From Albania to Greece
Athens, Greece
Initiative Typology
Work opportunities
Problem addressed
Interviewee 7 came to Greece in 1996 from Tirana, Albania. She came to Greece with her husband and her three children in search of a better life, especially for her children. In Albania she was an accountant for a state office. She recalled the period of Albania under Hoxha as a period of great poverty, exploitation and unreasonable demands for their survival.
Resilience strategies addressed by women
She was the one who decided to lead the family to migrate to Greece. She described the early years in Greece as harsh. She does not consider her job a humiliation as she has her house full of everything. Despite numerous difficulties encountered both in Albania and Greece, she has achieved good results in terms of her income.
Description of the integration initiative implemented
She completed her basic education and for two years received a university education in Albania in the field of logistics. In Greece she works as live-out domestic worker and cleaner since her arrival.
Personal story
When she arrived in Athens centre, in Omonia Sq., with her family, she contacted a friend to come and meet them, provide shelter and access to work. A close friend helped her find a cleaning company and worked as a cleaner. Since 1996 she worked for many cleaning service offices. Interviewee 7 works eight hours per day (6:00am-3:00pm) 5 days a week. She is paid with 8 euros per hour. In the afternoon she goes to employer houses to iron clothes and clean for 2-3 hours. She gets 700 euros per month. Nowadays, she cannot find many employers. She always tried to work with a specific employer both in terms of pay and insurance as well as trust. She is collaborating with a cleaning service the last five years. In the past, she undertook the cleaning of 4-5 offices for 5 working days, avoiding the fatigue or the difficulties of the employers in the live-in domestic work. She was never provided with social security contributions and healthcare insurance. Currently, she is covered by the office. Her wider network of friends is a key factor, both before the decision to migrate and for its further course. Her husband was a mining machinery operator and in Greece worked in construction works via their wider network of contacts, as unskilled worker, and over time they learned the work became assistant, then carpenter and moldmaker and plasterer. She remembered with bitterness her stigma as an “Albanian” woman, a foreigner in Greece. In her free time, she watches movies, TV series and reads books. She daily communicates with her relatives in Albania via social media. She does not go out often because she wants to save money for the future, to help their children to study and pay for tuition fees or start their own business. She also wants to rebuild her residence in Tirana. She is not participating in any migrant community association of Albanians as she believes that they do not help their members. She was able to deal with her own problems and did not want other to interfere.
Analysis of the initiative and individual story
Interviewee 7 is anxious about whether she will have a job the next day in Greece. Once her children are settled down with a stable job she would like to return back to Albania because she cannot work as a live-out domestic worker and cleaner until she is eighty years old.
Results and Impact
She is grateful she found a job in Greece. She emphasized that health and work are above all. She is interested in having enough money to be able to live. The employment of female Albanians leads to dead-end, low-status occupations characterized by horizontal development or mobility within the occupation itself rather than vertical or upward.
