The Financial Crisis in Greece Pushing Families Towards Emigration to Germany and Austria

Abstract

New areas in educational research on migration focus internal migration within the EU. These mostly young adults, who are moving away from the economic and financial crises in the southern European periphery in the last decade, are called “economic refugees”, “new immigrants”, “newcomers” or “jobbers” (migrants) in the current public discourse. However, this migration movement within Europe diverges from emigration of the so-called guest-worker movement of the past century. This article investigates the views and attitudes of Greek citizens who immigrated to Central Europe and in particular to Germany and Austria. An online survey (N = 500) was conducted to find out more about the motives that prompted Greeks to emigrate to central Europe, to provide space for them to outline their feelings, their views on the immigration process and their relationship with the host country. At the same time, another objective of the study is to gain insights into the political feelings expressed in connection to immigration or the immigration decision. Besides descriptive statistics, a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) is used in order to address the research questions.