Georgina Christou | Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences

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Papers by Georgina Christou

Journal of Childhood Studies , 2023

Through registering the chronopolitics of Cypriot teenage antiauthoritarian activists, this artic... more Through registering the chronopolitics of Cypriot teenage antiauthoritarian activists, this article explores the antichronocratic labour of children as a way to engage with processes of degrowth and to create dissident everyday temporalities through which to build alternative communities and relations in the present. It is argued that paying attention to such labour unsettles the hegemonic temporality of linear development and the individualized child of capitalist modernity while also troubling the consequent individual character of agency that has been hegemonic in childhood studies thus far. Such attention must infuse research on childhood(s) in its attempt to decolonize childhood and related knowledge production.

Children's Geographies , 2022

Pandemic conditions have affected social movement activity in various ways. In this article, we e... more Pandemic conditions have affected social movement activity in various ways. In this article, we explore how young Cypriot climate activists, associated with the global Fridays for Future movement, attempt to integrate pandemic conditions in their mobilizing tactics, as well as how such conditions affect their collective youth agency. We first look into the strategic antagonistic framings they develop to counter dominant discourses of the pandemic as an unprecedented crisis and explore how these are informed by their understandings of, and emotions on, climate change as an effect of capitalism and overconsumption and as a type of ‘slow pandemic’. We argue that by extending climate change crisis discourse to encompass the cause of the pandemic, young activists assert temporality as continuity, rather than rupture, and challenge the distinction between the exceptional and the everyday on which Emergency governance is based on. By doing this, they unsettle adult hegemonic discourses on temporality, emergency and crisis that lead to an uneven world. Secondly, we reflect on the impact of Covid-19 on non-institutional youth activism by exploring the challenges these activists face to their sustenance and reproduction, given that access to public space, as we claim, is crucial for teenagers in developing the necessary relationality that is key for the maintenance of their social movement activity. We argue that youth movements emerge and operate within particular conditions which are currently under threat given the distinct mechanisms of governing populations engineered during Covid-19.

Children & Society, 2021

This article explores the future imaginaries of young climate activists in Cyprus in the light of... more This article explores the future imaginaries of young climate activists in Cyprus in the light of the unfolding climate crisis and the uncertainty and urgency it engenders. We analyse young people's imagined futures and their struggles to manage fear and despair through the cultivation of a collective sense of hope which allows them to act as future-makers and to work towards creating more just and sustainable futures. Through our empirical illustration, we also make the more general case for attending to the future as a productive temporal condition in Childhood Studies’ explorations of contemporary childhoods.

GreeSE Papers - Hellenic Observatory Discussion Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe. LSE, 2021

This research paper explores young people’s climate action in Cyprus in light of the global mobil... more This research paper explores young people’s climate action in Cyprus in light of the global mobilization of children and youth and the emergence of the international Fridays for Future movement. The study on which the paper draws explored in particular the emergence and role of ‘Youth for Climate Cyprus’ in climate action on the island through the use of ethnographic and other qualitative approaches including ethnographic observation, in-depth individual interviews and focus group discussions as well as textual analysis of social media posts and local media coverage of youth climate activism. The paper examines the meaning that young activists make of their activism on climate change, the forms their activism takes, and the means through which they organize and mobilize around the cause of climate change including their strategies for gaining legitimacy.

This policy brief aims to provide concrete policy suggestions regarding the issue of youth politi... more This policy brief aims to provide concrete policy suggestions regarding the issue of youth political participation, particularly focusing on the case of youth activism for climate change. The first part of the policy brief provides an overview of the issue of youth activism for climate change. It further describes the methodology employed to investigate how young people organize and mobilize around the cause of climate change and make meaning of their activism looking at Youth for Climate Cyprus as a case in point. The second part of the policy brief provides suggestions that emerge from the findings of this qualitative study and pertain to establishing fora and policies for enabling youth political participation. It is suggested that this can be achieved by adopting a more critical approach to citizenship education and by tackling the issue of ageism as a phenomenon that impacts the rights of children and youth.

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2021

Stasis has reemerged in recent accounts of resistance. In this paper that draws from ethnographic... more Stasis has reemerged in recent accounts of resistance. In this paper that draws from ethnographic research with a youth antiauthoritarian community in Cyprus and their long-term occupation of a city square, I provide a broader theorization of this multi-semantic concept that has hitherto been missing from accounts on stasis commonly found in literature on the squares movement(s). I argue that stasis constitutes a key form of resistance to modern forms of power by pausing the circulation of capitalism and scheduled time and subverting the production of subjectivities that support such circulation. By drawing on Nicole Loraux’s interpretation of stasis as “movement at rest,” I overturn the negative connotations often associated with stasis as (unwanted) immobility by showing how stasis can be a desired political action that includes forms of mobility and circulation within it. Developing this theorization further, I analyze stasis as a threshold to critical political subjectivization, as productive of ipostasis (existence) that enables the subjects under stasis to appear in political terms and exercise their right to politics. I thus contribute to recent literature on the political potential and existential necessity of occupying practices that allow for a politicizing of the urban everyday.

