This paper aims to discuss the reality that imposes the economic recession and the new fiscal conditions of austerity in terms of social provision in Greece focusing mainly on the emerging configurations between formal and informal welfare providers. While the Greek welfare-state converged with the more developed European welfare-states, at least in terms of social spending, only during the last decade, the austerity measures and budget cuts seem to re-introduce a period of public welfare under-development. At the same time, the role of traditional providers of social welfare, such as the family, resurfaces; if the weak and late development of public welfare provision never led to the disappearance of informal and family-centered welfare processes, the welfare retrenchment implicated by the “memorandum” policies repositions such processes as social welfare and protection providers of “last resort”.
Within this framework, questions about the patterns of social welfare within Greek society seem once more crucial. The specific relations between the welfare state, the market and the family in Greece have been put now under new perspectives. While home ownership and intense intergenerational transfers strengthened by a pension-oriented welfare-state constituted the pillars of the social welfare system, economic recession and pension cuts threaten this system as a whole. Dominant family strategies in terms of social reproduction become increasingly instable while the state retrenches gradually from welfare and protection provision. In this context, the new mix between the family, the state and the market becomes a central issue. The reconversion of family strategies and the emergence of new networks of outside market exchanges constitute an important stake not only for social researchers, but for the reproduction of the crisis-hit Greek society.
