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Remembering Migration pp 141–154Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Pear Tree: Family Narratives of Post-War Greek Macedonian Migration

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Ongoing war prompted large-scale outward mass migration from Greece to Australia during the 1950s–1970s. By 1983, almost a quarter of a million Greeks had come to Australia as permanent and long-term arrivals. The largest group was from the Macedonian region of Greece, including Florina. This chapter examines how migrants who left Florina in the 1950s and 1960s and their children and grandchildren narrate cross-generational experiences of migration. It considers how collective family memory can shape transnational notions of belonging and how family migration stories of a contested home and identity can become limited in circulation across generations. Despite a greater belonging as Australian by the third generation, there remains a desire to remember the migrant legacy and understand their Greek Macedonian heritage.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 1870–1990 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  2. 2.

    Anastasios M. Tamis, The Greeks in Australia (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  3. 3.

    Victor Roudometof, “From Greek Orthodox Diaspora to Transnational Hellenism: Greek Nationalism and the Identities of the Diaspora,” in The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 139–68.

  4. 4.

    Anastasios M. Tamis, The Immigration and Settlement of Macedonian Greeks in Australia (Bundoora: La Trobe University Press, 1994), 350.

  5. 5.

    Loring M. Danforth, “‘How Can a Woman Give Birth to One Greek and One Macedonian?’ The Construction of National Identity among Immigrants to Australia from Northern Greece,” in Jane K. Cowan ed., Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

  6. 6.

    Theodoros (born 1935, Florina, Greece), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 14 February 2011, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  7. 7.

    Lazaros (born 1928, Florina, Greece), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 19 July 2010, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  8. 8.

    Alistair Thomson, “Moving Stories: Oral History and Migration Studies,” Oral History 27, no. 1 (Spring 1999).

  9. 9.

    Mary Chamberlain and Selma Leydesdorff, “Transnational Families: Memories and Narratives,” Global Networks 4, no. 3 (2004): 227–41.

  10. 10.

    Thomson, “Moving Stories: Oral History and Migration Studies,” 28.

  11. 11.

    Lynn Abrams, “Memory as Both Source and Subject of Study: The Transformations of Oral History,” in Stefan Berger and Bill Niven eds, Writing the History of Memory (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 89–109; Paula Hamilton, “The Knife Edge: Debates About Memory and History,” in Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton eds, Memory and History in Twenty-First Century Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne Oxford University Press, 1994), 9–32.

  12. 12.

    Astri Erll, “Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 42, no. 3 (2011): 303–18; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 63.

  13. 13.

    Georgina Tsolidis, “Greek-Australian Families,” in Robyn Hartley ed., Families and Cultural Diversity in Australia (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin in Association with the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 1995).

  14. 14.

    Vassiliki Chryssanthopoulou, “Reclaiming the Homeland: Belonging among Diaspora Generations of Greek Australians from Castellorizo,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 18, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2009): 67–88.

  15. 15.

    David Kertzer, “Generation as a Sociological Problem,” Annual Review of Sociology 9 (1983): 125–49.

  16. 16.

    This chapter forms part of a wider oral history PhD project over three genealogical generations that included interviews with 38 people invited to participate from my extended family networks. It examines how the transmission and circulation of family migration stories shape identity and belonging of the grandchildren of migrants who left Florina in Greece for Australia during the 1950s and 1960s (the third generation). Interviews with Greek Macedonian migrant families provided the key primary sources for the project. First names have been used to support the privacy of interviewees with recorded interviews privately held.

  17. 17.

    Anna Triandafyllidou, “National Identity and the ‘Other’,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 4 (1998): 593–12.

  18. 18.

    Andreas (born 1971, Melbourne, Australia), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 11 October 2015, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  19. 19.

    Dimitra Giorgas, “Transnationalism and Identity among Second Generation Greek-Australians,” in Ties to the Homeland: Second Generation Transnationalism, 53–71.

  20. 20.

    Victor Roudometof, “From Greek Orthodox Diaspora to Transnational Hellenism,” 146.

  21. 21.

    Anastasios M. Tamis, The Immigration and Settlement of Macedonian Greeks in Australia, 134; Nicholas Doumanis, “The Greeks in Australia,” in Richard Clogg ed., The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1999), 81.

  22. 22.

    Riki Van Boeschoten, “When Difference Matters: Sociopolitical Dimensions of Ethnicity in the District of Florina,” in Jane K. Cowan ed., Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

  23. 23.

    Nergis Canefe, “Home in Exile: Politics of Refugeehood in the Canadian Muslim Diaspora,” in Julia Creet and Andreas Kitzmann eds, Memory and Migration: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 156–80.

  24. 24.

    Anastasios M. Tamis, The Immigration and Settlement of Macedonian Greeks in Australia, 354; Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation,” Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 (1993): 349–63.

  25. 25.

    Eleni (born 1940, Florina, Greece), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 6 April 2014, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  26. 26.

    Lazaros (born 1928, Florina, Greece), interview, 19 July 2010.

  27. 27.

    Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York: Routledge, 1997).

  28. 28.

    Noula Papayiannis, “Identity and Belonging among Second-Generation Greek and Italian Canadian Women,” in May Friedman and Silvia Shultermandl eds, Growing up Transnational: Identity and Kinship in a Global Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2011), 69–83.

  29. 29.

    Peter (born 1961, Florina, Greece), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 24 November 2013, digital recording in author’s possession.

  30. 30.

    Danforth, “‘How Can a Woman Give Birth to One Greek and One Macedonian?’”; Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

  31. 31.

    Hans Vermeulen, The Ethnic Identities of European Minorities: Theory and Case Studies, Bruno Synak ed. (Gdanskiego: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu 1995).

  32. 32.

    Peter (born 1961, Florina, Greece), interview, 24 November 2013.

  33. 33.

    Sarah (born 1981, Sydney, Australia), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 23 October 2010, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  34. 34.

    Andrew (born 1985, Melbourne, Australia), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 29 October 2013, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  35. 35.

    John (born 1986, Melbourne, Australia), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 21 August 2016, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  36. 36.

    Belinda (born 1989, Melbourne Australia), interviewed by Andrea Cleland, 21 August 2016, Melbourne, digital recording in author’s possession.

  37. 37.

    John (born 1986, Melbourne, Australia), interview, 21 August 2016.

  38. 38.

    Andrew (born 1985, Melbourne, Australia), interview, 29 October 2013.

  39. 39.

    Belinda (born 1989, Melbourne, Australia), interview, 21 August 2016.

  40. 40.

    Andrew (born 1985, Melbourne, Australia), interview, 29 October 2013.

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    Google Scholar 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Andrea Cleland

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  1. Andrea Cleland
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Correspondence to Andrea Cleland .

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  1. University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Kate Darian-Smith

  2. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paula Hamilton

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Cleland, A. (2019). The Pear Tree: Family Narratives of Post-War Greek Macedonian Migration. In: Darian-Smith, K., Hamilton, P. (eds) Remembering Migration. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17751-5_10

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