Immigrants: A Study Case for N. Greece

It is a fact that the phenomenon of immigration constitutes, during the last years, the view of a new social and economic reality for the societies of most western European countries. Greece has received for the first time, during the 1990s, thousands of economic immigrants who appear not only in the big city centers but also in small country towns. Immigrants probably constitute the most discussed issue in the Modern Greek society, in an economic conjuncture in which the economic crisis has functioned in a catalytic way for the diffusion of insecurity in the native population (Biblionet, 2012). The Greek state was not ready to accept such a large number of immigrants in so little time. It showed hesitance and could not keep a steady position as far as the promotion of a necessary institutional framework for their integration in the Greek society was concerned. This initial surprise has never been overcome. In Greece, as well as in the rest of the European South, the majority of the immigrants entering the country illegally have supplied the informal working market. Even when they become legal, the available working positions for them presuppose low specialization with low payments, hard work and limited opportunities of improvement of their social and occupational status. Although the immigration phenomenon is usually approached in a national level, the local level is considered the most suitable one to deal with the interaction of its economic, social, political and cultural dimensions. Recent studies have shown their positive contribution in the revival of Greek agriculture and Greek agricultural districts in general. Within the scale of the Greek community and the degree in which it constitutes a place of constant flow of human resources, it is inevitable the general presence of immigrants to raise issues of mutual infiltrations among different national populations within which there arise interaction issues and intercultural interdependence of the immigrants themselves with the local population creating conditions of a potential multicultural society (The Greek Review of Social Research, 2008).