Ethnicity & Migration: A Greek Story (2008)

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Coordinator:

Martin Baldwin-EdwardsCo-Director of the Mediterranean Migration Observatory,

Athens, Greece

& migration

a greek story

Ethnicity


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ETHNICITY AND MIGRATION: A GREEK STORY


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S U M M A R Y

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E T H N I C I T Y & M I G R A T I O N :

A G R E E K S T O R YMigrance

34, rue de Citeaux 75012 Paris

Tlphone :01 49 28 57 75Tlcopie :01 49 28 09 30Courrier lectronique :[email protected] www.generiques.org

Les sommaires des numros de Migrance sont en ligne sur le

site de Gnriques www.generiques.org/ migrance.html.Commande en lignedes numros de Migrancesur le site de lAssociationdes revues plurielles www.revues-plurielles.org/

Directeur de la publication :Sad Bouziri

Comit de rdaction :Mustapha Belbah,Marc Bernardot,Hassan Bousetta, Andr Costes(),

Yvan Gastaut, Alec Hargreaves,Sman Laacher, Anne Morelli,Nouria Ouali,Djamal OubechouBenjamin Stora,Driss El Yazami,Jalila Sba,Patrick Veglia

Coordination ditoriale :Driss El Yazami

Secrtariat de rdaction :Sophie Chyrek,Elizabeth Becker

Coordination du numro :

Martin Baldwin-Edwards

ForewordEthnicity and migration:

a Greek story 5Martin Baldwin-Edwards and Katerina Apostolatou

The Greek labour diaspora in Europeits integration in the receiving societies,especially Germany,and its relation with the home country 18Hans Vermeulen

Veiling religious diversity:a note on Greek womens marriageto Turkish political refugees 37 Marina Petronoti

The life of asylum seekers in Greece:Comparing privilegedwith underprivileged migrants 49Eftihia Voutira and Elisavet Kokozila


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ETHNICITY AND MIGRATION: A GREEK STORY4

H omogeneis migrants from the former Soviet Unionin Thessaloniki and the transformation

of the western quarters of the city 61Garyfallia Katsavounidou and Paraskevi Kourti

Migration from Ukraine to Greecesince peretroka :Ukrainians and returning ethnic Greeks.Reflections on the migration processand on collective identities 71Kira Kaurinkoski

Challenges for the social inclusionof the migrant population in Greece 87 Ilia Roubanis

S U M M A R Y Ont particip ce numro :Martin Baldwin-Edwards

Katerina Apostolatou

Garyfallia KatsavounidouKira KaurinkoskiElisavet KokozilaParaskevi KourtiMarina PetronotiIlia RoubanisHans VermeulenEftihia Voutira

Conception graphique : Antonio Bellavita ()

Maquette :Jean-Luc Hinsinger / Cicero

Crdits photos :Magnum photosKira Kaurinkoski,Coll. prive

Couverture :

Photographie (dtail) JimGoldberg Jim Goldberg / Magnum Photos.

Imprimerie :Delta papiers

Migranceest publiavec le concoursde lAgence nationale pour lacohsion sociale et lgalitdes chances (ACS).

ISSN 1168-0814


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In recent years, when talking about immi-gration into Greece, people like to stress thatGreece has shifted from being a country of emigration to one of immigration. Withthis apparently simple statement, we aresupposed to understand that here is a new problem for which we can hardly expect goodgovernment policies, or positive public reactions.In reality, Greece since 1913 has witnessed massimmigrations, mass emigrations, mass populationexchanges perhaps more so than any other Euro-

pean country in the twentieth century. What is evenmore remarkable is that most of these population move-ments were explicitly linked to ethnicity and reli-gion. This neglected aspect of migration and Greeceis the focus of the papers here. We argue, and in dif-ferent ways all of the papers support this conclu-sion, that Greek government policies on migration along with popular opinion are rmly located in the

past. The crucial formative period of the modern

Greek nation state appears as the principal referencepoint for evaluating migration and migrants, andethnicity or race as it was perceived a century

ago is the predominant criterion.

