Papers by Georgios Karyotis
British Journal of Political Science, 2013
The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportu... more The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportunity to study the causes of mass protest. This article reports the results of a survey of the adult population in which two-thirds of the respondents supported protest and 29 per cent reported actual involvement in strikes and/or demonstrations during 2010. Relative deprivation is a significant predictor of potential protest, but does not play any role in terms of who takes part in strikes or demonstrations. Previous protest participation emerges as a key predictor of actual protest. This study seeks to place these results within a comparative context, contrasting Greece with other countries facing similar challenges, and discusses the implications for the future of austerity politics.
International Relations
The ‘securitisation’ of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat ... more The ‘securitisation’ of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat to key values, principally identity. Yet, the socially constructed nature of ‘identity’ implies the potential for dual usage: support and contestation of the security frame. Using the UK as an illustrative case, this overlooked dynamic is explored through mixed-methods, incorporating elite political and religious discourse (2005–2015) and original public attitudinal survey evidence. The discourse analysis reveals that the preservation of an imperilled British identity (‘tolerance’) is a frame invoked, in different ways and by different actors, to either support or contest the securitisation of migration. Similarly, British citizens who deeply value the preservation of ‘Britishness’ have diverse, positive and negative views on migration, challenging the notion that identity as a referent object is deterministically linked to anti-immigration attitudes. The innovative concept of ‘counter-s...
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
This article explores the experiences of young Syrian refugees in the UK. It looks at how settlem... more This article explores the experiences of young Syrian refugees in the UK. It looks at how settlement plays out for two 'types' of Syrian refugees, those resettled by the UK Government and those who claim asylum in the UK. Drawing on new empirical data from 484 Syrian refugees in the UK, the article compares and contrasts the two groups' access to educational provisions, the labour market and general support mechanisms that should, in principle, be equally available to all refugees. This reveals the scale and consequences of the existing two-tier system of international protection based entirely on how refugees come to be in the UK, rather than any objective analysis of their reason for flight. In doing so, the article seeks to contribute to debates about the process and implications of how host states label people, in this case by de facto treating resettled Syrians as the 'good' refugees, while those who arrive of their own volition, regardless of their needs, are viewed as more problematic.
Journal of Peace Research, 2010
Abstract This article revisits securitization theory of the Copenhagen School by addressing an em... more Abstract This article revisits securitization theory of the Copenhagen School by addressing an empirical overemphasis on political actors and offering a quantitative extension to typically qualitative assessments of the theory. Using Greece as a case study, it explores the dynamics of ...
British Journal of Political Science
The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportu... more The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportunity to study the causes of mass protest. This article reports the results of a survey of the adult population in which two-thirds of the respondents supported protest and 29 per cent reported actual nvolvement in strikes and/or demonstrations during 2010. Relative deprivation is a significant predictor of potential protest, but does not play any role in terms of who takes part in strikes or demonstrations. Previous protest participation emerges as a key predictor of actual protest. This tudy seeks to place these results within a comparative context, contrasting Greece with other countries facing similar challenges, and discusses the implications for the future of austerity politics.
The Politics of Extreme Austerity, 2015
European Political Science Review, 2021
Support for social distancing measures was, globally, high at the early stages of the COVID-19 pa... more Support for social distancing measures was, globally, high at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic but increasingly came under pressure. Focusing on the UK, this article provides a rigorous exploration of the drivers of public support for social distancing at their formative stage, via mixed methods. Synthesizing insights from crisis management and securitization theory, thematic analysis is employed to map the main frames promoted by the government and other actors on the nature/severity, blame/responsibility, and appropriate response to the pandemic, which 'follows the science'. The impact of these on public attitudes is examined via a series of regression analyses, drawing on a representative survey of the UK population (n = 2100). Findings challenge the prevailing understanding that support for measures is driven by personal health considerations, socioeconomic circumstances, and political influences. Instead, crisis framing dynamics, which the government is well-positioned to dominate, have the greatest impact on driving public attitudes.
