Antigone Lyberaki

Inflow of migrants and outflow of investment: Aspects of interdependence between Greece and the Balkans

Along with the other Southern EU member-states, Greece has moved from a country of emigration to become a migrant-receiving country. The influx of migrants occurred during the 1990s, following the dramatic events in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, with the majority of immigrants being clandestine. The bulk of the immigrant population are nationals of neighbouring Balkan states, predominantly Albanians. Coinciding with the influx of immigrants from the Balkans into Greece were flows of Greek foreign direct investment, or FDI, in the opposite direction. Both phenomena are to be understood as sides of the same coin, and reflect the search for cheap labour on the part of Greek enterprises. In this article, we examine both phenomena. We present empirical material on Balkan immigrants to Greece, focusing on the demographic, housing, employment and other characteristics of the principal immigrant community in the second largest Greek city, i.e. Albanians in Thessaloniki. And we examine Greek investment to the Balkan countries, pointing out complementarities where appropriate.

Migrant Women, Care Work, and Women's Employment in Greece

Abstract This contribution is about womens paid and unpaid work in the context of rapid socioeconomic change in Greece between 1983 and 2008. Drawing on feminist analyses of womens employment and the care sector, it highlights the link between womens paid employment and the supply of affordable immigrant (female) labor in Greece in the sphere of care provision. It examines three issues: the acceleration of womens involvement in the paid labor force after 1990; the parallel influx of immigrants, a quarter of whom are women involved in service provision for households, into Greece; and finally, the “big picture” of the demand for care (both paid and unpaid, childcare as well as eldercare) in the context of an aging population and womens rising participation in paid work. The analysis highlights the key contribution of migrant women acting as catalysts for social change.

The Greek Immigration Experience Revisited

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, Greece, along with other Southern EU member states, has experienced a transformation from a net emigration to a net destination country. This paper attempts to provide an assessment of the economic costs and benefits of the recent immigration flows into Greece. Based on a closer examination of the economic arguments it is argued that Greeces recent immigration experience can be seen as a win-win story both for the host economy and the immigrants themselves. In particular, ample evidence suggests that immigrants offered a solution to the chronic labor shortages in agriculture, while their presence provided also answers to long-standing growth impediments (bottlenecks) of the Greek economy. At the same time, the majority of immigrants managed to improve their lot and to integrate in the receiving society. However, this positive overall assessment is at odds with prevailing attitudes and political perceptions which give far greater emphasis to negative features than is warranted by economic considerations.

Mirages and miracles of European small and medium enterprise development

Abstract A small‐scale industry ‘renaissance’ has characterized recent academic literature on industrialization and development policies. This comes as a reaction to the manifest difficulties facing mass production economies and to the sometimes spectacular performance of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly in Europe. The causes of the above success, together with the accompanying theorizations — such as the flexible specialization approach — are manifold and contradictory. Furthermore, theories on the present and future of SMEs vary as regards both optimism and policy implications — supra‐national, national or regional. Recent EU policies towards SMEs present an amalgam of instruments which, albeit often economically effective, constitute chiefly a political gesture.

Greece—EU comparative economic performance at the national and regional levels: why divergence?

Abstract This paper reviews the evidence on the economic performance of the Greek economy vis‐a‐vis the average economic record in the European Union. It deals with the problems of measuring economic convergence and suggests that the Greek economy has followed a diverging path since 1980. It also addresses the problems of policies aiming at strengthening the regional economies, by means of examining the case of Crete and the latters experience with the implementation of the Integrated Mediterranean Programme (IMP). It concludes by drawing attention to the fact that the absorption of funds alone does not guarantee a long‐term and viable development scenario, since the inertia of domestic actors (both at the national and the regional levels) and the inherited structures and attitudes may culminate in the preservation of the status quo rather than its transformation.

Mapping population aging in Europe: how are similar needs in different countries met by different family structures?

This paper focuses primarily on the demographic and social structures across Europe aiming to portray how similar needs for care of the elderly population (justified on health outcomes), are addressed in different ways across European countries. To approach this issue, we focus first on mapping the ‘needs for care’ – a rough measure of demand for care, and then on family structures – characterizing an institution linked with the provision or supply of care. Attention turns next to linking these aspects, focusing on the types of care provided as a response to the needs of the elderly, distinguishing between informal (defined as unpaid personal care provided by family members) and formal care (defined as paid help provided by professionals and private providers). Mapping these trends, via choropleth maps, the emerging picture suggests that the same needs for elderly care are met via different channels across European countries: Southern countries appear to rely more on informal channels of care provision, while private providers (i.e. paid care) represent the dominant pattern in the North, as well as in most of the Continental counties. This difference is mirrored by a greater involvement of formal structures linked to the Welfare State as one goes further North; indeed the two – family ties and Welfare State involvement – proceed in parallel.

Migrants' Strategies and Migration Policies: Towards a Comparative Picture

Antigone Lyberaki is Professor, Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, 136 Sygrou Ave., 176 71, Athens, Greece. Anna Triandafyllidou is Senior Research Fellow, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), and Assistant Professor, Migration Policy and the Sociology of Migration, Democritus University of Thrace, Athens, Greece. Marina Petronoti, PhD, is Social Anthropologist, Research Director, National Centre for Social Research (EKKE), Athens, Greece. Ruby Gropas, PhD, is Research Fellow, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), and Democritus University of Thrace, Athens, Greece. Address correspondence to: Antigone Lyberaki, Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, 136 Sygrou Ave., 176 71, Athens, Greece (E-mail: antiglib@otenet.gr).

Explaining Persistent Poverty in SHARE: Does the Past Play a Role?

Poverty alleviation is certainly the most emblematic of European Union ambitions in the field of social policy – encompassing in a visible and politically salient way the cumulative end effect of many separate interventions in social and economic policy. The question posed in this paper is, therefore: Does the past play a role in the 50+ poverty we see today?

A-TYPICAL WORK PATTERNS OF WOMEN IN EUROPE : WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM SHARELIFE?

The second half of the twentieth century was a time of rapid social transformation. Nowhere were the changes more radical than in women’s participation in society and work. Women increasingly claimed a fuller and more active position in all societal functions. Though all parts of Europe and all social strata were affected, this process was unevenly distributed over time and space and driven by a variety of influences. Such influences could have been structural changes in production, transformations in the function of the family and last, but not least, attitudes in what woman’s position ought to be, as reflected in shifts of policy priorities. This period of rapid change corresponds to the lifetime of individuals in the SHARE survey. When today’s 50+ population were young girls, the world they were entering was very different from today. The long term social changes correspond to lived experience of women in the SHARE sample. The women in SHARE were witnesses to the foundation, flowering and restructuring of the Welfare State. Social policy stances towards maternity and family policy as well as labour market institutions were defining fissures between certain forms of the so-called “European Social Model”. This paper begins exploring how these factors – labour and social policy transformation – were reflected in the lives of women in the SHARELIFE sample.

Telling the Sudanese story in Athens through a gender lens

This article analyses the part that gender negotiations are playing in the making of Sudanese identity in Athens at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In an attempt to define the Sudanese version of the Athenian story, Sudanese men and women who undertake collective action rework differentiate them from newcomers and other Africans. The vindication of Arabness requires boundary work in which women and men perform different tasks in order to get recognition and elaborate their mobility story. The positioning of the Sudanese in the ethnic constellation of Athens is made possible through a gendered division of symbolic and material labor that takes place within the frame of the Sudanese Women’s Association.