Migration and Changing Urban Geographies in the European South: Evidence from the Case of Immigrants in Thessaloniki
Migration and Changing Urban Geographies in the European South: Evidence from the Case of Immigrants in Thessaloniki

Summary/Abstract: The cities of Mediterranean Europe are turning into multicultural metropolises at a time of socio-economic restructuring and urban transformation. This paper focuses on the case of Thessaloniki in Greece, bringing about evidence from various sources, mainly official statistics and fieldwork research that combined quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) methods. It examines the processes of socio-spatial integration of immigrants in the city, in order to investigate the relationship between migration and the dynamics of urban change. The specificities of Thessaloniki’s experience are discussed in relation to its distinct features of migration at present as well as to its history of urban development. The analysis sheds light to some characteristics that might be common in other city-cases across Southern Europe. The paper argues that immigration, albeit not the major force of urban transformation, inevitably challenges established social uses of space and alters the urban landscape, producing new or alternative urban geographies, as immigrants gradually form an organic part of the city’s corpus. For Thessaloniki, with its long multicultural past and its painful integration into the Greek national state, immigration today questions the city’s identity.

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