This study examines ethno-regionalist conceptions of identity and the reception of Greater Greece in popular history books produced by publishers based in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy. Discussing how the heritage of Greek antiquity may have provided a foundation for identitarian discourses and alignment with ideas of Westernness and whiteness, I examine how such publications have reinforced foundational mythologies that have overtly or covertly sustained the othering of migrants and systemic forms of racism.
It extracts data from an ongoing research project on popular and academic history books published in the region, as well as longer-term ethnographic work, and it focuses on their treatment of notions of autochthony in relation to Greater Greece. History publications are often tinged with nativist mythologies and beliefs in a purported ethnic continuity with Greater Greece. Such identitarian views can be pervaded by a disdain for those constructed as Others to the Greeks, in contrast to their self-appointed heirs.