Pro-Refugee Activism in Greece: The imaginary grounds of a real dynamic

This paper seeks to explore selective activism in order to seize the reasons lying beneath activist commitment to a cause instead of another requiring defense, concomitant and similar to the one ultimately chosen. The attempt to understand how activists' decision-making process and subsequent activity are structured is grounded on a field research conducted among pro-refugee activists in Athens from 2015 to 2017. The findings of the research show that the emergence and expansion from 2015 onwards of many different pro-refugee activist initiatives are largely influenced by imaginary constructs that are related to three superimposed but distinct levels of imaginary identification games. This case study reveals that prorefugee activism is certainly fuelled by political facts, but at the same time it is detached both from reality and politics, since it reflects the way in which they are combined with imaginary universes predominant in activist circles, which have little or no political relevance.

本文旨在探究选择性行动主义，以期揭示行动主义者投身某一事业，而非另一项同样需要捍卫、与最终选定的事业相伴且性质相似的事业的深层动因。本研究旨在理解行动主义者的决策流程与后续行动的构建逻辑，其研究基础为2015年至2017年间在雅典针对支持难民行动主义者开展的田野调查。研究结果显示，2015年以来各类支持难民行动主义倡议的涌现与扩张，在很大程度上受到想象性建构的影响；这类建构与三个叠加却彼此独立的想象性认同博弈层级相关联。本案例研究表明，支持难民的行动主义固然由政治现实所驱动，但同时又脱离了现实与政治语境——这是因为它反映出行动主义圈子中占据主导的想象性场域与现实的结合方式，而这类场域几乎不具备或完全不具备政治相关性。