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 The Ethnic Conflict Research Digest |
2000, Vol. 3 No. 2 . |
Into the Margins: Migration and Exclusion in Southern Europe | |
Floya Anthias and Gabriella Lazaridis (eds.) | |
Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999 209pp. Index. Hb.: £37.50; ISBN 1-8401-4116-6. | |
| This edited volume is a collection of papers from a conference co-organised by the Universities or Dundee and Greenwich. Most of the contributors are experienced researchers on ethnicity, migration and diasporas in Britain and Southern Europe. The book examines the questions arising from the immigration of labour in specific southern European countries, the social integration difficulties and the phenomena of social exclusion. The cases examined include Tunisians in Italy, Moroccans in Catalonia, British expatriates in Spain, Albanians and Polish in Greece and migrant workers in Cyprus. The cases under examination are recent developments, mostly of the 1990s, a fact that justifies the phrase of Gabriella Lazaridis describing the new migrants in Greece as 'the Helots of the new millennium'. That is not thought the only commonality; in most cases the new migrants sparked reactions and re-awakened racist and exclusionist reflexes in local societies. The new migrants quickly found their place in racist and exclusionist local discourses as the 'other', as a national and cultural threat, as the weakest group in the intersection of local and regional politics, economic interests and cultural politics. The fact that most of these southern European states are members of the European Union perplexed the situation more and added a clearly European dimension to the problem, which is examined in the last chapter of the edited volume. Many of the 1990s developments related to immigration in southern Europe are similar to the ones having been experienced earlier in the European north, including Britain. Interesting comparisons could have been made here but few such attempts are made in the book. In addition the elaboration of theoretical issues and of more general questions of immigration could have been more extensive. The case studies of the book however are thoroughly examined and well presented and generally the book will prove useful for researchers on southern European societies and Mediterranean affairs. | |
Ioannis Armakolas, Cambridge University | |
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