Displacement without Trauma? Greek Cypriot IDPs 30 years later

Peter Loizos

The paper assesses the long term effects on a Greek Cypriot village
population of having been forcibly displaced 30 years earlier. It is
sceptical of the term "trauma" to describe that experience since the
majority of refugees have been able to work, and raise their children
effectively. They suffered economic losses, as well as loss of the
wide-ranging sociality of previous village life, and they can and do
re-experience anger and sadness when reminded of their displacement. But
in spite of the easy attractions of accepting at face value their
periodic subjective expressions of victimhood, a fuller analytic view
must see them as having transcended the “severe life event" of
1974,although deeply marked by it.

Organiser: Dr. Parvathi Raman

Contact email: pr1@soas.ac.uk