Mirrors of our ills
Athens cannot be described as a ghetto in the narrow sense of the word. However, it does have certain areas with particular demographic characteristics and distinctive problems – where there are obvious trends toward marginalization and isolation, where mass unemployment is rife and where significant social pressures result from having a large percentage of its population taken up by immigrants. Close to the encampments with the containers set up for those who lost their homes in Athens’s September 1999 earthquake, there is the isolated Gypsies’ district of Zephyri; or Perama, which is plagued by the collapse of the shipyard repairs sector and where there is a 20 percent unemployment rate. Nor should one forget the Athens municipality, especially the areas along both sides of the section of the Athens-Piraeus urban electric railway (ISAP) stretching between Omonia and Ano Patissia where immigrants account for 40-50 percent of the population. This situation exerts pressure on the educational system as schools are forced to modify the pace of teaching Greek pupils to allow foreign children – most of whom have gaps in their knowledge of Greek – to follow the same lessons. The composition of the population of Athens reflects the problems and distortions of our economic development, the distribution of income, demographic evolution and social welfare. The conclusions we draw on the basis of statistics are reflected in the image of the capital’s ghettos. And as Athens has become a huge settlement accommodating around half the population of the country, the problematic composition of the capital’s population reflects the distortions and isolation that prevail throughout the country. This «unknown» Athens is not a marginal region which its relatively prosperous majority can simply ignore, but the very mirror of the whole country and its problems, whether these are unemployment, crime or the educational system. The capital’s ghettos are a hotbed of problems which must be analyzed by political and social experts so that swift remedial action can be taken. This is the only way to improve our living conditions and to eradicate the image of abandoned districts which push hundreds of thousands of people into social marginalization and despair. A realistic assessment of the situation in Athens would put the Greek State on the road to improving the standard of living in the country’s largest urban center, while also giving it the experience necessary to tackle similar problems in other parts of the country. But if it turns its back on the problematic districts of the capital, the State would effectively be giving up on the country as a whole.