Journal of Peace Research, 2010
This article revisits securitization theory of the Copenhagen School by addressing an empirical o... more This article revisits securitization theory of the Copenhagen School by addressing an empirical overemphasis on political actors and offering a quantitative extension to typically qualitative assessments of the theory. Using Greece as a case study, it explores the dynamics of competition and the relative discursive power of two actors, political and religious elites, regarding migration. After first documenting a divergence in the two actors’ rhetoric through discourse analysis, it proceeds to measure the relative impact of their discourses on public immigration attitudes, employing structural equation modelling of European Social Survey data. Findings demonstrate that exposure to the securitizing religious discourse through church attendance immunizes citizens from the softening effect of the political message. This, in turn, explains the survival of the security frame on migration in Greece, even as political elites begin to move towards the desecuritized pole of the continuum. Crucially, the analysis of this case suggests that a methodological synthesis of qualitative and quantitative research methods to study securitization is possible despite limitations. The authors call for greater efforts to combine the two methods which would allow for a better understanding of securitization and desecuritization processes.
British Journal of Political Science , 2013
The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportu... more The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportunity to study the causes of mass protest. We report the results of a survey of the adult population, with two thirds of the respondents supporting protest and 29 per cent reporting actual involvements in strikes and/or demonstrations during 2010. Relative deprivation is a significant predictor of potential protest but does not play any role in terms of who actually takes part in strikes or demonstrations. Previous protest participation emerges as a key predictor of actual protest. We attempt to set these results in the context of Greece as compared with other countries facing similar challenges and discuss the implications for the future of austerity politics.
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The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the worl... more The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world fuelled claims about a new style of mobilisation emerging that is markedly different from previous social movements. Analysing a series of original survey data, this article engages with this debate by providing a panoramic account of how the anti-austerity movement evolved in Greece, comparing the drivers of protest in three distinct protest waves. Contrary to expectations, the rise of the Greek version of the Indignados during 2011 did not decisively transform the anti-austerity movement that emerged in 2010, which mainly displayed characteristics typically associated with 'old' social movements. However, elements of the 'new social movements' approach featured more prominently in the third wave of protest, beginning in mid-2012 and culminating in January 2015 with victory for SYRIZA, the party that channelled the anti-austerity movement into the political scene. The model developed to study protest in non-electoral arenas also performs well to explain the success of SYRIZA in the electoral arena, highlighting the reciprocal but understudied relationship between mobilisation and electoral politics.
South European Society and Politics [DOI:10.1080/13608746.2014.977478], Dec 2014
Drawing on surveys of voters and MPs in Greece, this article analyses elite-mass interaction on k... more Drawing on surveys of voters and MPs in Greece, this article analyses elite-mass interaction on key policy (austerity, European integration, immigration) and ideological issues after the 2012 elections. We find that while for the government parties, New Democracy and PASOK, the level of congruence is quite high, MPs from opposition parties (SYRIZA, Golden Dawn) place themselves in more exposed positions in comparison with their voters. The observed substantial variation in the intensity and direction of congruence, across parties and issue preferences in Greece, reinforces the view that the dimensionality of political contestation is not reducible to a single ideological dimension.
Political Studies (Karyotis, G. and Rüdig, W. (2015), Blame and Punishment? The Electoral Politics of Extreme Austerity in Greece. Political Studies, 63: 2–24. doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12076)
Can governments that introduce extreme austerity measures survive elections? Contrary to economic... more Can governments that introduce extreme austerity measures survive elections? Contrary to economic voting expectations, the PASOK government in Greece initially appeared to cope quite well, claiming victory in regional elections in 2010 despite widespread anti-austerity protest. In this paper, we interpret this result with the help of a post-election survey, which also covered future voting intention. The explanatory power of models based on theories of economic voting and blame attribution as well as the electoral impact of the government’s representation of the crisis as an existential threat are assessed. Our analysis challenges the interpretation of the 2010 election as an indication of support for PASOK’s austerity policies and reveals weaknesses in its support base, which help contextualise its downfall in the 2012 Parliamentary elections. The paper also underlines the importance of studying the impact of crises discourses on voting choice, particularly since blame attribution receives little support in this case.
