Albanian immigrants in Thessaloniki, Greece: processes of economic and social incorporation

This paper addresses the complex issue of Albanian migrants' economic and social incorporation in a Greek city, Thessaloniki. The empirical base of the research is 30 in-depth interviews with Albanian migrants. Migrants' integration is seen in a dynamic perspective, which examines different contexts of incorporation: the policy framework, the labour market context, the socio-spatial environment, and the role of social networks. Exclusion and integration of migrants in the host country are seen as dynamic processes, which may be contradictory but operate in parallel. Incorporation thus becomes the process through which immigrants, despite structural and institutional obstacles, build their lives in the host society; it is strongly conditioned by time and it may also take place-specific characteristics.