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Although leisure constraints that individuals have to cope with can negatively affect their social inclusion and satisfaction with life, little research has addressed the link between these variables. Therefore, the current paper examined the moderator role of leisure constraints on the relationship between satisfaction with life and leisure constraints among adults living in five different European countries. The respondents were 1,382 women and 877 men adults. The findings of analysis revealed that all factors used in the study accounted for 15% of the variance in satisfaction with life and social inclusion had a significant and positive impact on satisfaction with life. As a result, it can be said that leisure constraints had a moderating effect on the relationship between satisfaction with life and social inclusion. The present research study recommends that social inclusion should be encouraged through decreasing to leisure constraints to increase the life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse discourses about Europe in Greek debates about immigration and citizenship and highlight the complexities of 'Europeanness' as a symbolic resource for argumentation in these debates. Our data consist of lay discourses from 2 rounds of online public deliberation (2009-2010 and 2015) about a controversial new citizenship law in Greece. Our analysis shows that Europe is an ambivalent category. On the one hand, Europe symbolises progress, but, on the other hand, it is also constructed in terms of decline and 'contamination' by multiculturalism. Further, our analysis shows that the category of Europe can be mobilised in contradictory ways, in order to support arguments for and against citizenship rights for migrants. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which constructions of Europe are implicated in processes of othering and inclusion in the context of current immigration debates. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors have underlined the influence of issues of power and ideology on the stigma of schizophrenia. The dual‐process cognitive‐motivational model of ideology and prejudice has shown that for deviant and derogated groups, such as people with schizophrenia, both authoritarianism and social dominance orientation can predict prejudice. However, this model has not been tested in relation to the stigma of schizophrenia. In this paper, we apply the Dual Process Model to the study of stigmatizing attitudes, in two contexts where the model has not been tested before, France (N = 224), and Greece (N = 238). We tested the relation of the model's two pathways (dominance‐competitiveness and authoritarianism‐dangerousness) to stigmatizing attitudes, while making the hypothesis that both would be associated with the latter since people with schizophrenia are perceived as both derogate/subordinate and deviant/threatening. Our results show that the models adequately fit the data and partly confirm the pathways predicted by previous research. However, for the Greek sample, the dominance‐competitiveness component was not significantly associated with stigmatizing attitudes, suggesting that for this sample, people with schizophrenia are mainly stigmatized in terms of deviance/threat. Our results provide evidence for the DPM's application to the study of the stigma of schizophrenia in two contexts where the model has never been applied and underline the importance of ideological and socio‐cognitive factors for community interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study explores the ways in which Greek migrants in their early adulthood position themselves in discourse on mobility decisions. For the purposes of the study, 17 virtual interviews with Greek migrants (aged between 25–40 years old) in European cities were conducted. Analysis, based on the principles of critical discursive social psychology, indicated that, in their accounts of migration decision‐making, participants positioned themselves in various ways: as career/job seekers, as adventurers, as well as (personal or institutional/economic) crisis‐ridden individuals. Multiple subject positions were constituted by an amalgam of rational/practical and affective repertoires which depicted migration as a multifaceted, dynamic and non‐linear project. Analysis also highlighted the multiple spatial (transnational, national and local) and dynamic temporal constructions mobilized by participants, in order to construct their motivations for migrating. Discussion of findings suggests that social psychology (a) can vitally contribute to migration literature, by considering ways in which social actors position themselves by the use of historically and culturally specific resources and by their orientation to local interactional concerns in the context of accounting for their mobility and (b) can be benefited by considering spatial and temporal aspects in the analysis of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Prejudice reduction has been an important concern within social psychology both in theory and applied research. According to the premises of Social Identity Theory, redrawing of the category boundaries is often considered a necessary step in order to battle prejudice, because in-group favouritism when the category boundaries change is diffused to the previously distinct identities. The present paper offers a review of the relevant research, and following a discourse analytic perspective argues that recategorisation can also be viewed as a rhetorical resource that people use in verbal interaction in order to achieve certain rhetorical ends. This point is exemplified using interview data from Greece with Greek participants who mobilise common in-groups between themselves and the immigrants in Greece. Different common in-groups were mobilised on the basis of common human nature, common ethnic descent and through the use of the common experience of migration that many Greek people have because Greece has been an emigrant sending country for the biggest part of the 20th century. Occasionally, these category constructions were used to differentiate between immigrants of different ethnic descent claiming that only certain immigrant groups can integrate to Greek society, whereas on other instances, these common in-groups were used in order to inoculate speakers of accusations of prejudice. