Aspects and experiences of crisis in rural Greece. Narratives of rural resilience

Journal of Rural Studies 52 (2017) 1e11

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Aspects and experiences of crisis in rural Greece. Narratives of rural resilience Theodosia Anthopoulou a, *, Nikolaos Kaberis b, Michael Petrou c a

Department of Social Policy, Panteion University, 136 Syngrou Av., 17671 Athens, Greece Research Center for Greek Society, Academy of Athens, 8 Milioni str., 10680 Athens, Greece c EKKE, National Centre for Social Research, 9 Kratinou and Athinas str., 10552 Athens, Greece b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 2 May 2014 Received in revised form 28 September 2015 Accepted 13 March 2017

The purpose of this paper is to explore aspects, dynamics and experiences of the crisis in the Greek countryside. The ‘rural’ is emerging in public discourse as a resilient milieu of solidarity, of social innovation, and of opportunities for employment, especially in farming and in rural entrepreneurship. It seems that the crisis has contributed to triggering social constructions of ‘idyllic rurality’ which generated counterurbanisation tendencies and expectations for urbanites to return back to the land. However, those who had remained in rural areas and in farming were already been confronted with the prolonged crisis of the agricultural sector (CAP reforms and market liberalization), now coupled with the severe impact of the recent economic and financial crisis in Greece. Drawing on narratives of farmers and incomers in two rural areas, the paper investigates experiences and strategies to deal with the crisis, in the framework of work and family and in the context of discourses on rural resilience. Personal accounts reveal that remaining or returning to rural areas often conceal cases of underemployment and social deprivation and that, both farmers and incomers are not explicitly supported by policy makers. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Economic crisis Agricultural crisis Rural resilience Crisis counterurbanisation Greek rural areas

1. Introduction Rural areas have been promoted in recent years as an attractive milieu combining pleasant living conditions and interesting employment opportunities, especially in rural entrepreneurship and services (e.g. the agrofood and tourism sectors). The changing character of rurality, grafted with diverse urban features (economic activities, social composition, consumption models, etc.) has had manifold effects e of both attraction and repulsion e on migration patterns from and to the countryside at different times, in the context of new significations of rural space (Boyle and Halfacree, 1998; Halfacree, 2008, 2012; Milbourne, 2007; Ni-Laroire, 2007; Woods, 2005). In several parts of Europe, the economic crisis since 2008 has reinforced the “rural idyll” through emerging perceptions about “rural resilience”, according to which the rural community and the reactivation of social and family networks make possible access to affordable housing and food provision, while offering opportunities

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (T. Anthopoulou), academyofathens.gr (N. Kaberis), [email protected] (M. Petrou). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.03.006 0743-0167/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

kaberis@

for employment in farming and para-agricultural activities, particularly for returnees from the cities who are the owners of inherited family property. The debate is more lively in the European South, where links with the family and place of origin are stronger (Castles and Ferrera, 1996; Gkartzios, 2013; Koutsou et al., 2011; Mulder, 2007). As noted characteristically by Bock (2013) the rural milieu is not merely fragile but is also a locus for social innovation, solidarity and resilience. Rural resilience refers to the capacity of rural regions, as dynamic socio-ecological systems, to adapt to changing external circumstances in such a way that a satisfactory standard of living is maintained (Heijman et al., 2007). Natural and human resources, investments and infrastructure as well as tangible factors such as social capital and local knowledge are important for adaptive and innovative processes to struggle with versatile changes rooted in natural hazards or socio-economic crisis (Heijman et al., 2007; Schouten et al., 2009; Magis, 2010; Bristow and Healy, 2015; Christopherson et al., 2010; Wilson, 2012). Undeniably rural resilience is a complex concept dealing with increasingly entangled and interrelated ecological, economic and cultural systems while adaptation takes many different forms according to local circumstances, including the severity and duration of the problem, public-individual strategies, technological

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configuration, financial support etc (McManus et al., 2012). Rural areas have been perceived in lay understandings as more resistant and persevering against deprivation and poverty compared to the urban areas, and especially the inner city, where the concentration of poverty is more visible (Woods, 2005, pp.268e269). These considerations are now fuelling idealistic images for rural areas as refuges for coping with the economic crisis. In fact, if in an initial phase counterurbanisation was motivated by aspirations for better conditions of life and work (i.e. lifestyle considerations), especially in the tertiary sector, more recently counterurbanisation has been reinforced by the pressure of the crisis, and indeed the expectation of securing a livelihood from farming in its more traditional or more enterpreneurial manifestations (i.e employment/economic motivations). Previously undervalued farming activity is being rediscovered through the lens of resilience by virtue of its perceived multiple benefits. It has, therefore, acquired a foothold in public discourse. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of the concept from a social science perspective, rural resilience represents an encompassing narrative for rural development policies to attract in-migrants, especially during the crisis. At the same time, rural resilience is gaining ground in the imaginary of urbanites, particularly among the lower and middle classes who are being hit by the crisis and perceive, in various ways, the rural as locus of refuge or recovery, always in conjunction with quality of life motivations and ideals of rural values. However, those who have remained in rural areas and in farming, with the farm as primary or secondary source of income, are already being confronted with the crisis of the productivist model of agriculture and the consequences of the related revisions of the Common Agricultural Policy, including decoupling, reduction of protectionism in agriculture, and market liberalization, particularly in disadvantaged Mediterranean regions and in heavily subsidized production branches (e.g. tobacco). For farmers, the economic crisis of recent years (in all its manifestations) might be considered “a crisis within a crisis” as the farming crisis preceded the post-2009 financial and economic crisis. This constitutes for them a familiar territory of deadlocks, conflicting production options and survival strategies (Anthopoulou et al., 2013). This complex dynamic in the midst of an uncertain and changing political and economic environment generates continuous redefinitions of relationships and flows between the urban and the rural (migration, employment, commercial transactions, social relations). Social actors reflect upon new individual and collective strategies of social and geographical mobility and shape new cultural perceptions of rural work and life questioning blanket terms such as “rural people” and “rural community” in the rural restructuring process (Milbourne, 2007). This paper proposes to examine aspects and dynamics of the recent economic crisis as well as strategies of social actors, utilizing empirical research conducted in two farming areas in Greece, namely the municipalities of Agrinion and Thebes. The key points investigated are concerned with: a) how individuals (farmers who have remained in the region and incomers) are experiencing the crisis in rural areas and what problems they face in light of the discourse on rural resilience. b) what types of strategies they elaborate, both in the framework of work and family and in that of social relations and cultural expectations, all within the broader dynamic of rural restructuring. 2. Between rural idyll and agricultural crisis. The complexity of rural mobility During the past few decades the rural ideal and the farming crisis have been interwoven in a complex interplay of outgoing, incoming and intra-regional population movements in rural areas.

