In 1923 Turkey and Greece agreed to the compulsory exchange of populations of their religious minorities, a story central to the Greek identity that poses international interest since it was the first compulsory population exchange in history. The narrative of the Asia Minor refugee memory is not static and passive, but is instead actively reshaped and contested over time. This research seeks to examine the formation and reformation of refugee memory through the historical parallel between the Greek-Turkish population exchange (1923) and the contemporary migration and refugee flows (2015-20). More specifically, while focusing on the case of Greece, the research questions that I aim to address are: how have family memories of the 1923 forced displacement changed over time from one generation to the next? How do people with these family memories think about subsequent migration? How does subsequent migration reactivate traumatic memories of forced displacement? To unpack the fluid relationship among history, memory, and identity and to overcome the numerous methodological challenges, I use a methodology of collecting primary sources using oral testimonies and archival evidence. The source material of this research is derived from a collection of primary sources. More specifically, 262 life history interviews were conducted and nearly 5000 oral testimonies were examined in the context of archival research in the course of 2019 and 2020. This study is focused on three geographic areas across Greece, namely the borderland island of Lesvos, Central Macedonia in northern Greece, and Greece's most populous region, Attica.