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and insecurity on the part of Greek people are represented as a sine qua non consequence of immigration to Greece. Two different lines of argument are used to account for the arousal of fear. According to the first, fear constitutes a corollary of a widespread stereotypical representation of immigrants as criminals. The stereotype of immigrants' criminality is considered to be ill-warranted and it is attributed to the media or to other unspecified people. According to another, more regularly used, line of argument, however, fear is predicated upon the sordid living conditions of immigrants in Greece which make the probability of them being involved in illegal acts particularly high. In this case, fear is seen to derive from a 'rational estimate' of the probability of immigrant's involvement in criminal acts. Nested within the discourse of 'risk' the stereotypical image of immigrants' criminality is sustained and used to account for the need to protect the 'ingroup' from 'immigrant groups' through immigration control and surveillance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a large scale cross-sectional study examining subjective perceptions of community social life held by a randomly selected sample of residents (n = 428) in all small rural settings (n = 89) of the region of North Aegean Sea. The notion of social capital was used as a conceptual tool in order to explore different aspects of the relational life of contemporary rural communities. This study has two aims: First to provide an account of rural residents' perceptions of village life in terms of interpersonal support, mutual aid, trust, social cohesion and community competence, and second to examine the suitability of the social capital notion within the specific cultural context. A combination of data collection procedures and a range of sources were employed, such as key informants, rural residents and researchers' field observations. The findings indicate that small farming communities of high devotion with deep roots and strong sense of belonging face severe demographic imbalance and experience low civic power given the limited links with external agents. The mainstream notion of social capital as an unconditionally beneficial factor is thus questioned. The findings call for revisiting its relevance across communities with varying capacities and needs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although family support programmes have been in place for several decades in Greece very little attention has been paid to evaluating the effectiveness of such endeavours, the techniques that influence their outcomes and the receptiveness to their messages. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of research findings collected during the first qualitative research phase of a community mental health promotion project. The research was conducted in order to delineate programme outcomes and the characteristics that had an impact on the participants' lives. The 3-month family support programme intended to introduce ‘philosophical dialogues’ as means to developing personal and communal understandings of what makes life worth living. The programme was developed and implemented on Crete under the auspices of a non-profit community organization appropriately named ‘The Lyceum for Women’. The features of the programme that contributed and enhanced the participants' tendencies to become not passive targets but active partners and stakeholders in the process will be clarified, as will the conceptualization and approach. Of the 45 evaluation protocols that were analysed the following themes were most important for the participants: ‘Group as-a-whole process’—the sense of sharing and development understandings in a ‘parea’ (in-group); ‘relational outcomes’—feeling of belonging, ‘reciprocated kindness’, and giving of self to others; personal and emotional outcomes-self-efficacy and empowerment; knowledge outcomes-learning about positive emotions and enjoying the simple things in life; and group facilitator outcomes-sharing stories, ‘gives of self to the community’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite social psychology's emphasis on "diversity," social psychological research on lay representations of diversity is pending. Capitalising on a string of critical diversity studies in other disciplines and based on social representations theory, this article presents a qualitative study on how lay Greek people interviewed about the meaning of diversity understand and use this term in talk. Our reflexive thematic analysis identified certain semantic tensions regarding the forms and value of diversity, which directly speak to findings in other cultural contexts and question the assumingly palliative effect of diversity on intergroup relations and social inequality. We suggest that the ideological input of this powerful concept be addressed rather than considering diversity a descriptive term or a self‐evident end in itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the ways in which constructions of immigrants' illegality and accounts on the meaning of naturalization and citizenship serve as argumentative resources against a particular immigration law in Greece. Data consisted of transcripts of parliamentary speeches by political party leaders who opposed the law. Analysis used the tools and concepts of discursive and rhetorical social psychology and identified three main lines of arguing. The first set clear boundaries between 'legal' and 'illegal' immigration and constructed immigrants' (il)legal entry as a category defining criterion. The second represented legal status as subject to change and constructed immigrants as 'legalized', in order to argue against their entitlement to citizenship. Finally, in another sort of accounting, regularization and naturalization procedures were trivialized, as the speakers negotiated the necessary, and also the ideal conditions of co-existence and participation in a nation-state. The findings are discussed in relation to their potential contribution (i) to the existing literature on the constituted and constitutive nature of the category of illegal immigration and (ii) to a social psychological approach to citizenship. