Vienna 12/11/04
Immigration and the competitiveness-cohesion equilibrium in Athens
Thomas Maloutas, University of Thessaly and National centre for Social Research
(Athens)
The object of the proposed paper is the impact of the immigration factor during the
1990s on a city’s equilibrium of competitiveness and cohesion (or more appropriately
on competition/cohesion or competitiveness/cohesiveness). I will leave aside the
problematic content of both terms (JV) and will try to build my problematique using
the rather naïve and volontaristic definition of the Lisbon summit concerning their
relationship. [Returning to the conceptual question on the basis of the projected
empirical investigation is not something I will discuss today].
Economic immigrants can be considered as a peculiar asset for the host society: in
their property of cheap (and/or otherwise distinguishable) labour force they will
influence the local economy, and therefore competitiveness in one way or the other;
and in their double property as cheap (and/or otherwise distinguishable) labour force
and as social group(s) becoming part of the local society will also affect its cohesion
in one way or the other. Greece will serve as a case study to evaluate these influences.
Immigration has undoubtedly been the most important socio-demographic change in
Greece during the 1990s impacting on both competitiveness and cohesion of the local
society. In the 1991 census there were only some 100.000 foreign nationals living in
Greece, many of who were not economic refugees. 10 years later the situation had
changed with foreign nationals approaching 800.000, the vast majority being
economic refugees from Eastern Europe and particularly from Albania.
This important change has been received by different groups in terms that constitute a
rather unclear division between rejection / nationalist arguments and acceptance /
multiculturalist arguments, with the former having a very strong popular audience as
the ESS has shown.
rejection / nationalist
They take our jobs
They bring criminality
They spoil the national homogeneity of
our society
They profit from and deteriorate our
social services (education, …)
…
They take more than they give
acceptance / multiculturalist
They take jobs Greeks don’t take any
more
Their criminality is not higher than ours
We should learn to live in multicultural
environments because:
It is an inevitable future
It is an enriching environment
They are the solution to the prospective
crisis of our social security system
…
They are victims of exploitation
They provide more than they get
The debate between such arguments, certainly not a Greek originality, is immediately
related to competitiveness and cohesion. However, it is overwhelmingly ideological,
involving all kinds of stereotypes and prejudices, and only marginally relaying on
serious analysis.
The projected empirical investigation focuses on the place immigrants have come to
occupy during the 1990s in the Greek (Athenian) labour market and make conjectures
about their impact on the competitiveness-cohesion couple.
The first question is related to the place of jobs in the occupational hierarchy.
Sector
Agriculture, fishing, mining
Industry, energy, water
Construction
Commerce
Hotels & restaurants
Transport & telecommunications
Finance, insurance, real estate and other corporate
services
Public administration
Education & health
Other services
Private households
Other
TOTAL
Number % within % of im2001
sector
migrants
68936
11.0
17.7
53904
9.9
13.9
95199
27.3
24.5
36001
6.0
9.3
35471
14.0
9.1
12900
4.8
3.3
18983
4385
15367
8756
38472
385
388759
5.5
1.4
3.6
6.4
77.6
35.0
4.9
1.1
4.0
2.3
9.9
0.1
100.0
There is a clear difference with the pattern of sector distribution in the fordist
economies of the early post-war period in Western Europe. Industry is not a leading
employer of immigrants. Recent immigration in Greece, and in Southern Europe, was
not planned and has been illegal until recently, its main cause not being the attraction
of the local economy but the repulsion in the countries of origin.
Construction, agriculture and private households employing domestic help cover more
than 50% of immigrant employment in the GLB. Manual, more or less unskilled and
precarious work is usually the job of the immigrant, a situation already present in the
aforementioned sectors and increasing with the immigrant presence. Moreover, the
place of immigrants is not much better in other sectors. A more detailed analysis
shows, for instance, that more than 40% of immigrant labour in FIRE work in
building cleaning and an even larger percentage have taken similar jobs within public
administration.
A first conclusion is therefore that the massive immigration of the 1990s has
contributed to the important increase of the lower echelons of the occupational
hierarchy. This has produced a re-dualisation of the labour market (a characteristic of
Southern European labour markets in the first post-war decades that had decreased
due to social mobility) and a certain polarization of the occupational structure
(although dissimilar to the global city polarization mechanism described by Sassen).
The second question is related to the dynamic of the sectors where the bulk of
immigrant labour is employed.
