Who am I or who am I supposed to be? Social representations of youth of African background in Athens

This paper is a result of my PhD research on citizenship, identity and belonging among youth of African background in Athens, and focuses in particular on prejudices and stereotypes those youngsters are facing daily, living in a society that perceives and quite often excludes them as foreigners ad hoc because of their skin color, which speaks for and before them.

How these youngsters are perceived by the majority society and the State is the core question I investigate, focusing on the imposed dual ‘otherness’ they are subject to.  On the one hand, they have to deal with the ‘otherness’ originating from the migrant status inherited to them by their parents, and on the other, with the ‘otherness’ deriving from their different phenotypic characteristics.  Without being formally recognized (they are not granted the Greek citizenship) by the country in which they were born and/or raised, their social inclusion is jeopardized, since they are not perceived either as citizens or even, as citizens to be. Race matters, and becomes a means of discrimination against youth of African background, who are perceived and treated as inassimilable and ‘forever others’.