Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the transformation of a situation of confinement into one of cohabitation, based on principles of hospitality, on the Greek island of Icaria during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). It explores the ways the groups - locals and political exiles - negotiated their social roles and relationships as hosts and guests.

Paper long abstract:

In my Ph.D. thesis I study the cohabitation of two groups of people, political exiles and locals, during the civil war of 1946-1949, on the Greek island of Icaria. While the experience of exile was common in this period in Greece, the case of Icaria was distinct in that it involved the cohabitation of local and exile communities. In a period of just a few months, more than 12.000 political exiles were sent by the government to Icaria, which at that point had only 8.000 inhabitants, without any provisions for housing, medical care and sometimes even food supplies. Since there were no prisons or concentration camps on the island, the exiles stayed for almost two years in the houses of the locals.

In this paper, I will discuss how this cohabitation was made possible and how what was originally intended by the government to be a way of confining or imprisoning the exiles eventually became the basis for fruitful relationships of hospitality. I will examine the social values and mechanisms that managed to transform the extraordinary situation of internal exile in such a way that today, the local community asserts its identity through the memorialization of that past experience of solidarity and hospitality. Furthermore, this paper will consider the different ways in which both locals and exiles acted as representatives of their communities, looking at how hospitality was practiced not among individuals but between the two groups that managed to create identities as host and guest on a broader, collective level.