Immigration to Greece
Immigration to Greece percentage of foreign populations in Greece is 7.1% in proportion to the total population of the country. Moreover, between 9 and 11% of the registered Greek labor force of 4.4 million are foreigners. Migrants additionally make up 25% of wage and salary earners.
As of 2012, Albanian migrants constitute some 55–60% or more of the immigrant population. More recent immigrant groups, from the mid-1990s on, consist of Asian nationalities—especially Pakistani and Bangladeshi—with more recent political asylum and/or illegal migration flows through Turkey of Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians and others. Since the 1990s, increases in such flows have led to the emergence of immigration as an increasingly important political issue in Greece.
Immigrants fill roles mainly in the informal sector, and there are large numbers of illegal immigration in Greece today. As larger numbers of migrants entered Greece in the 1990s, the Greek government's immigration policy began to be seen as lacking the control and legal framework to manage the situation. While the Greek government has made some changes in immigration policy, immigration reform remains a low priority.
In 2015, arrivals of refugees by sea have increased dramatically in Greece mainly due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War. There were 856,723 arrivals by sea in Greece, an almost fivefold increase to the same period of 2014. An estimated 8% of the arrivals applied for asylum in Greece, with others hoping to find asylum in Northern European countries. On 13 August 2019, 650 migrants arrived on sixteen boats in Greece for the first time in such mass since 2016. As a result, the government decided to increase border patrols and deportations to control the sudden migrant influx.
History
For the first half of the twentieth century, immigration mostly flowed outwards from Greece. At the turn of the century, the majority of Greek immigrants migrated to the United States; from the 1950s to the 1970s, migration flowed towards other European countries, mainly the Federal Republic of Germany, where there was a labor shortage in the rebuilding process after the second world war. Additionally, about 65,000 Greeks sought refuge in former Soviet Bloc countries after the defeat of the left-wing forces in the Greek Civil War. Looking solely at the years 1955 to 1970, approximately one million people—over ten percent of the total Greek population—left Greece to emigrate primarily to Europe, Australia, North America and South America.Several occurrences in the last quarter of the twentieth century lead to a change in the migration patterns in Greece. After the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974, some of the Greek refugees began to resettle in Greece. This wave of immigrants reached its peak towards the end of the 1980s. Most of the immigrants to Greece in this time period were repatriated Greeks. The immigration boom really hit following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, when co-ethnic Greeks from former Soviet bloc countries, co-ethnic Greeks from Albania and other Balkan nations, and economic migrants from the Balkans and Eastern European countries like Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland, flooded into Greece. Many came to escape turmoil and conflict in their homeland or for the economic opportunities afforded to them in Greece, a member of the EU with a large informal market. At the beginning of the 1990s when these immigration flows started, Greece did not have the legislative framework to practically manage and control immigration. Until the Greek government began immigration policy reform in 1991, immigration legislation dated back to the 1920s and made it incredibly difficult for migrants to enter Greece legally for work purposes; it was obligatory for a migrant to have a work permit to enter Greece, which they must have obtained from their home consulate only after having acquired a job in Greece. In the mid-1990s the Greek immigration policy relied mostly on massive deportation of mainly Albanian immigrants, hoping to discourage immigration to Greece. This policy tool was largely ineffective and the Greek government had to rethink its immigration policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While strides have been made to bring immigration policy in line with EU directives, immigration is still not a high priority for the Greek government, even as migrants continue to make up large portions of the Greek population.
Migrant demographics
Since the 1990s, Greece has become an important country for migrants both as a final destination and as a transit stop between countries of origin and other countries in the EU. Greece is a destination country primarily for migrants from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and some Asian and African countries, and a transit country for Kurdish, Afghan, and other Asian migrants. The large majority of immigrants to Greece come from Albania; Albanians constitute 63.7% of the total documented migrant population in Greece, followed by Bulgarians, Georgians, Romanians, Russians, and Ukrainians. Immigrants are employed in construction, industrial manufacturing, and agriculture. A high number of Filipino housekeepers also migrate to Greece.Documented immigrants in the 2001 census totaled 693,837, and undocumented immigration estimates increase this number to 1.2 million people, or over 7% of the Greek population. More than half of the legal foreigners are in the greater Athens area, and a quarter can be found in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city to the north. About half of the legally employed foreigners are either ethnic Greeks or citizens of the EU; however, about 79% of undocumented immigrants come from former socialist countries, with the remaining 21% coming from over one hundred predominantly Third World countries. The number of work permits to non-ethnic Greek foreigners is just 0.33% of the registered labor force, the lowest number in the EU.
On the other hand, undocumented labor by foreign migrants is estimated to constitute 24% of the GDP of Greece. Many irregular entrants and illegal immigrants do not see Greece as their final destination; they plan to work only to raise enough funds to move on to other countries in the EU. Others come to Greece to stay. No matter how long their stay in Greece, many undocumented migrants are excluded from the majority of Greek society and face political, social, and economic marginalization.
Female migrants
Migrant women to Greece, in particular, are of note and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Greek women continue to make strides in education and employment. Traditionally, the participation of Greek women in the labor force has been very low due to a lack of formal employment opportunities, an overabundance of unpaid activities in small family businesses or agricultural work, and prevailing cultural attitudes in Greece about the domestic role of women. Between 1971 and 1996, adult female participation in the paid labor force jumped from 31.2% to 47.5%. A rapid expansion of the Greek educational system, coupled with increased prosperity in Greece, lead to an increase in women in the workplace and a subsequent reduction of supply of labor for certain work mostly done by women. However, Greek cultural values regarding women's "duties" within the home has not changed as rapidly as female employment has—Greek women are increasingly taking on responsibilities outside the home while their domestic tasks remain largely unabated. This creates a demand for cheap, migrant labor in areas related to household and care work in Greece that is largely filled by female migrants.There is a great degree of job segregation by sex for migrants in Greece, with mostly migrant women filling the domestic roles left by Greek women. Women from the Philippines, Albania, and Georgia dominate migrant domestic work in Greece and indeed make up the majority of immigrants from those countries—76% of Bulgarian immigrants, 70% of Albanians, 76% of Romanian, 85% of Poles, and 80% of Filipino immigrants to Greece are female. Greece has the highest female migration rate in Europe. Filipino women are primarily employed as maids in families, while Albanian women are confined to domestic or cleaning roles.
While the majority of all female migrants are economic immigrants looking for good jobs that earn them a much higher salary than they can find in their homeland, female migrants, particularly undocumented ones, are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. The Greek legal system offers very little protection to domestic workers and in some cases may actually increase their insecurity and vulnerability. Additionally, instances of sex trafficking are increasingly on the rise, with estimates citing that over 20,000 migrant women are trafficked into Greece every year for the purposes of sex work.