Is there an ethnic division of labor in the city of Volos? In which sectors are the Bulgarian and Albanian migrants employed and how did their job careers develop over the years? Furthermore, what are the strategies of migrants themselves in this process?
How is gender related to class and ethnicity in labor relations? Does gender "unite" across the ethnic and class divide?
How is female employment in the service sector related to the historical formation of the Greek welfare state and to the gendered division of labor within the family?
How is work identity reconceptualized through the migration experience and in relation to past working experiences under communism?
How do migrant men and women use the cultural capital of Europeaness/Greekness in order to gain access to the labor market?
How are relationships with employers and co-workers shaped and how do migrants talk about these relationships?
How do the policies of paternalism or maternalism interrelate with racism and with gender identities?
How do government labor law policies (social security, permits, etc.) affect men and women? What do the migrants think of these policies?
Historical culture
To what extent does the culture of the home country affect attitudes towards migration and social relations in the host country? What cultural factors favour or impede the integration process?
How has the communist past and the transition period affected gender relations within migrant communities?
What is the role of political memory in addressing problems produced by migration? Is this memory transformed once migrants settle down in the host countries?
What are the main memory sites around which identity politics are structured during the migration process?
In what political terms do migrants structure their past after their settlement in the host country? What kind of ruptures emerge in their narration of the past?
Future expectations (hopes-fears). How do migrants think of their future and what do they expect of it? How are these prospects related to individual migration stories? Furthermore, how are expectations of the future internally diversified (the personal future, the future of the family, national and supra-national futures – Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Europe, etc)?
How do migrant men and women talk about the "wars of symbols" (around flags and other national symbols) which arise on national holidays, either within the education system (for migrant pupils and their parents) or in the media?
How does the reference to (or the reinvention of) religion in the host country operate according to gender? What role does religion play in narrative strategies? Is there a specific religious memory transmitted through the family, or through men and women?
Transcultural communication
In which ways are the adoption of linguistic and dress codes or of consumption patterns transformed into symbols of differentiation (or integration), in the host country or in the country of origin? In what contexts? Are there "male" and "female" patterns?
What is the role of visual culture (TV, magazines, photographs, internet) in shaping memory, culture and the "re-invention" of the home-country in the context of the migration experience?
How do concepts of individuality and collectivity, as well as family structures acquire new meanings, here or in the liminal space between here and there? In what forms and ways?
How and when do love, sexuality and entertainment operate as forms or ways of integration or exclusion? Are these patterns of everyday life differentiated according to gender and age?
In what ways does the consumption of cultural products in diasporic settings shape the second generation's identities? Are there any differentiations according to gender?
What can youth cultures teach us about new ways of negotiating migration narratives? For example, to what extent do young migrants redefine forms of belonging, experiences of racism, and transnational social structures? What is the role of interpersonal relations, feelings, life-style preferences and socialization practices?
Which social spaces do migrants' narratives identify as loci of intercultural communication? Does our evidence suggest that new practices and technologies of communication also give rise to the formation of new intercultural social spaces? And if so, would that mean that these new social spaces break through the older divide between a public and a private sphere in which migrants' subjectivities are formed?
What is the role of women in diffusing language models within the family?
What is the role of migrants' associations in the migrants' sociability?
In what ways do migrants communicate with their country of origin and how important is this communication for them?
