Economic crisis and migrants' employment: a view from Greece in comparative perspective

Abstract

This paper explains and evaluates the effects of the developing crisis on the mobility of third-country nationals in Greece and other South European political economies. In doing so it explores the mobility of these migrants within the context of the informal economic activity in which many such migrants have been involved. The paper exposes the distance separating the law and the actual enforcement of fundamental employment-and mobility-related rights of irregular migrants in Greece and other southern European countries. It identifies the significance of the familistic welfare regime of the European South in framing migrants' characteristics and their consequent mobility in the region. The article argues that the familistic welfare regime of the host country is inextricably linked to migrants' employment trajectories and fundamentally affects the strategies that migrants have developed in order to protect themselves in lieu of effective rights regulation.

Labor Management Strategies in Facing the Economic Crisis. Evidence From Greek Livestock Farms

“…It was after the 1990s that the abundance of labor from foreign migrants led to the emergence of large-sized intensive livestock farms, which took advantage of the very low costs of hired labour (Karanikolas and Martinos, 2012), a situation unknown -as it seems -up to then. As Maroukis (2013) pointed out for the whole Greek economy "the overall availability of cheap, informal and flexible migrant labour has been a key factor in maintaining a low cost for the reproduction of the familistic welfare capitalism". This flexibility of hired labor was also, in some cases, a source of abuse (Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2005).…”

Migration at Work

“…After that, Greece was in recession for a number of years, and Greek construction has been the sector that suffered by far the worst crisis effects. Thousands of Albanian construction workers became unemployed during the crisis or suffered under-employment, bad working conditions and cuts in salaries and welfare provisions (Maroukis, 2013).…”

Temporary agency work, migration and the crisis in Greece: labour market segmentation intensified

“…Migration has been a key external supply condition which, for nearly two decades, sheltered the welfare of Greek families and small and medium-sized businesses from their structural problems. An ageing population, the delayed entry of the young into and the early departure of the middle-aged from the labour market, the limited public spending on health and social care, low competitiveness and falling productivity have all been problems to which migration has offered short-term solutions ( Maroukis, 2013 ; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, 2013 ; Lazaridis, 2007 ). Not only small and medium-sized businesses but also temporary employment agencies have capitalized on the supply of informal migrant labour.…”

“…This is because the TEA profits are primarily obtained from exploitation of labour. The above-reported dramatic fall in the turnover of agencies during the crisis coincided with the shake-up of Greece’s settled immigrant population and the decrease of migrant flows from eastern European countries ( Maroukis, 2013 ). All the interviewed hotelier associations and hotel managers in tourist destinations noted that they found a long lost labour pool among the local Greek population during the crisis.…”