Immigrants’ employment strategies and their economic welfare: the case of the Greek countryside

Abstract

We investigate the employment strategies developed by Immigrants Working in Agriculture – ‘IWA’ – in Greece. To counter seasonality and the insufficient income of agricultural work, IWA develop employment strategies to improve their economic status. Specifically, we find that IWA develop two distinct and substitute strategies: multi-employment and movements following the crops. These strategies are processes of IWA integration into the local economies and adaptation to the structural changes in the countryside’s labour markets that took place prior to and during the transformation of Greece into an immigrants’ host country. Therefore, on the one hand, the employment strategies developed by IWA are different in different rural areas reflecting their particular economic structure. On the other hand, IWA with different socioeconomic characteristics opt for different strategies.

Keywords:

• migration
• agriculture
• multi-employment
• movements following the crops
• economic mobility

Notes

1. Seasonal IWA are documented and undocumented immigrants who stay in Greece for six months (from April until October) and who later return to their country of origin, irrespective of their period of employment in Greece. Documented IWA are usually invited by their employer. Permanent IWA are documented and undocumented immigrants who stay in Greece more than six months per year, independently of their working period in Greece. In particular, the literature employs a variety of criteria to distinguish between permanent and seasonal immigrants (i.e., length of stay in an area, duration of employment etc). We implemented the six-month-stay period limit following the Greek legislation because, as we will see, the immigrants’ capacity to develop employment strategies depends greatly on their legal status and particularly on the way the legislation applies the distinguishing criterion between permanent and seasonal immigrants.

2. Other kinds of movements were mentioned as well but by insignificant proportions of immigrants.

3. We refer to whole families and not individual members because IWA with children tend to be early- middle-age and the children under-age. Thus, it is very rare to have children in both the home and host countries.

4. 25.5 % of them moved so as to improve their income and 22.2 % when they were faced with problems regarding their official documents.

5. Nowadays, only 10.6 % of IWA move when they remain unemployed.