Balance
% within %
Sector
91-01
immigrants sector
immigrants
Agriculture, fishing, mining
-61427
68936
11.0
17.7
Industry, energy, water
-412
53904
9.9
13.9
Construction
85828
95199
27.3
24.5
Commerce
134843
36001
6.0
9.3
Hotels & restaurants
120145
35471
14.0
9.1
Transport & telecommunications
24496
12900
4.8
3.3
Finance, insurance, real estate and other corporate services
153965
18983
5.5
4.9
Public administration
33541
4385
1.4
1.1
Education & health
121018
15367
3.6
4.0
Other services
36000
8756
6.4
2.3
Private households
45345
38472
77.6
9.9
Other
-860
385
35.0
0.1
In all the sectors of important immigrant presence there is either a net loss (as in
agriculture where losses would be double without the immigrant inflow or in industry
where losses are equivalent to the immigrant inflow) or gains, which were more or
less equal to the number of incoming immigrants. This becomes even more striking
when the analysis is more detailed: within the industrial sector, for instance, the larger
numbers of immigrants are found in the garment and furniture industries which
presented the bigger job losses.
A first conclusion here is that immigrants are canalized in the less dynamic sectors of
the economy (at least as dynamism can be partially inferred by the employment
dynamic).
A second conclusion is that there is a strong indication that immigrants are replacing
Greeks in jobs the latter are no longer taking. However, this replacement process
should not be taken literally. Data on the age structure of the different sectors in 1991
and 2001 will probably show that the replacement is less a product of Greek workers
abandoning certain jobs to take up different ones and more the effect of
intergenerational occupational mobility.
The third question is also about the dynamic that immigrant labour force adds to the
local economy. Most sectors of the Greek economy are still dominated by the small
family business, which is facing increasing problems for survival for quite some time
now. [Economic restructuring has been much slower characterized more by a relative
stagnation than abrupt change.] It is therefore important to control whether the
immigrant asset is canalized towards the big (and presumably more dynamic)
corporate units or to the traditional small family businesses.
Sector
Agriculture, fishing, mining
Industry, energy, water
% of imms in
% of imm in units % of imm in units
units up to 9
up to 9
of 10 or more
employees on
employees on
employees on
number of imms total employment total employment
by sector
by sector
by sector
92.6
10.7
17.3
50.9
11.7
8.5
Construction
Commerce
Hotels & restaurants
Transport & telecommunications
Finance, insurance, real estate
and other corporate services
Public administration
Education & health
Other services
Private households
Other
TOTAL
73.1
76.7
68.2
48.4
27.4
6.3
14.5
5.3
27.1
5.0
12.9
4.4
59.9
19.1
41.5
61.1
99.0
18.2
72.3
6.5
1.9
4.8
7.0
79.1
40.7
4.4
1.4
3.1
5.7
26.6
34.0
There is a definite concentration of immigrant labour in the small to very small
business unit, as three out of four immigrants work in units of 9 employees or less.
Under this light, the immigration asset does not seem to be canalized to the dynamic
businesses but to the small family business where it probably extends the limits of its
stressed viability rather than increase its competitiveness in some more significant
way and the competitiveness of the local economy altogether.
An exception may be noted for the employment in public works, where big
construction companies have been dealing with the infrastructure for the Olympic
Games in the late 1990s and up to the census. Although the importance of this
operation cannot be overlooked, the same is true regarding its conjunctural character.
A major problem is bound to be the fate of these workers now that the OG are over.
The fourth question pertains to the large number of female immigrants employed as
house maids (10% of the total number of immigrant labourers in 2001). This has been
parallel to the sharp increase of the rate of employment for Greek women and the
paucity of social services normally facilitating this process. The anemically developed
welfare state has been going together with the subsistence of the traditional family
relationships and gender roles where women’s domestic labour was a prerequisite.
Immigrant women have taken over the traditional roles of Greek women in the
household (at least the manual part of these roles) and have contributed in reproducing
the gendered division of labour and to commodifying domestic labour in a peculiar
way.
The concluding tentative hypothesis at this stage would be that the asset of immigrant
labour in Greek (Athenian) society has been used primarily to serve the reproduction
of the large middle social strata (generated in the process of intense social mobility
from the 1950s to the 1980s) by supporting the feasibility of the small family business
as well as the performance of the family centered welfare system. The whole process
has been largely facilitated by the very reduced regulation [with the interests of these
middle strata always in mind] of the transition from a traditional to a commodified
welfare system. In this way immigration has enhanced both competitiveness (of the
small family enterprise) and cohesion (of the middle social strata) but probably this is
not exactly what the Lisbon summit had in mind.