Descending and Ascending Memories in a Melting Pot

Abstract This chapter combines a wide range of chronologies and Asia Minor places of origin from which people were forcibly displaced in the context of Greece’s most populous and cosmopolitan region of Attica. It is based on one hundred life history interviews, in addition to familial, associational, and archival evidence derived from the Oral Tradition Archive of the Centre of Asia Minor Studies in Athens. Different balances of memory and identity are sketched, and in settlements with dwindling refugee characteristics intergenerational memory is presented as fading, introducing the concept of descending history and identities. In Attica, triggering and descending identities coexist, as it is transformed to a place of settlement for subsequent migration and passes from homogeneity to multiculturalism over time. In this gradually transforming centre, hostility towards early migrations becomes acceptance, as multiculturalism and past refugee identities are seen as sources of pragmatism, understanding, and less tense attitudes towards contemporary migration.