As early as the 1970s new aggregate movements of people into rural areas were being registered in many agricultural regions of the developed world, at the same time that less favoured rural areas and small village communities were continuing to lose population as a result of the exodus of people seeking employment opportunities in cities (Berry, 1976). The rural idyll, related to the perceived quality of physical environment and rural life, is the key driver in urbanites’ decisions to move to the countryside. Counter-urbanization processes are the complex result of economic restructuring of urban and rural communities, and of socio-cultural and technological changes facilitating greater geographical and social mobility than was offered to previous generations (Woods, 2005). Given these developments, the geographic and rural-sociology research agenda moved from statistical analysis to mapping the changing demographic and socio-economic profiles of rural populations, while focusing on the narratives of in-migrants. A wide range of publications in western countries (especially in the Anglo-American literature) offers rich information on the spatial, temporal and socio-cultural complexities of demographic change (for example, Boyle and Halfacree, 1998; Halfacree, 1994; Mitchell, 2004). They further highlighted impacts on gentrification processes associated with socio-cultural, land use and housing-related conflicts in rural communities as a result of population movement, primarily of the middle-class inmigrants. Counter-urbanites mostly do not take up farming activity but intervene in local affairs through involvement in local government, assuming community leadership by virtue of the advantages of their urban culture (a relatively high educational level, organizational and communicative skills, professional and social networking) sidelining the socio-professional group of farmers (Petrou and Anthopoulou, 2013; Woods, 2005). They also affect rural property markets, generating inflationary tendencies in real estate values, including the value of agricultural land. If they are not in the category of retirement migration (e.g. migrants returning to their place of origin), the types of employment most promising for active urbanites moving to the countryside are in the areas of rural entrepreneurship, ecology and countryside stewardship. At the same time we rarely have direct knowledge of farmers’ hardships amidst rural restructuring, agricultural and rural economic change and even more amidst the recent economic crisis through their own narratives. We learn of them through the mediating discourse of incomers and more specifically their judgments on the rural communities into which they have moved and usually within emerging rural conflicts (Petrou and Anthopoulou, 2013; Bossuet, 2006). That said we do not know what is at stake in farming, as a social and productive dynamic, as a prospect and as lived experience, from the perspective of the farmers themselves, although farming continues to play an active role in the development of rural areas. This re-construction of rurality on the basis of rural resilience, a discourse addressed to potential migrants with expectations, has been adopted by politicians, who promote the rural as “an opportunity”. Their discourse shows little sign, however, of having been affected in any way by the prolonged farming crisis which preceded recent events. The crisis in the primary sector has to do with structural questions and regulations in the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy and its reforms, and with the internationalization of markets that are requiring increasing competitiveness of agriculture in terms of production costs or in terms of place-based specific quality (within the new agri-territorial paradigm). The contraction in farm incomes, socio-spatial inequalities between fertile lowland regions and less-favoured areas, or between small and large producers, underemployment, farmers’ debts: all these factors generated vocational dead-end situations, stress and mental health problems

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in rural communities (Kaberis, 2013; Ni-Laroire, 2001). Extensification, farm diversification, enhancing the value of local produce and country stewardship constitute in the framework of the revised CAP the basic drivers for adaptation and revitalization of farming regions (Woods, 2005). All the above, presuppose funding, training in new vocational skills and social aptitude. Given this, the recent financial and economic crisis is exacerbating the difficulties of adaptation and restructuring. It is affecting both big farmers, who have been encouraged to borrow money to invest in technical equipment, marketing innovation and farm adaptation; and small farmers, who are more vulnerable to price fluctuations and competition in domestic markets from imported products, and less able to adapt their farms to the demand for innovative diversification. At the same time, the economic crisis is shrinking the potential markets for specialized products and services with high added value reflecting the differentiated and place-based knowhow and practices, such as P.D.O. food, organic farming, specialized forms of agri-tourism, traditional craft products, at least in relation to the internal markets of the countries affected. The approach to rural areas as a place of refuge or of opportunities (employment, investment, rural entrepreneurship) for urbanites afflicted by the crisis appears in principle problematic, if measures are not provided in advance e at the regional and local level e to enable the farmers themselves to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis that has beset agriculture (e.g. problems of financial liquidity in the market, the high cost of borrowing, increased production costs, etc.) and rural communities generally. There should also have been provision for policies of integrating incomers both at the level of technical training and access to farmland for those interested in establishing themselves in farming and at the level of social infrastructures and services (schools, medical care and public transport) in rural regions. The public discourse of return to the land and to farming as an “opportunity” may prove void of content, simply reproducing stereotypical conceptions of rural idyll reinforced by the rural resilience discourse at this time of great economic hardship and collapse of welfare provision in urban centres. Rural resilience that reflects the capacity to adapt to interruptions and changes is in fact a long process of transformations and reconstructions, adaptations and integration of intrinsic resources and forces operating in the social and ecological system (Folke et al., 2010; Pike et al., 2010). The dynamic of resilience either of a region (Bristow and Healy, 2015; Christopherson et al., 2010) or a community-a network-a group of local actors (Wilson, 2012) depends both on perceptions of people about interruptions, continuities and instabilities (Skerratt, 2013; McManus et al., 2012), and institutional framework and political decisions regarding policies and procedures of reception and integration of counter-urbanites in rural areas (Davis, 2011). Rural resilience is thus more a forward-looking situation than a given context, an aspiration and a goal in a changing world (Hudson, 2010). As a result, resilience building should be part of rural/local development policy. In the next section there will be an investigation ethrough a brief overview of the evolution of the agricultural sector and family farming in Greece after 1980 e of the background to the crisis in farming and the rural milieu in the wider context of socioeconomic conditions, consumption patterns, and global changes. 3. Issues of crisis in rural Greece. The framework of analysis Exploring the different aspects, dynamics and lived experience of the crisis in rural areas should first take into account the specificities of Greek family farming and the postwar process of agricultural modernisation in the context of the capitalist integration; the most characteristic being those of very small size of holdings

