Introduction

Ethnic diversity in the city of Athens and, relatedly, the coexistence of different ethnic groups constitute relatively recent sociospatial phenomena. During the 20th century, Greece was predominately a country of emigration and thus it rarely received any important inflows of foreign populations (Emke-Poulopoulou, 2007, pp 83-116). Indeed, it was only in the early 1990s that Greece became a destination country for international migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as a transit country for those trying to reach northwestern European destinations.

During the 1990s, the first large migration wave was mostly comprised of people from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, while after 2000 the second significant wave also included people from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Over the last 25 years, these large inflows have increased the country's migrant presence from 1.6 per cent of the total population in 1991 to 7 per cent in 2001 (ESYE, 2009, p 45) and 8.5 per cent in 2011 (ELSTAT, 2011). Among migrants from more than 200 different countries, Albanians constitute by far the largest migrant population, followed by Romanians, Bulgarians and migrants from the former Eastern Bloc, while those coming from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are less represented. The great majority of migrants in Greece are concentrated in urban areas, primarily in the region of Attica and especially in the municipality of Athens, where they represented almost 17.5 per cent of the total population in 2011 (EKKE-ELSTAT, 2015).

Due to migration being a recent and substantially urban phenomenon, over the last 25 years the population of the large metropolitan areas in Greece, especially Athens, has become increasingly diverse in terms of its ethnic characteristics. This increasing diversity has led to controversial debates regarding the effects of multi-ethnic coexistence, including the spatial relations and social interactions that develop between population groups of different ethnic backgrounds.

In this chapter we focus on a specific and particular manifestation of ethnic diversity in the city of Athens, namely, vertical multi-ethnic coexistence, which refers to the spatial and social relationships that develop between different ethnic groups living within the same residential building. The aim of our study is to highlight the various and sometimes contradictory effects of vertical multi-ethnic coexistence, as well as to reveal multiple aspects of ethnic diversity that are less visible and hence often overlooked in both public and academic discourse.