The Crisis before "The Crisis": Violence and Urban Neoliberalization in Athens

Abstract

Between 1995 and 2007, Greece experienced one of the European Union's highest rates of economic growth. However, a substantial portion of the country's population was partially excluded or had a very unfair share of the material benefits that were linked to that growth. The first victims of exclusion were migrant populations. Between 1991 and 2001, over 600,000 migrants moved to Greece. Due to the political and economic meltdown of socialist countries, but also to the lack of migration control apparatuses in Greece, most of these newcomers migrated without documents. If part of the early migratory flows of the 1990s might be relatively settled today, many of the undocumented or semi-documented migrants who arrived during the 2000s have been living under extreme precariousness for many years. Financial austerity has exacerbated this situation. One indication of the increased institutional and social pressures endured by migrants was the collective hunger strike by three hundred semi-documented migrants in Athens during the winter of 2010-2011. Adapted from the source document.