Young-adults, who in the current societal sphere and economic deficits already find themselves having feelings of failing to reach the signifiers of adulthood, have to navigate this secondary collective identity, next to their national one, on an axis from failure to success. The paper further argues that this axis is often also experienced as going from ‘Greekness’ to ‘Europeanness’, holding similar connotations.

The paper continues to posit that this leads to polarization surrounding any conversation on European integration, collaboration, labour migration or globalization; making these contested topics in society, politics, and the lived experience alike. Similarly, framing failure to ‘be European’ on this axis posits inhabiting ‘Greekness’ as the opposite of success, leading to the recreation of foreign negative stereotypes amongst Greeks themselves. Depending on the space, the placement upon this perceived axis impacts feelings of belonging, ingroup dynamics and opportunities for these young-adults navigating their future-making. Additionally, within that framework, individuals have experienced alternatively or sometimes simultaneously being shamed for not being successful enough in their Europeanness, losing their Greekness, and their expressed desire to try and change their position on this axis.