The Regional Dimension of Migration in Greece - Spatial Patterns and Causal Factors

Abstract

Since the nineties, Greece, like other Southern European countries, has changed from being a country of migratory origin to a destination country for migrants. This, in itself, has been the result of fundamental political and economic reforms across Eastern Europe, as well as of demographic and economic developments within Greece. The first officially available data on migrants in Greece – country of origin, employment, education level or marital status- had been extracted from the 2001 population census. There are interesting points to be made regarding their spatial distribution. Migrants of Albanian origin, the most heavily represented migrant ethnic group, have a more or less even distribution across Greek regions. However, migrants of other ethnic origin seem to cluster in different regions. The first part of this paper offers a panorama of how migrants are dispersed across Greece in respect with their country of origin. This is followed by an attempt to identify the causal economic, social, and demographic factors of the spatial distribution of migration using various econometric tools, including spatial regression.