Migrants’ settlement in two central neighborhoods of Athens

Attributes of hyper-diverse neighbourhoods important for entrepreneurship: An exploratory study in 13 European cities

“…The findings related to creative entrepreneurs support previous studies, which described creative businesses as often youth-centred and freelance-oriented and employing highly educated individuals (Howkins, 2001;He and Gebhardt, 2014). For example, in Athens, Academia Platonos, entrepreneurs in creative and innovative businesses, are mostly highly-skilled, having undertaken not only higher education, but also postgraduate degrees obtained in Greece or abroad (Balampanidis et al, 2016), and the same is true for Beyoğlu, Istanbul (Eraydin et al, 2016). For these entrepreneurs not only the multicultural environment but even more access to multiple consumers is important.…”

Invest the city by doing businesses: Geographies of migrant entrepreneurs in the center of Athens

“…Yet despite these difficulties, Gerani (in comparison to the areas of Viktorias and Kipseli area) managed to keep its role as a central place to shop. Thus, rents remained significantly higher, even in the harsher years of the economic recession.The settlement and investments of migrant traders in those central areas put in question the prevailing perceptions of ghettoisation, as well as the association of migrants' presence with aspects of urban decline(Koutrolikou, 2015;Balampanidis and Polyzos, 2016).According to Hari, established since 1998 in the area, the anti-migrant narrative was mostly the result of the post 2010-2012 political and economic context. As he stated, the arrival of Pakistani and Bangladeshi migrants in the area of Sokratous in 1996 wasn't perceived as negative, "in the contrary, the area had already a bad reputation.…”