Stepping from Illegality to Legality and Advancing towards Integration: The Case of Immigrants in Greece

Abstract

This paper highlights how the social and economic situation of immigrants changes after their formal legalization and discusses what they have to go through for their complete integration. Legalization can hardly solve the problem of immigrant employment, nor can it pull all immigrants out of the underground labor market and integrate them into the Greek economy and society. The process towards complete integration is painful and involves a series of successive phases of various durations. During this period, apart from economic conditions, various institutional and cultural factors can hinder or delay integration. With respect to economic integration, immigrants seem to fare rather well. Their official unemployment rate is only slightly higher than the Greek unemployment rate, the two rates converging over time. This suggests increasing relative opportunities for immigrant employment, precarious or stable as it might be. Immigrant jobs come as a result of their flexible adjustment to the needs of the labor market – official or underground – compared to the inflexibility in the supply of Greek workers, due to labor mismatches and relatively high reservation wages. Wages of immigrants are generally lower, but are approaching the wages of their Greek counterparts. Educated immigrants much more than educated Greeks are forced by the circumstances to exercise jobs not measuring up to their qualifications.