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores ways in which diverse LGBTQI+ claim frames are sedimented in Greek everyday discourse. Specifically, it is interested in the identification of the argumentative resources that inform lay constructions of LGBTQI+ claims and rights, as well as of their potential social implications. The research data are drawn from seven focus groups, conducted in Thessaloniki, Greece and analysed by the conceptual tools of Critical Discursive Social Psychology. According to the analysis, liberal dilemmas over difference, visibility, and equality are mobilized. In particular, when accounting for violence and discriminations against LGBTQI+ community members, participants construct a normative hierarchy of exclusion, based on alleged differences between sexual and gender‐related categories. Notably, in the context of arguing over different claim‐making practices, participants prioritize the projection of uniformity – instead of difference – through non‐provocative, consensual claiming actions. While liberal concepts and subsequent dilemmas inform these constructions, "liberalism" is also represented as the rhetorical other, when participants prioritize intersectional claims over (sexual and gender‐related) identity politics. Finally, participants' discourse is informed by tensions between oriental and occidental ideological patterns. A juxtaposition between Western/European liberalism and Eastern backwardness is used to challenge homonormative perceptions, which are constructed as a means of de‐radicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The present article examines the strategies that immigrants living in Greece use to cope with stigma that arises in their interaction with both Greek society and their communities of origin. Drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted with immigrants from a variety of countries, a dialogical analysis illuminates the ways in which immigrants actively negotiate stigmatizing perspectives and transform themselves. Strategies include the deployment of social categories such as those of 'human being' and 'crazy' person, and concepts such as those of 'lawfulness' and 'fate'. These were used to construct meanings of equality and inclusion into society, to deny responsibility for stigma and to discredit stigma as absurd. They enabled participants to see themselves as proud, equal, self-dependent individuals who plan actions for social change. The article suggests that coping with stigma should not only be understood in terms of stress regulation, leading to positive or negative outcomes, as suggested by current literature, but as a meaning-making effort, through which individuals transform the way they see themselves and act within their world. A meaning-making approach moves away from individualistic, outcome-oriented explanations to a socially situated perspective on stigma that studies the processes through which social meanings are subjectively perceived as stigmatizing and are used to challenge stigma. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This research aims to investigate the impact of minority members' decision about whether or not to adopt the majority's religion on how the majority perceives these minority members and on beliefs about religious and cultural diversity. It is hypothesized that the adoption of the majority's religion would be more positively evaluated, the minority person adopting the religion would be perceived to identify more with the national polity and less with the minority ingroup, the minority group as a whole would be more positively viewed, more tolerant religious beliefs would prevail and the majority would accept cultural maintenance by the minority. However it is also hypothesized that the positive effect of this strategy would be moderated by the origins of the minority person. Greek-Orthodox students ( n = 223) participated in a 2 (type of decision) x 5 (group membership) between-subjects design conducted in Greece, a mono-religious society which has become culturally diverse due to immigration. The target groups represent religious minorities with Greek citizenship (Jews and Muslims of Thrace), immigrant groups of different ethnic orientation and similar religious background (Albanian Muslims and Pakistanis) or groups sharing ethnicity but differing in religious beliefs (Albanian Muslims and Albanian atheists). The moderation hypothesis was confirmed for perceived identification with the minority ingroup, presenting Albanians in a worse position. However, group membership influenced mainly group perceptions and beliefs about diversity. The theoretical and political implications of the findings and their importance for the specific context are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine prejudiced attitudes as a factor associated with social distance from people with mental illness. A total of 289 university students from Greece completed written measures assessing social distance from, prejudiced attitudes about, and familiarity with mental illness. A structural equation model with manifest variables was tested. Participants who reported to be more familiar with mental illness held stronger social care and weaker prejudiced beliefs, and consequently expressed a less strong desire for social distance. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are outlined. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the political discourse on immigration in Greece, Italy and Spain, with a view to highlighting how discourse is organised and, in particular, the use of ingroup and outgroup categories in it. It is hypothesised that talk on immigration involves a re-elaboration of national identity and re-definition of the ingroup/nation and outgroup/immigrant representation. Moreover, it is expected that immigrants are represented as Others, alien to the ingroup and, therefore, to be excluded from the host society. My aim here is to highlight the commonality of identity processes activated in different social-historical contexts and analyse the connection between ingroup-outgroup representations and the specific historical legacy and socio-economic reality of a given country. Greece, Italy and Spain have been selected as a suitable set of case studies because they have recently been transformed from senders to hosts of migrants. The section that follows describes briefly the size of the immigration phenomenon in each country and the public policies adopted. The second section discusses the ingroup-outgroup dynamics activated in immigration discourse from a sociological and a social psychological perspective. The third section concentrates on the analysis of political discourse, namely interviews with non-governmental organisations, trade union representatives and public administration employees in Athens, Rome and Madrid. The methodology used is that of qualitative discourse analysis. Findings are discussed under the light of sociological and social psychological research on the issue. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]