Griffith Law Review, Volume (22) Issue (3) (2013), Mar 2014
It has become commonplace to argue that migration in most host states is socially constructed pri... more It has become commonplace to argue that migration in most host states is socially constructed primarily as a security threat, a process known as ‘securitisation’. Political elites and security professionals are identified as the main agents that promote this particular framing of the issue. While securitisation is often implicitly considered as a goal-orientated process, paradoxically few studies have explored its actual consequences on policy and the securitising actors themselves. Adopting a consequentialist ethics approach, this article assesses the implications of the securitisation of migration in Greece, drawing on face-to-face interviews with security professionals, discourse analysis and other primary data. It demonstrates that securitisation harms the interests of not only migrants but also, counter-intuitively, of the state and the elites that supported it in the first place. This leaves only parties of the far-right as the main winners of the security frame that characterises Greece’s stance on immigration since the early 1990s and which continues to pose obstacles to its development of a coherent immigration policy with a long-term view.
International Political Sociology, 2012
The field of security is largely controlled by elites who, by virtue of their authority, are able... more The field of security is largely controlled by elites who, by virtue of their authority, are able to create an image of an enemy which is largely independent of the objective significance of a threat. However, a narrow focus on speech acts and discourse analysis to study such processes of securitization is inherently inadequate. This article provides a panoramic account of Greek migration politics during the 1990s. It shows that securitization can be discursive or nondiscursive, pre-mediated or subconscious, and beneficial or detrimental for securitizing actors. Elite interviews and an in-depth analysis of contextual factors help make sense of these dynamics.
Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 271-293. , 2007
After 27 years of stalemate and inability to make any progress in dealing with domestic terrorism... more After 27 years of stalemate and inability to make any progress in dealing with domestic terrorism, in 2002 the Greek police finally arrested members of the `Revolutionary Organization November 17', the most lethal terrorist group ever to operate in Greece. The arrest of the terrorists raised several questions that have not yet been satisfactorily answered. Why did Greece take so long before a decisive strike against domestic, left-wing terrorism was recorded? What were the factors that led to the arrest of the terrorists? In answering these questions it is necessary to analyse not just the operational changes in the Greek counter-terrorist strategy that began to materialize at the turn of the millennium, but also the deep-rooted conceptual changes that led to the inclusion of terrorism in the Greek security agenda for the first time. I utilize and extend the theory of `securitization' as developed by the Copenhagen school, and argue that the state's failure to curtail terrorist activity in Greece resulted from the erroneous belief that terrorism was not a direct threat to Greek security. In turn, the belated securitization of terrorism was the key to the arrest of the terrorists that held Greece hostage for almost three decades.
Mobilization: An International Quarterly
Following the emergence of mass protest against the austerity measures taken by the Greek governm... more Following the emergence of mass protest against the austerity measures taken by the Greek government in 2010, the question arises to what extent the protests are just mobilizing the ‘usual suspects’ of left-wing trade union activists or a new protest generation. Using a general population survey carried out in December 2010, we find that almost one third of the adult Greek population had taken part in anti-austerity protests, but less than one in five had been first time protesters. Comparing new with veteran protesters but also non-protesters, we find that new protest recruits do not fit the expected pattern in many respects. The Greek protest movement has re-mobilized many of the ‘usual suspects’ but it also includes first timers as ‘apprentice’ protesters, particularly in demonstrations, who differ markedly from veteran participants.
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Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20 (1). pp. 1-17. ISSN 1351-1610, 2007
Many studies have explored the security logic of EU policies on migration and asylum, which serve... more Many studies have explored the security logic of EU policies on migration and asylum, which served as the legitimizing factor for adopting restrictive measures and for cutting back the rights of third-country nationals. The involvement of the European Commission in this policy area after the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force signalled a move towards more liberal immigration policies, which recognized the positive contributions made by labor immigrants. However, the terrorist attacks of September 11 brought the liberalization of European migration policy to a halt. In the context of these developments, this paper aims to readdress the security-migration nexus, utilizing but also extending the concept of 'securitization', developed by the 'Copenhagen School of Security Studies'. By analyzing institutional developments in the area of internal security in the EU, it demonstrates that the events of September 11 did not initiate the insecurities, uncertainties, ambiguities and complexities in regards to migration policy; rather they accelerated dynamics that were already deeply rooted in the emerging European internal security regime. The paper concludes that the discourse that links migration to security is a construction that is both exaggerated and problematic, yet it has been further reinforced in the post-September 11 context.
