To some extent, this is reflected in the Eurobarometer data and other media reports, which indicate that the gig economy in Greece is still emerging (Koutantou & Maltezou, 2019; Τζωτζές, 2024). According to Vrikki and Lekakis (2024), while the platform economy in the USA, China, and the UK grew rapidly in the early 2000s, the rise of the platform economy in Greece took off since the first austerity measures were adopted in 2010.
Greece played an unfortunate pioneering role in the course of the economic crisis that surged almost 15 years ago and had its roots in the collapse of Lehman Brothers’ financial crisis in the USA a few years earlier (Koukiadaki & Kretsos, 2012; Lekakis & Kousis, 2013). Successive governments facing a serious threat of bankruptcy signed the so-called memorandum agreements with the Troika of international lenders consisting of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Those agreements were based on the rule of conditionality.
The Greek government was compelled to implement various reforms. Otherwise, it was not possible to get financial support from its lenders. Typical examples of such reforms include the modernization of the public sector, as well as regulations aimed to make product and labour markets more efficient, such as the dismantling of the collective bargaining system, and the introduction of increased employment and wage flexibility (Gialis et al., 2017; Tourtouri et al., 2020). Privatization of public assets was also considered a necessary step to guarantee the above objectives.
In this context, Greece became a byword of modern internal devaluation policies with significant political implications for both the national and the global accounts (Armingeon & Baccaro, 2012; Mexi, 2019). The unpopular fiscal adjustment measures (tax hikes, salary cuts, pension cuts, etc.) along with rising trends in unemployment and the prolonged recession of more than 25% of GDP in five years fuelled the Greek citizens’ sense of frustration, uncertainty, fear, and anger (Kretsos, 2015). Greece became repeatedly the site of running demonstrations and sometimes violent confrontations between police and (mainly) young people including migrants (Mason, 2012).
2 MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE GREEK GIG ECONOMY
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