Dr Dimitris Soudias (Visiting Fellow, February 2022 - February 2023) will focus on the political imaginary of hapiness in Greece. In recent decades, post-industrial economies have engaged in place-branding strategies to generate growth. These strategies go beyond the short-termism of tourism and have focused on attracting human capital vis-à-vis ‘creative talent’, ‘lifestyle migrants’, ‘digital nomads’, as well as ‘brain-gainers’. This project investigates the case of Greece, claiming that the current government mobilizes happiness as a political imaginary to brand Greece that embodies happiness. The analytical task of this project is threefold. Firstly, it scrutinizes the constitutive discursive elements and (governmental, scholarly) agents of the happiness imaginary in Greece. Secondly, this project investigates the role of the happiness imaginary for Greece’s place-branding strategies. Thirdly, the project elaborates the claim that the political imaginary of happiness serves the purpose of not only attracting desirable migrants, but also of disciplining the Greek population.