Migrants’ settlement in two central neighborhoods of Athens

Abstract

Greece has recently become a destination country for migrants from both neighboring and distant sending countries. Over the last 20 years, urban areas in general and Athens in particular have become ethnically and culturally much more diverse. Scholars often describe migrants’ residential and entrepreneurial settlement in cities through narrow terms, focusing either on migrants’ ‘ethnic’ characteristics or on merely economic factors. According to this perspective, space is often conceived as a neutral surface, merely providing migrants a location in which to settle or work. In this study, we demonstrate how urban space, as a complex socio-spatial framework, determines migrant settlement and, at the same time, how migrant settlement transforms cities producing both continuities and discontinuities. In other words, we highlight the more complex causalities and patterns of migrant settlement and formulate an analytical framework to explain interethnic coexistences in urban space. We explore our research questions and hypotheses about migrant settlement through field research and the comparative study of two central neighborhoods: Kypseli and Metaxourgeio.