Economic crisis and migrants' employment: a view from Greece in comparative perspective

This paper explains and evaluates the effects of the developing crisis on the
mobility of third-country nationals in Greece and other South European political
economies. In doing so it explores the mobility of these migrants within the
context of the informal economic activity in which many such migrants have been
involved. The paper exposes the distance separating the law and the actual
enforcement of fundamental employment- and mobility-related rights of irregular
migrants in Greece and other southern European countries. It identifies the
significance of the familistic welfare regime of the European South in framing
migrants’ characteristics and their consequent mobility in the region. The article
argues that the familistic welfare regime of the host country is inextricably linked
to migrants’ employment trajectories and fundamentally affects the strategies that
migrants have developed in order to protect themselves in lieu of effective rights
regulation.