A history of ethnic diversity

The modern Greek state arose out of rebellionagainst the Ottomans a rebellion which was basedon religious afliation, despite the fact that a

substantial proportion of its revolutionary supporters were unable to speak Greek and instead were Vlach, Slav and Albanian speakers.1 Thus, therst Census of 1828 looked only for the religiousadherence of its inhabitants, and found 741,950Christians and 11,450 Muslims. The Jews, esti-mated at 5,000 on the eve of the revolution, weremostly massacred or expelled in the rst year of the

Greek state and afterward largely ignored.2

In 1907

Foreword

Ethnicity and migration:

A Greek Story


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a Census was taken asking for the religion andlanguage of the population, although it did not actu-ally ask what language a person spoke, but whatlanguage they considered as theirs (thereby ensuring that people who spoke Greek as a secondlanguage would list it as their own tongue). ThisCensus counted 97% as Greek-speaking and 98.7%as Orthodox; the Arvanites (who spoke Albanian) were recorded as 1.9%, Vlach as 0.4% and there were also various European language speakers.Signicantly, more than 75% of non-Greek speakers were labelled as illiterate.

The relative homogeneity of Greece (i.e.predominantly Orthodox Greek-speakers) wascompletely shattered by the near-doubling of itsterritory and population at the conclusion of theBalkan Wars (1912-13): the Greek Kingdomannexed Epirus, the Eastern Aegean islands, Creteand the southern half of Ottoman Macedonia. Anenumeration of the new population was taken by the military, and also by the civil authorities andpolice: the data were suppressed other than to givebasic demographic information. At the end of WW I,Greece also annexed Western Thrace. A Census wasconducted in 1920, and its sensitive resultspertaining to the New Lands were also suppressed

since, it is shown by ofcial correspondence, theauthorities did not dare to avow and revealpublicly the existence of a non-Greek majority inMacedonia.3 In fact, Greece had acquired threemajor problems with the enactment of its national-istic Great Idea [ Megali Idea] of territorialexpansion. First was that the Orthodox Slav-speaking Macedonians could not be distinguished

from Greeks on religious grounds, but were notobviously Greek; secondly, there were large Muslimpopulations in Epirus, Western Thrace and thenewly-acquired Greek islands. Thirdly, Greeksmade up only 30% of the population of the pros-perous city of Thessaloniki: the signicant ethnicgroups there were Jewish, Muslim and Armenian.

Greece seemed to have three options in dealing

with these problems: to abandon the nationalisticction of an homogenous racial purity traceableback to Ancient Greeks; to convert (forcibly, if need be) the aberrant populations to a commonGreek national identity; or to forcibly expel themfrom Greek territory. Rapidly, it emerged that a mix of the last two choices would be the preferred solu-tion: ultimately, a fourth option of relocatingGreeks from Asia Minor into northern Greeceturned out to be the decisive factor for constructinga Greek national identity.

Early Balkan attempts atethnic cleansing

The authoritative 1914 report of the Interna-tional Commission to Inquire into the Causes andConduct of the Balkan Warsdetails the mutualatrocities and specic policies of genocide carriedout by Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian and Serbian forcesand even civilian populations throughout the twoBalkan Wars.4 The Greek armys policy of killing allbut children and the elderly, as it advanced throughthe Balkans, was well known by Muslims, who edin terror to Turkey: in the second war, some 135,000Muslims from all parts of Macedonia had passed

through Salonica en route to Turkey by the time of the Commissions visit.5 In Bulgaria, the Commis-sion found 50,000 refugees who had ed from Mace-donia and 30,000 from Thrace. Another 80,000 Slavsin Greece were asking for resettlement in Bulgaria, while 100,000 Greeks were eeing Bulgaria.6 Wecan see even from this incomplete information,that ethnic cleansing, whether by genocide or

refugee ight, was one of the major characteristicsof the two Balkan Wars. A Protocol to the Treaty ending the Second Balkan War between Bulgariaand Turkey, addresses the idea of a voluntary exchange of frontier populations: this was inter-rupted by the onset of WW I and never carried out. A 1914 agreement between Greece and Turkey wentmuch further, covering large areas where its popu-lation had not been affected by war. This proposed


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voluntary exchange covered the regions of Mace-donia and Epirus (Greece) and Thrace and Western Anatolia (Turkey), and would potentially affectover one million people. Although this exchange too

was interrupted by war, the Turks expelled nearly half a million from the interior during the war, andlater (1919-1920) focused upon deporting Greeksfrom the Black Sea littoral.7

The rst major step taken for the exchange of populations was the 1919 Neuilly Pact, for themutual voluntary exchange with Bulgaria. Some

39,000 Slav-speakers had already left Greece during WW I, and another 53,000 eventually went throughthe exchange: from Bulgaria, some 46,000 Greeksarrived.8 Even so, by 1920 a minimum of 20% of thepopulation of Greece was considered to be non-Greek, since most of the Macedonian Slavs had notleft and the Muslims were in the majority in Epirusand Western Thrace, along with Greek-speakingMuslims on various islands.