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(average size 4.7 ha, 2011) and of high fragmentation (exceeding 6 parcels per holding). Nevertheless, despite its severe structural problems Greek agriculture has undergone significant modernisation and indeed constituted an important lever of the country's socio-economic development in the first postwar decades. This progress was due to the government policy (before EU accession in 1981) of supporting small and medium-sized family farms (e.g. through land improvement works, agricultural credit, etc.) recognizing that they constituted the backbone of Greek agriculture.1 In the 1980s, with the entry of Greece into the European Economic Community (EEC), the modernisation of agriculture was intensified through the privileged framework of subsidization and the protectionism of the Common Agricultural Policy (principally in the fertile plain regions). However, the orientation of subsidies mostly for consumption purposes and placements into nonfarming activities rather than for investments and restructuring, made farms vulnerable to international competition (high production costs, low productivity). The mass influx of labour from Balkan countries and Asia in the 1990s made it possible for traditional farming systems to survive and even expand/intensify, especially in the plain regions (Kasimis, 2008). In other words the existence of a low-paid farm workforce made possible the complacent perpetuation until recently of non-competitive orientations in agricultural production rather than strategies of adaptation and restructuring. This was also possible thanks to increased opportunities for profitable employment of farmers (both male and female) outside agriculture (increasing tourism, second-home construction activities and broader “rurbanisation” processes). It should be recalled in this respect the permanently significant role of pluriactivity as a supportive mechanism for Greek family farms (Damianakos, 1997; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013; Koutsou et al., 2011). Rural pluriactivity in addition with increasing seasonal and permanent non-agricultural employement opportunities have enabled small family farms to face structural, productive and economic difficulties. Nevertheless, these choices, which seems to create conditions of resilience at individual and local level, do not actually lead to agricultural reconstruction in a broader developmental perspective given that they are not accompanied by corresponding state policies. They remain thus individual strategies of farming households which do not lead to community and rural resilience. As indicated by Heijman et al. (2007, p. 387) the ability of rural areas to diversify, transform and adapt to external changes and shocks has to be backed in an informed manner by public policies and with the participation of regional stakeholders as “the necessary information to (re)shape the landscape is available in the region itself, and only to a very limited extend at higher govermental levels”. That said the post-2009 financial and economic crisis has revealed the distorted model of agricultural and rural development that has been pursued since Greece's entry into the EEC. The mismanagement of funding from European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) and the ineffectual structural policies implemented by Greek governments, in addition to the reduced levels of private investment in agriculture, all had the effect of depressing overall performance and lowering competitiveness in the primary sector (Karanikolas and Martinos, 2011; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013). Greece, which was self-sufficient in basic comestibles on entry into the EEC in 1981, today has a trade deficit for agricultural sector because of increasing imports even in fresh products where the country possesses comparative productive

1 For a comprehensive analysis of the peculiarities of the “Greek model” in the evolution of modernization and capitalist integration, see Bika, 2007; Damianakos, 1996, 1997; Gkartzios, 2013; Goussios, 1995; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013.

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advantages (e.g. fruits and vegetables). Throughout this prolonged period of European institutional and financial support, the agricultural sector has not succeeded in increasing the added value of production, either in line with the productivist model (economies of scale, reduced production costs) or with an alternative agroterritorial model (place-based specific quality, territorial addedvalues) (Goussios, 2011). Moreover farming activity has itself been drastically undermined at the local level, as a vocational option and potential income source; as know-how and invested social capital; as values and notations of everyday life in rural communities. The reasons for this long-term decline in farming are welldocumented in the literature. They relate with the deficiencies and weaknesses both of the institutional framework and of the public support structures provided by the responsible agencies, national and regional (education and training of farmers, farming extension services, and so on), as well as professional and trade union organisation of farmers (co-operatives, associations, etc.). They are also related to the political patronage system, the state bureaucracy and the mode of implementation of agricultural policy “from above” at the regional and local level (Bika, 2007; Damianakos, 1996; Gkartzios, 2013; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013; Krimbas and Louloudis, 2008). In addition, the crisis has revealed the generally distorted mode of development of the Greek economy in favour of the tertiary sector. Services and salaried employment, preferably in the public sector, were until very recently the enticement offered to lure people away from farming, even in the case of farming families owning large expanses of agricultural land and modern capital equipment. They offered the farm successors respectable, and comparable e if not higher e income than an unskilled wage labouring job in an urban centre (Goussios, 2011). Trade constitutes another familiar vocational path for young people in rural areas, in the absence of other productive business opportunities (Labrianidis, 2004). The growth of small towns in the countryside from as early as the 1980s, associated to rural regeneration (EU rural and regional development programmes, fostering of infrastructure facilities and rural services, subsidized increases in farm incomes, economic diversification, etc) shaped and consolidated family strategies of livelihood and social advancement on the basis of pluriactivity, instilling resilience into local agro-productive systems. In any case, even if managed by part-time pluriactive farmers, the family farm has a material and symbolic significant contribution to supporting farming households, particularly in periods of crisis (land reserve, self-consumption, potential professional options for the children of farming families, etc.). The links between the family and the farm continue to shape defensive strategies and practices on the part of farming households in their struggle to cope with a continuously changing global setting (Gkartzios, 2013; Koutsou et al., 2011; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013). On the urban side, the crisis of waged labour (cuts in salaries, pensions and social benefits, precarity in labour relations, lack of protection from arbitrary dismissals, etc.) with its destructive knock-on effects on the business and commercial sectors, is effectively dismantling the whole transformational model for postwar Greek society (urbanism, wage labour, retailing) and reinforcing pre-existing tendencies towards counterbanization. Without there being any available statistical data that might identify and qualify the outward and inward population flows to and from the countryside or empirical studies to analyse the phenomena of crisiscounterurbanisation as “experience of entry into the rural milieu” (and not as “motives for exodus from the city”), the rhetoric of the media and other opinion makers concerning a “return to the land” seems to anticipate reality. Rural areas are somehow projected through an idealized and stereotypical image as a “place of promise”, of resilience and of a fresh start in life.

