The construction of a “public” discourse for Athens centre

Governing urban – particularly – diversity has been a political issue and a public policy agenda for the last 20 years (at least), both in the EU and in different countries...These discourses were partially incorporated into Greek governance policies, but as words rather than practices.. In Greece, up to 2009, the issue of governing diversity gets into the policy agenda rather superficially, mainly through immigration legislation and sometimes in terms of education or welfare (MIPEX II, III). The current government came to power with an agenda of major public reforms that also dealt with issues concerning minority groups (albeit under the current austerity regime most of these reforms were abandoned or changed)...
Immigration reform was a risk the recent government took with its ‘Naturalisation’ law (3838/2010) which would ease the process of naturalisation, resolve the problems of second generation migrants, give voting and representation rights to long-term migrant residents and reform the asylum and legalisation institutional structures so that the overall process is dealt faster (and reliably). With the introduction of this and some other relevant laws, Greece actually managed to address – at least in policy and legal terms – some of the problems it had been condemned about by the EU (as was also indicated by the Migration Integration Index III). However, implementation is slow and facing serious obstacles, while the naturalisation and political rights reforms are currently contested in the High Court as unconstitutional (by nationalist groups).Read more