Immigration and the Spatial (Dis)Equilibrium of Competitiveness – Cohesion in Athens

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ambiguous relationships between contemporary immigration and the competitiveness/cohesion equilibrium in the metropolitan region of the Greek capital. It makes use of the latest available data on immigrants’ employment and investigates the emerging implications for competitiveness and cohesion at both metropolitan and sub-metropolitan levels. The analysis establishes links between the dynamics of immigration with wider processes of economic and social change and their spatial and social effects. The authors are led to conclude that immigration introduces new relations in the labour market and creates more complex subjectivities making it impossible for competitiveness and cohesion to be treated in abstracto; these ambiguous and context dependent notions have to be interpreted in the respective specific social and spatial context and this is what may constitute their added value in terms of policy orientation.