Along these lines, when the Hellenic Statistical Authority (EL.STAT.) in the 2008e2010 biennium registered a small increase in the number of people employed in the farming sector (by 33,000 individuals or 7%), notwithstanding the continuing shrinkage of the country's overall workforce, the analysts of PASEGES (Pan-Hellenic Confederation of Unions of Agricultural Co-operatives), hastened to link it to phenomena of return to the countryside, both by returnee farmers from extra-farm occupations and by newcomer urbanites (PASEGES, 2011). This position was very quickly reproduced by the printed and electronic media in Greece and internationally, with the countryside being projected sometimes as an opportunity for social innovation and vocational opportunities in the wider farming sector (dynamic new crops such as hippophaes, pomegranate and snails, local traditional products, agrotourism) and sometimes as a hospitable place of refuge and social solidarity (lower housing costs, self-consumption, family and friendship networks) (indicatively Kathimerini, 2011; Courrier International, 2011; Guardian, 2001). But it was subsequently ascertained that during the 2010e2012 period, with the consequences of the crisis at peak intensity, there was a more significant numerical loss of jobs in the rural sector (58,000 workplaces), a figure nevertheless smaller than those for the other sectors of the economy, such as construction, manufactoring and commerce (AgroNews, 2013). Obviously this was a purely statistical analysis focusing on net migration balance, treating incomers to the rural areas and to farming as an undifferentiated social group. Such a quantitative approach masks the complexity of movements within rural areas as well as intersectoral movements of workers, especially of the unskilled labor force working primarily in construction and agriculture (for the most part foreign workers, Kasimis et al., 2010). Generalizing interpretations of aggregate statistics similarly mask phenomena of unemployment and underemployment in rural areas due to young people remaining in family farming (potential successors) so as to secure, under the family roof, a small income and rights to social security and medical care as farmers (Anthopoulou et al., 2013). In the same vein of public discourses on “returning to the land” and social constructions of “crisis counterurbanisation”, was the promotion by the mass media of the results of a study entitled “Return to the countryside. Employment and Quality of Life” (a telephone poll of a sample of 1286 people) conducted in Athens and Thessaloniki under the auspices of the ELGO-DIMITRA organization (Ministry of Rural Development and Food) (AgroNews, 2012). Most of those interviewed (68%) had thought of returning to the provinces (extrapolating from the statistical data the Ministry estimates that this corresponds to 1.5 million inhabitants of the two cities). The motives cited for exodus from the big city were firstly the mode of life and secondly the economic crisis (better quality of life, 88%; more relaxed pace of life, 80%; lower cost of living, 77%; more human relations, 68%). A high proportion of interviewees wanted to find employment in farming but most (52%) said that they would be seeking work in other sectors, such as in tourism and cultural industries, commerce, renewable energy, education, communications and new technologies, construction, the real estate market. In other words their inclination was towards employment in the same vocational fields as those of city, with any move to the provinces evidently motivated by pro-rural perceptions of country life as the polar opposite of city life (anti-urban motives) (Mitchell, 2004). What was involved seems to be an “imaginary return” to the countryside in the context of an “aspirational migration” (Woods, 2005, p. 77) where the attractiveness of the rural milieu is one of the many factors in a multi-stage decision-making to move back into rural areas. Given the peculiarities of Greek farming and the Greek countryside (e.g. high fragmentation of agricultural land, high financial cost of investment, state bureaucracy, etc), it appears that “there are a lot of dragons lurking in the fairy tale of going back

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to the countryside”, as very aptly noted by one article in a regional newspaper (Politischios, 2012)2 deconstructing the enticing image of an insular rural milieu within the rhetoric on the “return to the land”. Apparently, media and government agencies put forth the return to rural areas as a creative way out of the economic crisis while urbanites express confusing aspirations and professional goals based on emotional and personal experience and judgements in view of the current economic situation. However, unlike mainstream public discourses of an idealised return, local actors seem reluctant towards this perspective. In any case, what can be concluded with certainty from the statistical data and various press publications is that rural areas are characterized by relative resilience in comparison with urban areas. It remains to be explored however under what conditions this applies and at what cost to social subjects. In other words what are the local realities (vocational, social, cultural, economic) that face those who remain in the countryside, return or establish themselves for the first time in farming and rural areas? We propose to try to investigate these questions through empirical research. 4. Research context, methodology and presentation of the selected rural areas The present field study was carried out in two separate geographical contexts and specifically in the agricultural regions of the municipalities of Agrinion (Western Greece) and Thebes (a farming district not far from the Athens basin). These territories do not necessarily qualify as representative rural areas and societies in the Greek countryside. They are nevertheless suggestive of the heterogeny of agro-productive systems, as well as of the specificity of the “crisis” content and the complexity of “recovery”. More specifically, the greater Agrinion region exhibits the familiar structural characteristics and weaknesses of Greek agriculture: predominance of mountainous and disadvantaged areas (78% of the communities in total), very small and fragmented farm holdings (68% of less than 3 ha, 38% of farms in 4e9 parcels). A characteristic feature of the region is its productive specialization, since the early 20th century, in the cultivation of tobacco. The traditional Myrodata and Tsempelia tobacco varieties have been at the basis of the area's economic prosperity and the relations of the farmers with other social strata, with commerce, with the credit system and the political system. The golden age of tobacco cultivation in the 1970s and 1980s saw income support for producers and distribution of the product underwritten by the state, and later subsidies, higher incomes, and the abolition of quality standards with the country's entry to the EEC. The revision of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1992, and in particular changes to the Common Organization of the Market in Tobacco, imposed a number of restrictions on production, regulating commercial criteria, prices, subsidies and varieties of tobacco. The wider crisis of tobacco production deepened at the end of the 1990s and led in 2004 to the measure of total decoupling and the so-called “end of tobacco” (Anthopoulou et al., 2013). In the case of Boeotia there is examination of the fertile plain area at the borders between the municipalities of Thebes and Tanagra, which follows the intensive model of farm production (a high rate of capital investment, of mechanization, of fertilizers and

2 It notes, characteristically “… the land, half a century later has become fallow and would require intense effort to be made cultivable. Are our flabby bodies ready for such a change?. The schools have closed and the child of a young family must be transported each day to the school of a neighbouring village. The KTEL [the public transport system] is one step away from collapse … You can repair grandpa's house, but the permit to do this costs as much as opening a building site in Kolonaki [expensive suburb in the centre of Athens] …”.

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pesticides). The area in question is characterized by a high level of agricultural development, having for years been the basic provider of farm products, and in particular of garden vegetables for the Attica basin. One significant aspect of the producers' increased capital investment in garden vegetables is the provision of abundant and cheap labour force by economic migrants from the early 1990s onwards. In consequence, several of the socio-economic and cultural transformations that have taken place in recent years in the wider region are linked to the intensification of productive systems, attributable on the one hand to proximity to the capital, on the other to utilization of this very sizeable and low-cost labour force by the region's producers. The empirical data of this paper was based on qualitative research methods and, specifically, was taken from semi-structured interviews and ethnographic research in the areas in question (2012e2013), in the course of which the members of the research team were already working on the basis of systematic long-term on-site participatory observation. The informants that were sought out were economically active individuals divided in two basic categories: a) farmers who had never moved out of their area, b) incomers who had moved from towns and cities of Greece to the rural areas in question because of the crisis, either as returnees or as newcomers. Above and beyond the data gathered through participatory observation - in order to gain an insight into people's perceptions of their professional direction, their lives and life expectations within the crisis context - a snowball sampling technique was used especially to identify potential in-migrants. There were located and interviewed: a) Twenty-one people in the Agrinion area, of whom nine were local farmers who had never migrated out of that district, six were in-migrants with origins in the area who, after a significant period of living in the city, had returned because of the crisis, and six were in-migrants from the city, without previous experience of living in the country, who had chosen the area on the strength of membership in kinship or friendship networks, b) Sixteen people in the Thebes area, who had never migrated out of that district and occupied all positions on the socio-productive spectrum of the region: owners of very small farms (in order of 3e4 ha) with supplementary sources of income from outside farming; owners of farms with flexible family-based productive and labour strategies; farming entrepreneurs with relative large expanses of agricultural land (in the order of 15 ha) and employing foreign farm labourers (10e15 people). No counterurbanites (returnees or newcomers) moving because of the crisis were identified in the research area. The interviewees were asked to reflect on their experience of the current crisis and strategies for coping with it at the professional, personal and familial levels. This paper aims to shed light on aspects and experiences of crisis and rural resilience through these narratives of people living in rural areas. 5. Findings and analysis 5.1. The Agrinion rural area In the course of the current crisis, which deepened the impacts of the earlier tobacco crisis (1992e2004) 14,572 families in the prefecture of Aetolia-Acarnania abandoned the cultivation of tobacco and in some cases gave up farm activities and left the area (data from the local office of the National Tobacco Organization). To this figure must be added 2500 workers engaged in processing and marketing of tobacco (Kaberis, 2013). At the same time, the crisis in tobacco production was accompanied by population movements from mountainous areas to the plains, movements from farming areas to urban centers and a rise in unemployment. In other words, the end of tobacco farming caused employment insecurity and