The next signicant event concerned Greeces war with the rump Ottoman Empire or modern-day Turkey: Greece was very satised with its military successes in Northern Greece and thought that it had

the support of the Great Powers in expanding its terri-tory into Asia Minor and beyond. Towards the end of the Greek Armys disastrous three-year Asia Minorcampaign, the regions Christian population ed asterried refugees to various ports around the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor. The Turks entered Smyrna inSeptember 1922 and eye-witness accounts testify tothe violence and horrors which rapidly ensued

although not only from the Turkish side. Hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived at Greek ports, desti-tute, starving and desperate for assistance. Since theghting had indirectly involved the Great Powers, anarmistice was rapidly signed by the British (thusaverting an Anglo-Turkish war) and there was a callfor a peace conference at Lausanne. Such was thebackground to the Lausanne Conference and theExchange of Population Conventions of 1923.


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Kemal, the leader of the new Turkish nation state,insisted that there was no place for Christian minori-ties in the republic with the clear problem thatGreece, already badly drained by wars, might collapseunder the strain of accepting over one millionrefugees into a population of 4.5 million.9 However, Venizelos was as much a nationalist and equally keento rid Greece of its ethnic heterogeneity. After dif-cult and dramatic negotiations, a nal peace settle-ment was made with Turkey on 24 July 1923. A compo-nent part of the Treaty had already been signed inJanuary and this document was the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations which was the rsttime in history that a compulsory transfer of a largenumber of people was ofcially adopted as a means of solving a minority problem. According to the Treaty,all Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religionestablished on Turkish territory (other than Constan-tinople) and all Greek nationals of Muslim religionestablished on Greek territory (other than the newly-acquired region of Western Thrace) were to beforcibly exchanged. Thus, the distinguishing criterionchosen for compulsory resettlement was exclusively that of religion: the result was that a minimum of 1.3million Greeks were expelled from Turkey and some500,000 Muslims were sent to Turkey. All were dispos-sessed of their property which, in the case of many

of the bourgeois Greek refugees, was substantial and this loss of property was subsequently conrmedby the Ankara Treaty of 1930. The Lausanne negotia-tions had left some 150-200,000 Greeks in Constan-tinople and a similar number of Muslims in WesternThrace; the Treaty stipulates the legal obligations andother conditions imposed on the country hosting eachminority. These conditions still pertain.

The impact of the refugees onGreece

The refugees arriving in Greece after the AsiaMinor Catastrophe were mostly destitute, frommixed backgrounds and with very diverse attributesgenerally. Most spoke Turkish or Pontic Greek

(equally unintelligible to the local population)10and were shocked at the prejudice, exclusion and name-calling that they were subjected to [names such astoukosporoi Turkish seeds; yiaourtovaptismenoi baptised in yoghourt].11The refugees were locatedand housed by the Greek state, with no freedom tochoose their location in Greece. Some 90% werehoused in northern Greece predominantly in Mace-donia and Thrace; this colonisation policy was delib-erate, and without economic or similar rationale, but justied as a matter of national security.12Its cleareffect was to create Greek majorities in areas wherethere had been few Greek Orthodox inhabitants especially in Thrace and Macedonia. There was alsoa massive impact on the Jews of Thessaloniki, whohad been the dominant population group there 1900-1923. They began to experience difculties andoutbursts of hostility from the Orthodox Christianrefugees,13 alongside pressure to hellenise theirschools and cede their land to the Greek state.14

Overall, the impact of the Asia Minor refugeeson Greece can hardly be exaggerated. The massivestate effort needed to manage their arrival andsubsistence, the crucial effect they had on theethnic balance in northern Greece, and in thelonger term the benecial effect they had on the

economy all of these combined to mark a clearturning-point in the development of the Greeknation-state. Furthermore, the refugees second-class status even those who had clearly beensuccessful bourgeois merchants in Anatolia madethem into a desperate and exploitable labour forcefrom which the native population generously bene-ted.15

Ethnic minorities and migration

For the most part, the Greek authorities choseexpulsion of Muslims over the possibility of theirconversion to Orthodoxy and assimilation as Greekcitizens: the great exception, of course, lies withthe Muslim Minority of Thrace who (like Orthodox


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O R YChristians in Istanbul) retain the wrong religion

alongside nominal citizenship of the host country.Religion had proved to be the only available markerof ethnicity, derived from the Ottoman milletsystem, since language was simultaneously tooinclusive (most educated Ottomans spoke Greek) whilst excluding Greek patriots who spoke tonguessuch as Arvanitika, Turkish, Vlach and Slavicdialects.

