A large number of Greek Cypriots live in North London, where the sense of belonging in an ethnic community is daily and actively renewed through multiple mechanisms of participation and multileveled communication. A variety of ethnic media, which people consume in everyday life, have their role in the processes of (re)invention and (re)construction of British Greek Cypriot ethnic identities that depend, at the same time, on immediate and mediated experiences in and of the country of origin, the locality and the diaspora. These three spaces - the country of origin, the locality and the diaspora - come together in a meeting point of the virtual and the real, through electronic media. The ethnic electronic media, which are both local and global and which use new and old technologies, challenge the boundaries between geographical positionings and singular categorisations. These media are the focus of this research. In this thesis, I argue that the ethnic electronic media have a vital role for the construction of a new hybrid imagined community, which is neither geographically bounded nor lacks the face-to-face communication, as suggested by Anderson (1983); rather it depends simultaneously on immediate and mediated communication. Traditional institutions and face-to-face relations developed in community centres and alternative ethnic spaces become the immediate context of ethnicity - at the same time, ethnic media become the mediators of ethnicity which is not just local, but also diasporic and global. The survival and the (re)construction of ethnic identities depend as much on traditional community mechanisms and relations, as they depend on the mediated communication of the imagined community. In their contradictions and shifting, ethnic identities continue to be meaningful to people. They depend on a sense of belonging to a community and on sharing common values and everyday culture - both communicated through physical co-existence and the sharing of the media.

The concept of home is integral to much research in the field of refugee studies, which has looked at the settlement of refugees in the new home of exile, return to the lost home and, more recently, a negotiation between two or more homes through transnational practices. However, studies have rarely focused on what home actually means for those compelled to leave their homes. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of forced migration to look at the lived experience of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot refugees in London, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of home. The thesis takes as its focus four key aspects of home - the spatial, temporal, material and relational - to reveal that home for the refugee is complex, multiple and in process. What the refugee loses when they are displaced is not only the physical property of the spatial home; but also the networks and social capital of the relational home; the framed memories, repetitions of daily life and future potential of the temporal home; as well as the tastes, scents and embodied experience of the material home. It is the impossibility of all these aspects ever being reassembled, even if the physical property were to be returned, which illustrates the depth of loss that exile often represents. However, in spite of the losses they have suffered, the majority of Cypriot refugees in this study also show tremendous resilience. The findings are based on narrative interviews with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot refugees, who have lived in protracted exile in London for several decades. Contributing to a narrative turn in the field, which places the refugee at the centre rather than the margins of the research, this study recognises refugees as agents in their own lives, who are victims of circumstances rather than victims per se.

The focus of this thesis is the analysis of a Greek–speaking Muslim community that resides in Syria and Lebanon and who claim Greek identity and Diaspora membership on the basis of Greek language and customs. My empirical research on the community was guided by the following research question: in which ways do the members of the Greek-speaking community practice and project their Greek identity? This thesis draws on theories regarding identity construction, community building, memory, gender, diaspora and immigration. All of them have been useful in order to understand and analyze the empirical data gathered during the fieldwork. Anthropological research was conducted for more than 17 months in Syria, Lebanon and Crete. Modern Greeks have constructed their identity around Orthodox Christianity, the Greek language, the glory of Ancient Greece and around policies in support of the Greek state; all concepts that people should respect, support and identify with in order to be included in the Greek fold. The voices of the members of the community in this study tell a counter narrative to that of the official Greek state, and to the formal Greek nationalist historiography that accompanies it. In this counter narrative, Greek history incorporates Muslims, and relates that good relations amongst religious groups are possible and desirable. Significantly, Greek identity is disconnected from Orthodox Christianity, while it does remain attached to Greek customs and Greek language. The community under examination constructs its identity around memories of Crete, gendered norms and practices, and the experience of living in Crete as illegal immigrants.