The impact of immigration on the spatial structure of the population in Greece

Anastasia Kostaki, Athens University of Economics and Business

The most significant event in the demographic profile of modern Greece is its current alteration from a typical emigration country to an immigration one, experiencing through the last two decades, a strong immigration flow, coming at most from the neighboring Balkan countries. This phenomenon led to a significant amount of literature referring to its social, economic and demographic dimensions at a national or a major geographical level. However, since the immigrant population is neither uniformly nor even proportionally distributed in comparison to the native one, the implications of immigration can exhibit significant geographical deviations. Therefore an analysis in a lower spatial level can be useful in finding structures that is impossible to observe otherwise. This work examines the impact of immigration on the size and structure of the populations in the 1034 municipalities of the country. For that purpose, using data from the 1991 and 2001 population censuses, we apply statistical clustering techniques in order to define homogenous groups of municipalities according to the nationality composition of the immigrant populations in them, as well as the severity of the impact of immigration on the size, and the age and sex distribution of their populations.