Housing Pathways of Immigrants in the City of Athens: From Homelessness to Homeownership. Considering Contextual Factors and Human Agency

《Housing Pathways of Immigrants in the City of Athens: From Homelessness to Homeownership. Considering Contextual Factors and Human Agency》

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作者单位: Post-doctoral researcher in Urban Social Geography, Department of Geography, Harokopio University of Athens, Kallithea, Athens, Greece

摘要: Against the background of the so-called “new immigration” to Greece starting at the beginning of the 1990s, this paper explores the housing experience of immigrants in the city of Athens and reveals housing pathways that have been overlooked or deliberately concealed. Through the processing of data from the Athens Mortgage Office and through interviews with migrant homeowners, it is shown that despite serious difficulties raised against their spatial and social integration, immigrants managed to escape homelessness, gradually upgrade both their housing conditions and occupancy status, and gain access even to homeownership. Special emphasis is given to key factors that allowed immigrants to achieve upward residential mobility and that relate to specific aspects of the local context and to immigrants’ individual strategies. Urban space emerges as an “opportunity framework” and immigrants as “active agents” who set up successful housing strategies and reverse the supposedly vicious circle of poverty, delinquency and marginality.