Negotiating Multicultural Europe, 2011

Citizenship Teaching and Learning, Volume 8, Issue 1, 2013

Gender-based violence (GBV) among adolescents has been an understudied phenomenon in Europe, desp... more Gender-based violence (GBV) among adolescents has been an understudied phenomenon in Europe, despite the prevalence of studies that deal with violence against women and intimate partner violence. Drawing on the results of a research study conducted with Greek-Cypriot adolescents and teachers in secondary education schools in Cyprus, the present contribution aims to highlight common forms of GBV in adolescent intimate and peer relationships, as well as the much neglected gender dimension in the perpetration and toleration of bullying in schools. Furthermore, the author aims at examining the models of attraction that Greek-Cypriot teenagers maintain and their possible interconnections to violence. By investigating the various forms of gender-related violence the author aims to expose the diverse needs of youth in relation to this phenomenon, but also to examine the contribution that a reformulated citizenship education can make in addressing such violence and discrimination. For this purpose, the author takes a critical look on the management of gender and other social inequality-related issues through the citizenship education philosophy and curriculum, with a special focus on the Cypriot context, and argues for a more inclusionary concept of citizenship that would represent the everyday realities of diverse social groups and contribute to social change.

Μεταναστριών στην Κύπρο» Ζέλεια Γρηγορίου, Τζιωρτζίνα Χρίστου Εισαγωγή Η διερεύνηση για τις εκπαι... more Μεταναστριών στην Κύπρο» Ζέλεια Γρηγορίου, Τζιωρτζίνα Χρίστου Εισαγωγή Η διερεύνηση για τις εκπαιδευτικές πολιτικές ένταξης και τα σχολικά βιώματα των κοριτσιών μεταναστριών 171 διεξάγεται σε μια εποχή όπου τόσο ζητήματα ένταξης μεταναστών όσο και ζητήματα ισότητας φύλου υφίστανται μια πολιτικά, εννοιολογικά και κοινωνικά κρίσιμη αναδιάρθρωση. Η έννοια (και η ευθύνη) της ένταξης των μεταναστών ιδιωτικοποιείται και εξατομικεύεται ολοένα και περισσότερο τα τελευταία χρόνια καθώς μεταφράζεται σε προσωπική υποχρέωση των ίδιων των μεταναστών. Παράλληλα, η έμφυλη πρόσληψη της εθνοτικής διαφοράς έρχεται να ενισχύσει νεο-αποικιοκρατικές αντιλήψεις για τις γυναίκες και τα κορίτσια μετανάστριες. Η συχνή πλαισίωσή τους στις διάφορες πολιτικές ως καταπιεσμένες από οπισθοδρομικές πατριαρχικές κουλτούρες καθιστά αόρατα τα δομικά μοτίβα υποταγής που προκύπτουν στη ζωή τους ως μετανάστριες. Μολονότι η ένταξη των μεταναστών έγινε αρχικά κατανοητή ως καταλύτης για την προώθηση της κοινωνικής ένταξης και των πολιτικών δικαιωμάτων των μεταναστών, σήμερα πολλά κράτη-μέλη της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης (ΕΕ) αντιλαμβάνονται τις πολιτικές ένταξης τις οποίες προωθούν κυρίως ως μέτρο για την αναχαίτιση της μετανάστευσης. Η αρχή της «αμφίδρομης διαδικασίας, αμοιβαίου συμβιβασμού μεταξύ όλων των μεταναστών και υπηκόων των κρατών μελών» επαναπροσδιορίζεται πια από πολιτική αρχή ισότητας και ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων σε πολιτικές και πρακτικές ελέγχου των «απολιτών» (Αgamben, 1993·2000). 172 Πλέον δεν γίνεται αναφορά σε μια αμοιβαία σχέση 'δύο παραγόντων', ή 'δύο πλευρών', αλλά σε όρους συμβολαίου οι οποίοι δεσμεύουν τους μετανάστες μέσω τεχνολογιών ελέγχου όπως η εξατομίκευση της ευθύνης για ένταξη και η παγίωσης του αμφίβολου καθεστώτος του ενταγμένου μετανάστη (ούτε πολίτης, ούτε αλλοδαπός· απλά ένας δικαιούχος ο οποίος πρέπει

Negotiating Multicultural Europe

Books by Georgina Christou

'How to Introduce Gender in History Teaching is a pioneering book about working with gender when ... more 'How to Introduce Gender in History Teaching is a pioneering book about working with gender when teaching history in school. It is thorough, varied and accessible. The first chapter contains a historiography of women’s and gender history, and an overview of what has been published about women’s history in Cyprus, covering both the Turkish and Greek communities. The second chapter presents research on the language and content of curricula, textbooks and other teaching materials, done specifically by the writers for this project. The third and last chapter consists of eight concrete lesson plans covering themes dealing with women’s and gender history, developed by the writing team
in cooperation with the UK expert Dr Dean Smart, senior lecturer in history and citizenship education at the University of the West of England'.

Excerpt taken from the Forward to the publication