The Slavomacedonians of Northern Greece

Unlike Muslims, a large number of slav-speakersremained in northern Greece despite extensiveaction by the Greek state against them. Some 5,000from eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace wereexiled to Thessaly and Crete in 1923, with theirproperty conscated and given to incomingrefugees from Asia Minor; the Neuilly Pact wasextended to cover Western Thrace and acceleratethe implementation of the population exchange with Bulgaria; and numerous ministerial directives were issued, exhorting skilful and specialised work to compel Slav-speakers to move toBulgaria.16 (The latter referred to preferentialtreatment in land and property allocations whichdisfavoured the native Slav-speaking residents andbeneted Greek refugees.) Ofcially recorded in

1928 as numbering 80,000, according to state of-cials the actual gure was closer to 160,000 of native (although mostly illiterate) speakers of the makedonoslavikidialect.17Other sources indicatea gure as high as 250,000.18

Initially, the Greek state conned itself tochanging place-names from Slavic to Greek forms,

setting up night-schools for the teaching of theGreek language to older Slav-speakers, and insti-tuting compulsory primary education in Greek. Italso used the secret service to monitor Slavophileacademics, temporarily exiled some of these, andeven deported some to Bulgaria on the orders of theCommittees of Public Order. (The latter had beenfounded in 1924 to deal with brigands; they weregiven an expanded mandate by the dictator

Pangalos in 1926 to cover all aspects of public orderor national security.)19The Metaxas dictatorship(1936-1941) adopted an overtly nationalistapproach and banned outright the use of Slaviclanguages in Greece, increased the use of exilingand deportation of Slav-speakers on the grounds of being dangerous, and prohibited the settlementof foreigners [ allodapoi] and non-Greek Greek citi-zens [ Ellhnes thn ethnikotita] in border regions.20This relentless attack on the Slav-speakers effec-tively ceased with the Axis occupation of Greece,although had serious ramications for the Jews of Thessaloniki and elsewhere in Greece.

Consistently, Greece has pursued an aggressiveassimilation policy towards the Slav-speakers in itsnorthern region, which includes false accountingin the collection of language statistics, denial of land-rights to pro-Slav citizens during theMetaxas regime (1936-1941) and, since 1951, arefusal to include in national censuses any ques-tions on native language spoken, religion, or self-identied ethnicity.21

Other minority groupsFor other minorities who lived in the region

throughout the Ottoman period, different groups

seem to have followed very different trajectories of incorporation into the Greek polity and society, asoutlined below.

The Arvanites are the historical remnants of Orthodox Albanian mass refugee migrations toGreece and Italy (1468-1506); Albanian-speakingshepherds, peasants and seamen (estimated in the

1930s to number around 400,000) lived primarily in Aetolia, Attica and Morea, although there weretwentieth century movements into the nearby islands of Evia, Andros, Hydra and the Spetses.22 Albanian-speaking Christians are completely absent from the 1928 Census, which one commen-tator attributes to wholesesale falsication of thedata, and evidence of their existence has beensuppressed ever since.23 Despite usage of the


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Albanian dialect throughout the Ottoman period, inmodern times the Arvanites consider themselves tobe wholly Greek and largely disavow their languageand ethnic origins. They have thus been almosttotally assimilated into the contemporary Greekidentity.24

