Neither minority nor majority: the paradox of Aromanian identity in the Greek nationalising state

This article examines the paradox of the Aromanians in Greece – a community that rejects minority status while maintaining cultural distinctiveness. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, digital discourse analysis, and historical comparison, it analyses how Aromanian identity is constructed, denied, and reconfigured across institutional, everyday, and digital arenas. Officially categorised as “Vlachophone Greeks”, Aromanians are folklorised in ways that reproduce the logic of the Greek nationalising state. In domestic life, identity endures through what Herzfeld terms cultural intimacy – a moral economy of discretion through which language and memory persist beyond formal recognition. In digital spaces, these silences resurface as irony, polemic, and nostalgia that unsettle homogenising narratives. Bringing Brubaker’s nationalising state into dialogue with cultural intimacy and everyday nationhood, the article argues that Aromanian resilience lies not in overt resistance but in adaptive coexistence – a form of minority existence sustained through discretion and negotiated survival within hegemonic frameworks.