This article explores how primary features of occupational restructuring, such as the feminization of employment and migration, and changes in patterns of residential mobility of Greek and migrant women since the 1990s have contributed to shaping new forms of sociospatial segregation in Athens. We examine changes in the occupational structure and in segregation indices from 1991 to 2001. Findings suggest that new gender and ethnic divisions in the occupational structure combine with residential mobility and introduce strong tendencies towards spatial fragmentation. Intra-urban and migratory flows reflect diversified occupational trajectories among women and contribute to shaping the socioeconomic profile of the destination areas: (a) migrant domestic and unskilled service workers locate to central city and suburban areas; (b) Greek managers and professionals, move to ‘upper-class suburbs’; (c) small Greek entrepreneurs and independent workers sprawl to peri-urban areas; (d) salespersons and clerks move to inner suburban areas.

This introduction to the special issue ‘Diversity, inequality and urban change’ provides a brief historical overview of assimilative, politico-economic and multicultural approaches in the USA and Europe. It focuses on representations of diversity in cities and highlights processes of theory transference, which are often silenced in debates about city paradigms. It draws attention to how the cities discussed in the special issue (London, Berlin and southern European cities) can contribute to the relational framing of the migration experience and multicultural life.

This paper presents the spatial distribution of multiple deprivation in Athens, and links these spatial patterns to the city’s urban development trajectory and the way housing is accessed. Multiple deprivation was measured as the combined concentration of disadvantageous employment situation, access to education and housing conditions. A principal components analysis was utilized for 20 variables from the three said domains. Two components were identified as statistically significant. The analysis covered approximately 3000 urban spatial analysis units (URANU), using data from the population censuses of 1991, 2001 and 2011. The findings unveil that from 1991 to 2011, multiple deprivation in the urban periphery as well as in city center areas worsened. Conditions in many (but not all) working-class areas in the west of Athens, as well as in middle class suburbs in the east, improved or did not get worse. If compared to the urban development trajectory of the city, this distribution means that the historical East–West socio-economic division is getting less pronounced, whereas an important center–periphery dynamic is emerging. The filtering and sorting process of the housing market could explain those trends. It appears that the most affected populations are those outside the Greek family-centered and homeownership-based model of access to housing.

This paper aims at shedding some light, by contrasting the discourses and practices of shelter-providers and welfare agencies which manage the homeless in Athens, on the ways in which culture and power combine to produce segmented responses to homelessness in the European South. It is argued that central state, local state, church and voluntary agencies resort to different understandings of pity in order to acknowledge responsibility for different groups of homeless people and shape action in a variety of local settings. Official rhetoric addresses visible homelessness but conceals exclusions, selecting deserving from non-deserving clients and 'clean-ups' of public spaces. Radical voices aim at revealing hidden homelessness and sustain inclusive practices such as street or community work, but they fail to secure access for the homeless to housing, income and good quality of care.

This article argues that the study of homelessness in the European South can be advanced by employing concepts and methods of critical discourse analysis, which integrate different conceptualizations of homelessness into wider changes in the direction of the ‘pluralistic’ and ‘decentralized’ treatment of poverty and social exclusion. To illustrate the dialectical relationship between power, discourse, and practice in the treatment of homelessness in Greece the analysis of documents and interviews amongst key stakeholders is contrasted with information from my participation in local projects. Findings suggest that powerful actors resort to a mix of philanthropic and managerial discourses to promote their own charitable work and to select deserving from undeserving clients.