This paper is about migration from a small Cycladic island (1) to Athens, the capital city of Greece, and chiefly concerns those male migrants for whom migration entails a change from agricultural labour to work in the building trade. The first part of the paper briefly sets the depopulating island of Nisos in the context of Greek rural depopulation, migration within and from Greece, and the growth of Athens. Migration from Nisos from 1840 to 1940 fitted into traditional expectations about an island-man's wage-earning activities at a certain stage in his life and is therefore interpreted here as supporting established island institutions. Migration since World War II and the Greek civil war (1945–49) is interpreted as transforming island life and even threatening the continued existence of a viable community. The second part of the paper gives an account of the involvement of Nisiot migrants in the building trade as workmen, subcontractors and property-owners, and discusses the tensions which have arisen between members of old-established migrant families and more recent migrants enriched by the building boom.