Ioanna Thomadakis
My thesis explores the construction of nationality and identity in general among the Arab migrants in London, especially in regard to globalisation and its effects on this construction. This is an area of migration that has received little academic attention. Globalisation is a reality and its sweeping force should not be ignored. It is dissolving barriers of time and distance and transcends mental, as well as physical, barriers, with consequences for ideas of nation and national identity.
Globalisation and nationalism are often presented in mutual opposition. But members of diasporic populations may perceive themselves as belonging to a global community of Arabs retaining links with their national "homeland" while also valuing citizenship of their adopted county. My study of Arab migration offers an ideal perspective through which to interogate co-existing of notions of national, transnational, regional and global identity and the impact these have on individual perceptions and emotions.
My Bachelor Degree was Journalism and Mass Communication (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and I undertook my MA in Transnational Communications and the Global Media here at Goldsmiths University of London.