“Live Like a Lifelong Tourist”? The Contradicting Realities of Finnish Offshore Service Workers in Athens

Abstract

Contrasting the mass out-migration of the younger populace following the economic crisis in Greece and the simultaneous large inflow of refugees, the city of Athens has lately become an attractive place for tourists and lifestyle migrants. This article provides a better understanding of the marginal, yet unexplored in-migration of relatively affluent Europeans moving to Athens to work in the growing offshore service sector. Athens is an attractive place for offshore service work companies, as low salaries can be compensated for by “the sun,” “Greek culture,” and “low cost and high standard of living” (Bellos, 2019). Based on interviews with Finnish offshore workers, this article argues that the local context might not render all lifestyle migrants from wealthier countries similarly privileged. Due to their low salaries and recent changes in the local housing market fuelled by touristification, offshore service workers face a lack of affordable housing. The article further argues that affluent transnational migration is a multidimensional phenomenon, which needs to be contextualized, and which has nuanced, widespread effects on local housing markets and neighbourhood life.

On the recursive relationship between gentrification and labour market precarisation: Evidence from two neighbourhoods in Athens, Greece

“…Importantly, it was not only tourists who replaced local residents but also other, richer Athenians and expats from various EU countries. The inflow of migrants from developed countries has not been the case solely in our research areas (KI-1–5/Locals), but in other parts of Athens too (Alexandri and Janoschka, 2020; Lilius and Balampanidis, 2020).…”

“…Similar trajectories are evident in other Mediterranean cities, where the succession of crisis, austerity, and mild recovery, triggered by the EU’s bailout terms and in conjunction with an anaemic industrialisation and overt focus upon services, are generating a distinct form of urbanisation (Tulumello and Allegretti, 2021). In this paradigm, ‘foreigners-only’ enclaves for tourists and workers from Global North countries have consolidated at the centre of cities like Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Seville (see Cocola-Gant and Lopez-Gay, 2020; Sequera and Nofre, 2020), and, lately, Athens (Lilius and Balampanidis, 2020). ‘Digital nomadism’, which, as a practice, has surged during the current COVID-19 pandemic, has furthered the formation of such enclaves (Alexandri and Janoschka, 2020).…”

Italians in Valencia: A New Lifestyle Migration in an Urban Context

“…Second, the migration flow is not from Northern Europe, as is the case of Scandinavians migrating to coastal Spain or Britons to rural Southern France (Casado-Díaz, 2009) attracted by a Mediterranean lifestyle significantly different from their country of origin, as in the majority of LM studies (see; Casado-Díaz, 2006;Gustafson, 2001;Huber & O'Reilly, 2004;Helsen et al, 2005;Lilius & Balampanidis, 2020;Karisto, 2005;Oliver, 2007;O'Reilly, 2000;Rodríguez et al, 2005;Schriewer & García, 2005). Instead, it is a flow from one Mediterranean country to another, an intra-Southern Europe migration.…”