The C. P. Cavafy Modern Greek Professorship in cooperation with the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (U.S.A.) presents

The New Face of Greece:  Immigrants in Athens since the 1990s

lecture by
Thomas Maloutas
Professor of Urban Social Geography, University of Thessaly
Director of the Institute of Urban and Rural Sociology at the National Centre for Social Research, Greece

4pm, Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Classical Studies Library
2175 Angell Hall
435 S. State St.

Since the early 1990s Greece has been transformed from a country of emigration to one of immigration. The new immigrant population is from all over the world, but mainly from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and has arrived especially in Greek cities and particularly in Athens.  The immigrant presence in Athens is the most important and characteristic recent social transformation of Greece.

The lecture will discuss that transformation.  It will evaluate the position immigrants have come to occupy in the Athenian labour market. Issues to be explored are market competitiveness and social cohesion. The branches of economic activity and the occupational categories through which immigrants participate in the labour market are basic indicators of the way this asset is used in the local economy (competitiveness) and how the immigrant presence is transforming the occupational and eventually the social structure of Greece (social cohesion).