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social uncertainty in the tobacco supply chain and in other urban sectors linked to tobacco (processing, retailing, construction). Above all, the crisis and the end of tobacco farming brought about decisive transformations in symbolic structures concerning farm work, family enterprise, the marriage market and the succession system. For male tobacco producers, the end of tobacco production produced fundamental changes in personal and social identity. The ‘tobacco production permit’ that had reinforced the holder's status as breadwinner, head of the family, and ’the boss' of the enterprise”, was diminished in economic, social and symbolic signification (Kaberis and Koutsouris, 2013). The permit lost its potency as a symbol of privilege in local society, marriage arrangements, commercial networks, the credit system and in clientelist political connections, and was instead given away, sold, or kept as a paper token of lost personal and social identity (ibid). From this perspective, those who have not abandoned farm production, those who left and returned following the crisis in urban employment, and those who do not come from the area but have taken advantage of some family or friendship link so as to establish themselves in the area, have had to cope with the difficulties of the respective labour markets at the local level. As far as in-migrants in particular are concerned, and indeed the low and medium class of the selfemployed (trade, catering, repair shops, technical services, etc.), they have experienced both the problems of the near-futile pursuit of a “family business” and those of being a newcomer attempting to transplant the model of the city to the country. 5.1.1. Those who never abandoned farming These are farmers who have remained in the area and confronted the crisis and the end of tobacco cultivation in an inherently contradictory manner. On the one hand they seek out alternative vocations inside and outside farming while continuing to feel and act like the “boss” of the (disintegrating) family farm and “boss” of the household in the eyes of the local community. Keeping alive the decades-long dominant tradition of the family farm and the male farm-head after the termination of tobacco cultivation they have attempted to move in dynamic new directions (cultivating pomegranates, dwarf olives, stabled stockbreeding), which require capital, specialised expertise and commercial networks that are beyond the means of the family and the available level of skill of the farm head. N. says in this connection: “We talked about cultivating pomegranates, with friends, fellows from other villages. We ran around, we paid, almost blindly, on our own, so that each of us could learn. When the first crop was ready we discovered that the pomegranates had to be transported to Kilkis [Northern Greece] where there is a factory. From here to there, you understand what the transportation costs would be, what damage there would be, what quality would remain at the end …”. As for the younger farmers who decided, or were obliged, to continue living with their parents, remaining in farming was the economically safest and socially most acceptable solution within their general family strategies.3 P. explained in this regard: “I knew that I have my own business. I feel that it is my business, because I make some money from it e a fair

3 The family strategies on farms engaged in cultivating tobacco centre on education (those lacking aptitude at school stay in tobacco cultivation), the marriage market (aspirations to “marrying well”) with the hope that a daughter will “leave for the city with a good husband” and a son will stay behind with “a hardworking spouse who is a respectable woman and a good housewife”, succession (the hope that there will be grandchildren and someone to look after the old people) and social reproduction (the pursuit of financial prosperity and upward social mobility) (Kaberis and Koutsouris, 2013).

bit of money, I suppose. I have quite a large quota [of tobacco] and I make some money. I employ workers … I feel that I am the boss.” A. mentions pluriactivity as a basic parameter for people staying in farming and in the countryside: “… I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay, in my house, in farming, in building. It's good …” Sometimes pluriactivity makes staying and not moving more of an adventure: D. says: “In summer I did the farm jobs here or went with my father to work on building sites. In winter I worked in Agrinion [the capital city of the district] in a machine shop …” Often the lingering on has an oppressive element to it, sometimes out of the urgent need to support the family and the farm (economic assistance, personal favours, excessively long working hours, etc.), and sometimes out of the aspiration to create “family businesses”, weaving tangled webs of interdependence and erecting obstacles to necessary rationalisation and commercial efficiency. “My father,” says C. “has undergone heart surgery and can't work anymore. My mother minds the children, my mother helps me. When the going gets tough my wife and I go. Let me tell you something, if I got married again, I would like to live alone. Let's be frank. Because the way old people's minds work is something very different from the way my mind works.” In other words, while affording a temporary respite to vulnerable families and farms, cohabitation with parents does not create the long-term economic and social prerequisites for changes in the local community and broader restructuring (Bourdieu, 1993, p.1095; Champagne, 1986). At the same time, while the male leadership in farming and local societies has long been undermined (crisis of the productivist model, contraction of farm incomes, offfarm employment of women, current economic and financial crisis), cultural perceptions concerning the independent male farmer as the head of the farm holding and the exclusive family breadwinner still persist. The prevailing male norm still plays an important role in the self-determination of rural men creating them ambivalent moods and attitudes about their future decisions. As a result, it makes it difficult to proceed to change and adaptation in the face of adversity and external shocks. 5.1.2. Those who have left the rural community and have returned The people of this category are those who, due to the tobacco crisis and the general restructuring of the farming activities, attempted to move to Athens or in the surrounding areas of the region. The multiplying effect of the social and economic insecurity blended with the seasonal character of their employment began to steadily crush the boss's imaginary construct and their initial expectations. Furthermore, these factors led the way to their back home. C. recalled in this regard: “… I went to work at a liquor store in Agrinion but, well, it wasn't much money. It was very tiring and wasn't worth it. There were no prospects. I was going to try some other jobs, for example as a driver, but the pay was miserable there too. They gave you something, but you spent half of it.” G., too, had a hard time: “I went to Athens, to work in a shop with construction machinery but it was tiring work, and a tiring schedule, working very long hours. After that I went and worked on Kos [a tourist island], with aluminum. The shop where I worked closed [because of the crisis]. So I came back because I thought it would be better.” The employment history of A. followed a similar pattern: “I worked in Athens with frozen foods for a couple of years … I unloaded frozen fish, cod and so on, into a refrigerator … After that I went somewhere else, to some building sites, and after that to some public works in Karpenisi [central Greece] … And then I came back.” The return to the farming family base after some attempts of securing more viable employment terms did not finally ensure the

