Financial Crisis Multiplies Migrant Miseries in Greece
ATHENS, May 6 (IPS) - The economic crisis is hitting migrants harder than most other people, and it looks set to get worse for them.
With close to zero growth rate and a constant upward revision of the budget deficit, Greece is deep into recession. Thousands of jobs in the formal and informal economies are reported lost every month. State structures appear unable to take on the extra burden piled up by the economic downturn.
Once more the first, and the worst hit, will be both regular and irregular migrants offering cheap labour, and with minimum demands by way of working rights and social security provisions.
“The major result of the current crisis will be to slow down the integration process of many thousands of migrants,” says Apostolos Papadopoulos, assistant professor of geography at the Harokopio University in Athens. He was among the academics and researchers at a workshop on ‘Irregular Migration and Informal Employment in Europe’ held in Athens last week by the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.
“Additionally, people who had managed to achieve some degree of integration are set to experience a reversal of the process, falling again back to informality (in employment).”
Unemployment or reduction of income brings with it the danger of losing legal status. Regularised migrants who do not manage to find adequate employment run the danger of not collecting the necessary social security contribution stamps in order to claim renewal of work and residence permits.
“Seasonal migrant workers who come from neighbouring Albania, employed mostly in the agricultural sector, have delayed coming to Greece this year,” said Papadopoulos. “In a number of industries migrants keep their jobs without receiving salaries for months now, or accepting a reduction in compensation.”
