Not only for work: Italian migrants in the Athens area

According to the official Italian administrative data, the community of Italians living in Athens went on growing over the years, including the last decade. What are the drivers of Italian immigration in a less developed country than Italy, a country which recently has also experienced a more serious crisis than the Italian one? To answer this question, we followed a research strategy based on in-depth interviews to Italians living in the Athens area. After reviewing the features of the Italian community and those of the group of interviewees, we focus on the respondents who found a job in Athens, both as independent workers and as employees. Our results show that a great number of drivers are at work in producing a migration flow from Italy to Greece. They support the idea that contemporary international migration (more specifically, intra-European migration) cannot be fully understood by relying exclusively on an economic approach.