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necessary family income as far as these small family agricultural holdings are not economically viable and most importantly cannot be modernised according to the changing market norms (Balazs, 1979). Especially within the constraints of the CAP (e.g. decoupling) in which primary agriculture in the area might not be able to provide by itself a satisfactory standard of living for future generations (Heijman et al., 2007, p.387). 5.1.3. New comers without family origins The deep economic recession of recent years that made the crisis a problem for wage labour in cities, and particularly for those working in sectors such as construction, repairs and small retailing, has brought unemployment to a significant number of people, not only workers in insecure and unskilled jobs but also self-employed, micro-entrepreneurs and people in what are regarded as good professional positions. Such individuals are usually city people, that is to say their social origins are not from the provinces, they have no vested interests in farming or experience in farm work and, above all, they never thought that at some moment they would be fated to have to take up farming. Nevertheless, under the pressure of urgent necessity (debts, rent, children, other fixed expenses, etc.) these people have followed in the footsteps of people they know (friends) or relatives (generally of the parents or the spouse) and have ended up in a rural area trying to make a new start. Without possessing specialized knowledge, land or technology, these so-called “newcomers to farming” have had to elaborate their own strategies and know-how for survival. G., as he said of himself and his children, did not have “any connection with the countryside, only from television and holidays.” After 25 years working in a big car repair workshop, with a specialization in exhausts, he had what was perceived to be “a good job” and wanted “like anyone who has children” to buy a sizeable house, taking out a loan to do so. “There was enough money,” he says. “The banks were lending it, the children were growing up, and an opportunity appeared.” But after two years, as the crisis sharpened in all sectors linked to cars, the workshop started laying off workers. G. found himself out of a job, without any knowledge other than knowledge of cars, and specifically car exhausts, with a big loan to pay off, with rent, with the children's expenses for private lessons, etc. His wife came from a village in the study area with which, after leaving it, she had kept some limited contact. But her parental family did not have any significant amount of fertile land, a comfortable house or usable farming equipment. G. took up residence in his wife's village, lived in the same small house as his very elderly mother-in-law and started to look for work wherever there seemed to be a need for it (harvesting olives, cutting wood, clearing fields, doing house repairs, painting, etc.), at the same time thinking about his children, who in that atmosphere “couldn't have their minds on entry examinations into the University but rather on how they themselves were going to get by.” We had a number of discussions with him. For all his realism concerning the causes of the economic crisis, and his self-criticism for the naivety that led to him being persuaded by the banks and also for believing his position to be “indispensable” for the company, for all his present efforts to survive, G. is often overcome by pessimism, sluggishness, ambivalence and an ill-defined personal anxiety. His return to his wife's place of origin has meant losing the freedom of the big city with its anonymity, and becoming “known” locally, where he must conform to local or family norms (Ni-Laroire, 2007, pp. 340e341). But it is also difficult for him, he says, to live in an environment where his history, the vicissitudes of his life, his knowledge, his experiences and his concerns are without meaning: “Nobody really knows me. Nobody knows what I did, what skills I had, how many people I was in charge of … In the coffee shop everyone talks about his own preoccupations … and it is the same at home, and

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in the street. And I am an outsider. The husband of Mrs. So and so, the son-in-law of Mrs. So and so … the guy who came to live here, who came from Athens … How did I end up here …” . In this way, temporary rescue is achieved from unemployment or the underemployment in cities but this does not provide the long-term economic and social requisites for social integration and viability as a producer in the area. The role of the extended family is certainly significant, insofar as it can support relocation “choices” through socioeconomic networks, through psychological empowerment and above all, through housing provision. Further investigation is required at this level with regards to the potential “costs”, especially when the relocation “decision” is taken under pressure to escape poverty and fear that one may not survive the crisis thus losing professional identity and prestige and feeling excluded from local community networks. To summarize, people that during the crisis did not leave the region, and those that left the area opting for, mainly, urban centers and came back home, as well as newcomers, did not manage to create the prerequisites for their economic, social, and symbolic viability and integration. In other words, each individual itinerary towards the accomplishment of their personal and social identity led to situations of disconnection from the necessary restructuring of the agricultural production and the improvement of living conditions in rural areas. 5.2. The Thebes rural area 5.2.1. The dynamics of socio-cultural relations and the productive model (1970-1990) In the early 1970s the productive structures of the Thebes area were integrated into a wider supra-local market for agricultural products, through the adoption of new crops such as vegetables. The value of the crops in question was based on two key sociocultural and economic parameters. Firstly, at the time it was understood to be an important moment of productive restructuring, marking the transition from extensive cropping (e.g. wheat) to intensive productive systems, with produce specialization (e.g. carrots, potatoes) and larger market integration. Secondly, the success of this innovation in production brought social reconstitution and transformation, with the new crops being introduced by small producers hitherto engaged in subsistence farming. Given the high levels of demand for vegetables (largely due to proximity to Athens and its large consumer market), significant profits were generated for the producers, who invested in symbols of social and productive status within the local community (such as urban-type residences, automobiles, purchase of agricultural land, modern tractors, carrot-packaging machinery and seasonal employment of Greek farm labourers from surrounding mountain villages), something which until then only big landowners had been able to do, securing for themselves the corresponding social prestige. So the productive success of the new crops came to be associated with the emergence of a new socio-professional identity for small farmers, that of the employer and the successful person (Petrou, 2008). 5.2.2. Strengthening the foundations of production and shaping a new identity (1990-2010) The structural changes in the area from 1990 onwards are linked to the appearance of hundreds of foreign rural labourers employed as a cheap all-purpose workforce on farms (Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013). For most producers the availability of migrant workers largely predetermined the choice of crops, inducing them to expand their activity into new competitive types of production. S., one of the producers, explains the advantages of having a foreman at the farm:

