For Maroukis (2013) both familistic welfare regimes and work informality create an opportunity structure that facilitates both geographical and socio-economic mobility for migrants. In an opposite vein, other scholars (Floros & Jørgensen, 2020; Kapsalis et al., 2020) talk about the dominance of coercive geographies, where localized and spatialized intersections between labour regulations and migration policies result in restricted spaces that create a lack of freedom and immobility.
Such spaces have already been mentioned in earlier studies. For example, Fouskas’s (2014) study of Egyptian immigrants found that their employment and financial position was determined by insecure and low-status jobs with poor working conditions. This situation hindered their participation in trade union organizations. To counterbalance this incapacity, Egyptian immigrants adopted and followed individualistic behaviours and heavily relied on informal networks and religion for support, rather than collective action.
A similar situation of the absence of formal labour market integration was also detected in an earlier study by the same scholar regarding Bangladeshi and other migrants in Athens (Fouskas, 2012, 2013). Again, the centrality of precarious working conditions represented an insurmountable obstacle to the full integration of migrants into Greek society. As a result, the community of Bangladeshi migrants in Athens developed social networks to cope with the precarity and the absence of a full citizenry and stable employment, which kills the prospects of unionization. As mentioned in the study, Bangladeshis in Greece avoided joining Greek trade unions, believing Greek members would not be able to understand or solve their unique issues, such as obtaining legal documents (Fouskas, 2012). In contrast, the Bangladeshi Immigrant Workers’ Union of Greece assists its members in finding employment and resolving individual workplace issues.
Papadopoulos et al. (2018) also discovered that many Bangladeshi migrant workers in the agricultural area of Manolada use a wide range of social practices to improve their precarious lives and working conditions in their locality. Likewise, in various rural regions of Greece, Indian and Pakistani Punjabi men assert their agency against the violence of their illegal status by publicly playing the sport of Kabaddi. Kabaddi tournaments have become a form of resistance and a celebration of South Asian male migrants’ diverse cultural identities, serving as a strategy to gain masculine capital and reclaim respect for their unique cultural identities (Kukreja, 2023).
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L. KRETSOS AND V. CHARITSIS