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Papers by Georgios Karyotis
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Key Findings:
- Young Syrian refugees in the UK have the highest levels of skills and training, and are most eager to remain and contribute to the host country, compared with those in Greece and Lebanon.
- Young Syrian refugees are faced with higher levels of unemployment in the UK than citizens, while many of them who are in employment are doing jobs for which they are over-qualified.
- Refugees in the UK receive better support and have an overall more positive experience and evaluation of actors compared to those in Greece and Lebanon, but access to key provisions designed to enhance labour market participation remains patchy.
- Syrian refugees who have been resettled to the UK report overall more positive experiences than those coming through the asylum route, despite higher levels of employment among the latter and the government supposedly taking the more vulnerable among the former.
- Young Syrians in Scotland are better supported, and more positive about their engagement with people and institutions, although they are currently more distanced from re-integration into the labour market compared to those settled in England.
des Landes. Überwiegend stammen sie aus dem benachbarten Albanien.
* Im Unterschied zu den starken Einwanderungswellen der frühen 1990er Jahre hat sich Griechenland im Zuge
der Flüchtlingsmigration der letzten Jahre vom Zielland zum Transitland gewandelt.
* Gesetze zur Legalisierung von Migranten standen um die Jahrtausendwende im Zentrum der Integrationspolitik
des Landes. Darauf folgten ab 2006 erste sozioökonomische Maßnahmen.
* Einwanderer sind überwiegend in hochprekären Beschäftigungsverhältnissen angestellt. Die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise
hat ihre Lage im Land erschwert.
* Flüchtlinge wurden bisher kaum in den Arbeitsmarkt und die Gesellschaft integriert. Die einheimische Bevölkerung
steht deren Integration überwiegend skeptisch gegenüber.
* Wo nationale Systeme nicht ausreichen, müssen häufig NGOs oder internationale Organisationen eingreifen. Unter der angespannten wirtschaftlichen Lage und anhaltenden Sparmaßnahmen leidet auch die Integrationspolitik des Landes.
This chapter utilises discourse analysis and a set of face-to-face interviews with migrant protesters and organisers of the hunger strike to analyse migrant activism in Greece during the economic crisis. It starts with a broad theoretical overview of framing, linking it to identity and the two dominant, competing frames that apply to immigration policy, the restrictive, realist one and the liberal frame. The following section provides a narrative of the hunger strike and draws on primary interview data to map the ethnic and ideological profile of participants and assess their migrant experience and evaluations of the protest action. The chapter proceeds to explore the framing of the protest movement by analysing its official press releases during and after the action, as well the discourse of supporters and opponents, which, in different ways, challenged or supplemented elements of the projected collective identity. The overall analysis thus offers a comprehensive account of the protest movement, identifies tensions and dilemmas relevant to its attempt to construct a collective identity, and allows for the migrants’ suppressed voices and untold stories to be heard.
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This chapter utilises discourse analysis and a set of face-to-face interviews with migrant protesters and organisers of the hunger strike to analyse migrant activism in Greece during the economic crisis. It starts with a broad theoretical overview of framing, linking it to identity and the two dominant, competing frames that apply to immigration policy, the restrictive, realist one and the liberal frame. The following section provides a narrative of the hunger strike and draws on primary interview data to map the ethnic and ideological profile of participants and assess their migrant experience and evaluations of the protest action. The chapter proceeds to explore the framing of the protest movement by analysing its official press releases during and after the action, as well the discourse of supporters and opponents, which, in different ways, challenged or supplemented elements of the projected collective identity. The overall analysis thus offers a comprehensive account of the protest movement, identifies tensions and dilemmas relevant to its attempt to construct a collective identity, and allows for the migrants’ suppressed voices and untold stories to be heard.