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“Because of our foreign foreman we have more time by not having to be in the field all day. So we have time to close commercial agreements with supermarkets, experimenting in new productive systems, to be educated in new technologies and to travel to other rural areas to acquire experience and knowledge”. The immediate result of these changes was that dynamic vegetable crops were now incorporated, with attendant significant expansion of the area under cultivation, diversification into wholesale trading and new business activities such as supra-local commercial agreements with supermarkets, post-production infrastructures, etc. What we observe, in other words, is an extended form of capitalist organization of farming where the objective is not simply subsistence but business profit. Taking this instance as our point of departure, we see that the identity of the (predominantly male) farmer today, or rather his evolution from an ordinary producer into an employer/boss and sometimes into a merchant/ entrepreneur, begins to acquire significance through the employment of foreign labourers on his farm. As was mentioned by one of the community's older producers, “The Greek farmer does not go out digging in the fields because with the immigrants he is starting to have it easy. The immigrants have made us bosses, businessmen and dealers”. Within this framework there emerged an apparently strong and promising “medium capacity” category of farmers that sought to continue the innovation of a previous generation of small producers. The emergence of this category of farmer highlighted a new transformation of identity through a passage from the simple farmer-producer to the entrepreneur-merchant-employer with dozens of foreign workers in his service on the farm further enhancing his entrepreneurial status as well as farming masculinity in the area (Petrou, 2012; Giddens, 1991, p.52). At the same time competition is intensified between producers who invested in modern residences, in increased areas of land for cultivation, in expensive cars and four-wheel-drive commercial vehicles, and extends to other domains of consumption of special symbolic value in local cultural practice and display (Bourdieu, 1979), such as expensive household equipment and decoration, visits to casinos and entertainment at Athens night clubs. An employerentrepreneur must have the ability to defend his social profile and identity as a producer not only in the coffee shop, in the fields and in the village square but also in supra-local geographic environments or in other words, according to an interviewed producer of this category: “You have to have the guts to respond to challenges and be ahead of the others everywhere and always.” 5.2.3. The “identity adventures” of those who have never left farming and the rural community A significant number of farmers in the area have in recent years pursued a course of development in production that has enabled them to maximize their profits, modernize their farm and expand into supra-local commercial networks, transforming themselves into dynamic entrepreneurs. It has enabled them at the same time to climb the social ladder and occupy a higher position in the local socioeconomic hierarchy, as well-established ‘professionals’ investing in consumption goods comparable to those in the possession of big landowners overturning the long-established stereotyped conception of success simply on the basis of largescale landed property. However, many of the farmers who followed this model, have found themselves in an impasse during recent times, both financially and in terms of production. With the economic crisis of recent years now a tangible reality, signs have emerged of a rethinking of the productive model they have been implementing. One might think that the type of farmer who in the preceding years has constituted a dynamic and promising “medium capacity category”

of producer with significant productive and entrepreneurial achievements to his credit, would rise to the challenge and succeed in weathering the economic crisis. However, such farmers have been the first to come face-to-face with the danger of a reversal and collapse of the production and consumption model adopted by them until recently, and the basic challenge for them has not been lack of work (as has been the case in other sectors of the economy) but a multiple combination of socioeconomic and cultural factors. The basic problem emphasized by all the producers interviewed is the financial constraint with which the Greek economy as a whole is afflicted, resulting in the suspension both of the provision of agricultural loans by the banks and of credit sales by private companies marketing farm supplies. The “medium category” of producers is also under pressure from obligations at the level of display, given that until very recently they were the hallmark of productive and commercial success in local communities. M. commented: “We don't have any problem with finding a market for our products. The problem is with securing liquidity and delaying payments. Well, some of us went too far and got into debt over their heads. Because beans happened to be fetching a good price one farmer would sow 20 ha and another would follow with 30 ha. Now they are in hock to the banks and to suppliers, in a difficult situation.” The perennial practices of expanding into large-scale planting of crops, often on the basis not of economic rationality but in the quest for quick profits and in response to local competition, the emphasis on conspicuous consumption and reinforcement of self-image through expenditure on certain kinds of consumer goods, the cutting back on lending by financial institutions and the suspension of credit facilitation by suppliers, all come together to shake the foundations of the local socio-cultural order., In brief, today's productive dynamic may enable them to get by, but it cannot support the production and consumption model that prevailed until not long ago and of which they were the exponents, deriving power and prestige from it in the context of everyday social reality (Bourdieu, 1979; Gefou-Madianou, 1999). On the other hand, smaller capacity producers specialized in selling to street markets seem to be handling the crisis more effectively because of the smaller surface under cultivation (lower costs), the absorption of all of the product by the market (including the spoilage), the low incidence of employment of migrants and enlistment of family members into working on the farm (flexible reserve labour force). One producer who supplies the street markets notes: “I know what the market wants because I am with consumers every day. It is on that basis that I work out what I will cultivate, and how much. I employ a migrant on the stall and another in the field and I work myself, along with my wife and son. We well everything … I am paid in cash. The big producers don't understand this and play at being businessmen … the merchants run up debts with them and pay them after six months. But that doesn't stop them from seeing themselves as entrepreneurs.” It is evident that proximity to the largest consumption centre of Athens creates conditions of resilience for those farmers that can adapt to the difficult and changing context of current crisis through productive diversification, new commercial strategies and flexible working practices. However, the small producers’ better handling of the economic crisis is not accompanied by any corresponding rise in social status in the eyes of locals, despite the fact that the “laikatzides” (street vendors) have considerable economic and material achievements to their credit (houses, cars, purchase of farmland, even if in small lots, but in the midst of the crisis, etc.). Working for the street markets, and particularly on a stall in a street market, has negative associations in the minds of most residents,

