A do-it-yourself integration ? Two immigrant districts in Cyprus

The conference paper is based on an on-going PhD research exploring forms of immigration in Cyprus. Via an ethnography method, the authors compare two districts in two different cities of the island, who, in the absence of national immigration and immigrant policy, are dealing with the recently arrived expatriates from diverse origines. In the midst of the political debate on the imminent resolution of the ‘Cyprus Problem’ (which shapes the islanders perceptions of identity and Other) and in times when drafting a 12,5 kilometre wall is the national ‘response’ to immigration in Greece (motherland for many greek-cypriots), how do the two communities accomodate this multicultural working class ? The authors tend to explain when and how local institutions (school, hospital) as well as private traders and other social actors, dealing with this cities’s transformed paysage, initiate structural changes to their organisation ; how this efforts are percieved by the neihbourhood’s population and how do they appear in official discourses ?