As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. What has happened to me? He thought. It was no dream. (Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, 1915, 1999, p. 89)
In 1915, Franz Kafka published a short story, The Metamorphosis , in which he narrates the story of Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, who is transformed into an insect. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka uses an allegory to describe the psychological dimension of a man who detests his job, serves his family and sacrifices his life for his parents and his sister. The author explores the limits of humankind and the relations between the members of an ‘ordinary’ European family via the character of Gregor Samsa. The symbolic nature of this short story, that verges on the absurd, is an issue of literary studies; however, Kafka’s thoughts cannot be restricted to the limits of a specific discipline. The Metamorphosis, written in 1912, remains a pioneering work, not only because its author negotiates with the notions of humankind, patience, family values and social relations, but also because Kafka introduces the concept of ‘otherness’ in this story.
Gregor Samsa is metamorphosed into a repulsive creature and at the same time converted into an ‘Other’ for his own family, an ‘Other’ that threatens the coherence, the social status and even the life of the members of his family. Confronted by the alleged ‘danger’, the members of his family forget the human dimension of Gregor Samsa and seek his exclusion or annihilation. In particular, Gregor’s sister notes ‘we must try to get rid of it’ (p. 133) and his father wounds him (pp. 121–122), as he considers Gregor Samsa an enemy and not his son.
The Metamorphosis is thus a symbolic work that offers the reader a representation of the ‘Other’, and indeed an ‘Other’ that is neither remote nor unknown. In contrast, Gregor Samsa as the ‘Other’ exists within the territory of his own family and his presence is interpreted as a threat by the members of his family. Hence, there is a parallel between Kafka’s hero, Gregor Samsa, and the ‘Other’ in ‘Fortress Europe’, as I will illustrate in the next paragraphs.
The metaphor of ‘Fortress Europe’ is frequently used in manifold debates on immigration and asylum issues, and this concept coincides with the restrictive European migration policies of the last two decades. However, according to Modood et al., ‘a unique feature of the EU as a sociopolitical entity it’s the fluidity of its boundaries. The EU has no fixed external frontiers. It is a community of inclusion rather than exclusion’ (2006, p. 10). Here, the authors note the borderless character of the European Union (EU) and the ability of all citizens to cross European borders without border controls and to move and work in other European countries. This argument links to the theory of globalization and the multicultural dimension of the contemporary European megalopolis,1 although it seems like a paradox in an age when the member states of the EU are pursuing not only oppressive security policies but also language tests and other complicated entry and settlement requirements, rules and regulations in order to secure the borders of the Union and exclude countries and people who do not satisfy the criteria (Wodak 2007; Geddes 2008). Thus, the above argument illustrates the contradictory character of the EU, insofar as the EU, on the one hand, proceeds towards European integration and on the other, adopts policies that deter non-Europeans from entering the Union or sets the Schengen Agreement into question.
The inclusive/ exclusive nature of European policies on migration and the recent refugee issue raises questions about European identity , insofar as the limits between ‘us’, the Europeans, and ‘them’ are renegotiated. Gilroy (1997) noted earlier that ‘we live in a world where identity matters’, and it matters because ‘[it] provides a way of understanding the interplay between our subjective experience of the world and the cultural and historical settings in which that fragile subjectivity is formed’ (p. 301). In an age of European enlargement and because of the increasing insecurity on national and European levels, identity politics play an important role, because it can differentiate the ‘Self’ from the ‘Other’. In particular, Gilroy further explains that identity is designed to help us understand whom we are and where we belong via strategies of inclusion and exclusion. In other words, identity depends on the marking of difference, though ‘every ‘we’ can be understandable only in relation with a ‘they’ (ibid.). This adversative relationship between identity and difference, or sameness and otherness, is ‘an intrinsically political operation’ (ibid.). Following the inclusion/exclusion dimensions of the concept of identity, my aim in this study is to illustrate that European identity can be interpreted as an institutional construction of a supranational organization that intends to unify Europeans and distinguishes them from the ‘Others’.
The ‘Other’ is neither specific nor stable. For instance, the concept of ‘Fortress Europe’ is linked to restrictions on migration and access to Europe for citizens from Muslim and other states and dictates the concept of a non-European ‘Other’. However, the ‘Other’ usually exists within the walls of the ‘Fortress Europe’ and is portrayed by negative, stereotypical representations of Muslim migrants, Roma, Jews and other minorities who live in European cities and are integrated into the host societies; at the same time this challenges the values of the ‘permissive’ and ‘hospitable’ ‘European family’ as Gregor Samsa challenges the values of his ‘sacred’ Western middle-class family. Furthermore, even a member of the ‘European family’ can be transformed into an ominous and threatening ‘Other’ in the age of the financial crisis, as the case of Greece has proved.
1.1 Europe in a Time of Crisis (2010–2017): The Greek Case
This study was begun in October 2010, just a few months before the economic and sociopolitical modifications of Greece. Reference to the financial or debt crisis of Greece was not one of my main intentions. However, as the so-called ‘Greek debt crisis ’ has resulted in so many changes to Greek society and challenged European solidarity, I realized that I could not avoid referring to this, if only briefly.
In May 2010 the Greek government signed the so-called Memorandum of Cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission, the so-called ‘troika’. This involved financial and institutional agreements between Greece and its creditors, which entailed the imposition of severe fiscal and economic adjustment measures that have drastically increased Greece’s budget deficit, accompanied by sociopolitical implications, such as massive cuts in wages and pensions, drastic increases in taxation, the virtual dissolution of the public health system and a huge increase in unemployment (Kaplanis 2011; Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou 2013). Thereafter, Greek society experienced new memoranda, economic threats and further austerity measures that led to massive cuts in wages and pensions in tandem with a drastic increase in taxation, the virtual dissolution of the public health system, the complete dialysis of the public education system, and a huge increase of unemployment. All these factors challenge the vested rights of Greek people (Verney 2014; Vasilopoulou et al. 2014).
Moreover, Greece also...