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connoting low prestige and culturally not entirely respectable. The small size of the holding, the limited numbers of migrants being employed, the involvement of family members in farm work alongside migrants, and above all the stall in the street market: for many producers all this is to be equated with an inferior productive dynamic and a corresponding subservient stance towards the consumers. These practices are not, in other words, compatible with the predominant business-oriented male producer identity that has emerged in recent years in the community. It is not uncommon, for example, for other producers to make fun of the “laikatzides”, with sarcastic insinuations: “Did you take the zucchini for a walk?” “Hey, guys, where are you taking the greens?” In brief, the passage to street market commerce marks the passage to the margins and to the devaluation of the productive process through other-determinedness of identity, albeit by people whose own entrepreneurial performance leaves much to be desired. One of the big producers said: “Can I, the businessman owning 30 ha of land go from selling fifteen tons of onions to selling a hundred kilos? Setting up a stall? Like in the church? Like at the church festivals? Can I become a stall holder at the church festivals and start calling out: “Come over here, good lady, and buy some of my little onions”? So in Boeotia we have a redefining process of a different kind, not of farming itself as a productive resource and a means of earning living, but of a specific production and consumption model within farming. Although one might expect “medium capacity” farmers to hold out and cope with the crisis, they are in fact the first to be threatened by immediate economic collapse, having proved to be productively vulnerable and socially unprotected. In other words, the successful and accordingly dominant representatives of productive and entrepreneurial aptitude in the area turn out to be the first victims of an imaginary business model (Anthopoulou et al., 2013). On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the investigation in this area did not find any instance of an in-comer: either of a returnee coming back to take up farming in consequence of the economic crisis or of a new-comer without being from the area originally and settling there to become engaged with farming, again because of the economic crisis. “What could they do if they came here? Can't they see what a mess we ourselves are in? And we have some infrastructure. Where would they find capital? Markets? Are they willing to get down and work in the mud if necessary?” And yet many would say that the area is ideal for integrating city dwellers into farming in response to the crisis, as it is very close to Athens; there are wide expanses of fertile, and in many cases cheap, agricultural land to invest in; alternative farming options are available both on the plain (e.g. garden vegetables) and in the semimountainous areas (e.g. stockbreeding); there is an up-to-date road network and public transport (e.g. the national road, the suburban railway). Answers as to the deeper reasons for the non-return of locals and/or non-establishment of newcomers cannot be provided with any certainty in this paper, as research is still in progress. Nevertheless, preliminary indications from the research make it possible to put forward a hypothesis touching on a number of diverse economic and socio-cultural factors: i) the need for significant capital investment in material and technical infrastructure, ii) new tax regulations e in the context of fiscal adjustment of the Greek economy e including higher rates of taxation on agricultural land and income, iii) the privatization of the Agricultural Bank in 2012, leading to stricter criteria for provision of loans, iv) suspension of credit payments by large farm supply importing companies v) increased production costs as a result of the crisis (e.g. farm supplies, taxes, fuel, loan repayments), vi) a shortage of specialized agricultural know-how (particularly among newcomers) combined

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with the absence of framing in public extension services and vocational training, vii) the low professional status of farming, especially among individuals with origins in the area. Therefore, despite whatever might be proclaimed at the level of public discourse concerning a return to the land, on-site research does not at the moment substantiate the existence of any such phenomenon, as a tendency with any general validity in Greece's farming areas, including the dynamic plain regions. To conclude, the image of farming landscape in the area based on the prevailing productive model has not visibly changed. Yet at the level of production and investment it has started to collapse, given that in social display the professional identity can clearly no longer uphold the social identity, which has become excessively demanding in the local value system. And at the same time the masculine norm of the powerful head of the farm and provider of the household is now challenged. Finally, those who seem best able to cope with the economic crisis are those who are “better at handling their identity than handling their tractors”; in the sense that they can adapt their livelihood and professional practices in the changing economic context. 6. Conclusion Drawing on narratives of farmers and incomers in two rural areas this paper highlighted that the crisis experienced in the Greek countryside does not bear the markings of typical economic and productive crisis but is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Similarly, the experiences of people afflicted by the crisis, whether in rural areas or in the city, are personalized, shaping different narratives of rural resilience. Taking into account the inherent heterogeneity and multiplicity of the rural areas, social groups and modes of production, these personal accounts should be studied in their specific social, cultural and economic contexts while precluding preconceived and generalizing stances, including optimistic scenarios of return to the land and agricultural revival. The “return to the land” so widely celebrated in public discourse may have some substance to it in the case of a certain number of middle-class Athenians with a relatively high level of education, or of lower-income workers, for whom, in conjunction with the better quality of life, the crisis contributed to the decision to move into the countryside (Galani-Moutafi, 2013; Gkartzios, 2013). Some of those who have left the city under the pressure of unemployment and economic stagnation have found themselves faced with difficulties of integration (employment, social identity) in their new rural environment (as in the Agrinion example). In any case, these movements of crisis counter-urbanisation do not have a generalized character (Duquenne, 2014). It could be argued that “aspirational migration” (Woods, 2005) is greater than “real in-migration”, because the crisis is reinforcing the rural idyll. Yet this net inmigration could be more significant arithmetically if there were targeted public policies for the reception of urbanites (e.g. social infrastructures, installation and training of new farmers, simplified procedures for rural entrepreneurship). It should not be forgotten that the Greek countryside too is affected by the general socioeconomic crisis (e.g. contraction of educational and health services in rural areas, unemployment, poverty) as well as by the crisis of productive structures in farming. To conclude, what we may perceive through public discourse on rural resilience is that the crisis is reinforcing the stereotypical image of the rural as a place of refuge while at the same time highlighting a new prospect for the rural as a locus for social innovation and employment opportunities. What is obvious at the moment is that in this situation of unprecedented phenomena of social and economic deprivation leading to a general rethinking of the assumptions of a current mode of life, the crisis contributes to

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activating links with rural areas and family networks. At the same time it is generating real and imaginary attempts to remain in, or return to, the rural milieu. Personal narratives of rural resilience, presented in this paper, suggest that remaining in or returning to the rural milieu e at this phase of the generalized crisis e often hide instances of underemployment, social deprivation and proletarianization, insofar as people living in rural areas, both farmers and incomers, are not explicitly supported by public policy-making. Family facilities in rural areas, kin networks and pluriactivity outside agriculture may constitute factors of resilience for people afflicted by the current economic crisis, especially in the city. They do not lead however to processes of transformation, reconstruction and innovation within a sustainable community and rural development perspective since economic, social and cultural prerequisites of resilience are inadequate. In broader terms, both successful examples of innovative urban installation in the rural, and unsuccessful attempts by those who lacked the financial and technical means for a fresh start in farming and rural entrepreneurship, could prove useful in facilitating rural and regional policies towards the direction of resilience building at this time of crisis and severe insecurity. References AgroNews, 2012. Half Want to Become Farmers, According to ELGO-DIMITRA (In Greek). Available on: http://www.agronews.gr/business/meletes/arthro/79537/ oi-misoi-theloun-na-ginoun-agrotes-sumfona-me-ton-elgo-dimitra/ (accessed 24.09.15). AgroNews, 2013. Despite the General Call, the Number of Farmers Falls. (In Greek). Available on: http://www.agronews.gr/business/meletes/arthro/93673/para-togeniko-prosklitirio-meiothike-o-arithmos-ton-agroton-/ (accessed 24.09.15). Anthopoulou, T., Kaberis, N., Petrou, M., 2013. Exploring aspects and dynamics of rural society in times of crisis. first findings. Available on:. In: Proceedings of 11th ERSA- GR Conference 2013: Rural Economy, Rural Areas, Regional and Local Development, Patrai, 14e15 June 2013 (In Greek) http://grsa.prd.uth.gr/ conf2013/48_anthopoulou_etal_ersagr13.pdf (accessed 24.09.15). clin. Actes Rech. Sci. Balazs, G., 1979. Jeunes
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