Survival Ethnic Entrepreneuers in Greece: A Mosaic of Informal and Formal Business Activities

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of ethnic entrepreneurship in Greece. Greece has been transformed from an emigration to an immigration country. Since the 1990s the majority of migrant workers occupy low paid, unskilled jobs in the informal economy. However, some set up (in) formal businesses. Ethnic entrepreneurs of our study have been excluded from social and economic opportunities. By running a business they struggle against exclusion, have control over their work situation (work hours, income) and gain emotional satisfaction and self-fulfilment. As we will show, self-employment is viewed as an ‘alternative income-generating activity, a strategy towards inclusion, a feasible ‘survival strategy’ for escaping discrimination and exclusion given the lack of other employment options. In this context, entrepreneurship is not viewed as an economic behaviour structured by the existing economic and socio-political structures only, but also, as having an important subjective meaning for the self-employed migrant. We will demonstrate that ethnic businesses comprise a mosaic of formal and informal activities. Opportunities for participation of migrants in informal activities occur because of the high demand for informal provision of services and goods at competitive prices. The entrance barriers are lower than in the informal sector since one usually does not have to meet costs associated with running of a business. Although the development of ethnic business activities will be viewed as the outcome of interaction on one's legal status, economic resources, access to informal networks of support, individual aspirations and structures of opportunity (e.g. informal economy) available to migrants in the Greek case migrants are faced with structural disadvantages that push them into what is marginal self-employment. It is the peculiarities of the Greek case (large informal economy and high rates of self-employment and the multiple forms of exclusion they experience as they were in Greece) that encourage them to become ‘ survival’ entrepreneurs, to strive to create a business of their own in the ‘twilight zone’ of the Greek economy where they often carry out extra-legal activities in order to ‘survive’.