East European Migrant Women in Greece. Intergenerational Cultural Knowledge Transfer and Adaptation in a Context of Crisis

Abstract

Abstract This paper draws on a larger oral history project entitled ‘Gendered Histories of Resilience and Resistance: East European Women’s Narratives of Mobility and Survival’, a narrative ethnography of Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Polish immigrant women living in Greece. The paper explores intergenerational cultural knowledge transfer and adaptation in a context of crisis with an analysis contextualised within the current crisis in Greece. We consider here the degree of uncertainty and the emotional challenges and constraints, but consider also the creativity and agency that participants display. Following on from that we aim to unravel the impact of ‘family and cultural values’ on migrants’ everyday lives in the diaspora.