The Aromanians (Vlachs) are a semi-nomadicLatin people who have occupied the Balkan regionsince early Christianity,25 although since the 14thcentury large numbers of one dialect group( Koutsovlachi) set up summer villages and becameless involved in cattle-breeding.26 As with otherminority groups in the Ottoman period, there was

little or no identication with other peoples ornationalist movements, but primarily to the milletof Orthodoxy and secondarily with a professionalgroup. In the early 19th century, although an Aromanian movement emerged, large numbers of Aromanians had already started to be assimilatedinto various national movements. In Greece, theskilled craftsmen were apparently incorporated

into urban Greek culture, whilst Aromanians withpastoral professions tended to retain theirlinguistic and cultural identities although not iden-tifying with any nation other than the Greek one. As with the Arvanites, the Greek state manipulatedcensus data to hide the existence of Vlach-speakers: one prominent Vlach politician andForeign Minister Evangelos Averof had personalexperience with the 1940 Census and estimated the

gure at 150-200,000 Vlach speakers.27 This gure was also given in the Lausanne Convention of 1923.28 A clear split emerged in the Aromanianpopulation, between the vast majority who identi-ed with Hellenism, and a small number who were(according to Greek sources) pro-Romanian. In theinter-war period, there was some limited migrationof Vlach to Romania, although not even crudenumbers are available.29

Although Armenian merchants and craftsmenlived in the region throughout the Ottoman period,it was in the late 19th century that Armenian immi-gration into Greece started. Small numbers settledin Thessaloniki, as part of the Ottoman administra-tion, and also seasonal workers for railway construction were housed in Alexandroupolis andLoutraki. In the 1890s, refugees ooded into theEast Aegean islands, especially after the 1894-1896

massacres of Armenians. When the Greek army occupied Thessaloniki in 1912, prisoners anddeserters from rival armies took refuge there, asthey also did from the Russian Revolution of 1917.However, the important ow of around 80,000 Armenian refugees into Greece occurred after their1915 massacre and during the Greek military adventures in Asia Minor, 1920-1922.30 Many of

these refugees remigrated to other countriesalmost immediately, especially after 1924 when theLeague of Nations committed itself to relocatingthem to the new Soviet republic of Armenia. Thelargest emigration (known as the nerkaght) of the Armenian population of Greece started with theGreek Civil War of 1946, again to Armenia. Two-thirds of the Armenian population, some 18,000,

left at that time.The Armenian communitys relations with the

Greek state are quite distinct, and determined by external political factors, such as their relations with Turkey and usefulness as allies of Greece. Thepersecution of Armenians was also seen by Greekauthorities sympathetically, to the extent that Venizelos offered Greek citizenship (which was


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A G R E E K S T O R Yrefused) to all of the Armenian refugees. However,

by 1968 all Armenian refugees had been grantedGreek citizenship. Armenians have now beenassimilated into Greek society, and the illegally-operating Armenian schools have been regu-larised and are nanced and staffed by the GreekMinistry of Education.31

The presence ofJews in the region dates backas far as 6 BCE in nearly all the major cities of whatis now modern Greece. The Jews of the South weremassacred in the early days of the Greek Revolu-tion, as they were perceived as allies of the Turks.Subsequently, Jews became known as ardentsupporters of the new Greek Kingdom, which partly inspired Jewish nationalism, and they migrated toGreece from across the Ottoman Empire. In 1889,the Greek government ofcially recognised theJewish community. Despite his friendship with the

large and important Jewish community of Thessa-loniki, Venizelos directed massive ows of AsiaMinor refugees to that city. The effect on infra-structure was severe, particularly after the greatre of 1917 which had left the Jewish merchants without businesses or homes. Many Sephardimerchants emigrated, especially to France, whilethose remaining survived for decades on American-

supplied temporary housing and handouts. The city authorities conscated the burnt land as anarchaeological site and demanded the Jewishgraveyard to build the University of Thessaloniki.(This was eventually achieved during WW II, whenthe Jewish population was decimated by theNazis.)32

In 1943, the Bulgarians (who controlled Mace-donia and Thrace at that time) sent 12,000 Jewsto Germany, supposedly for forced labour: they were all murdered at Treblinka. The NrnbergLaws were introduced into Thessaloniki also in1943, and within 3 months some 48,000 Jews withGreek citizenship were deported to Auschwitz. Intotal, some 60,000 were deported and by the endof the War, 2,000 survived and returned. From

1945-1955, about half of the estimated 10,000Jews of Greece emigrated to Israel. Today, thereare a mere 5,500 Jews left in Greece, mostly in Athens.33

Of all the ethnic groups in Greece, and thereare many more not discussed here (along with greatsimplications in some of our descriptions), theChams [Tsamides] remain the most concealed andmysterious and are even despised by the Greekpopulation.34The Chams are historically one of theseveral local population groups occupying theregion known as Chameria, from the ancientIllyrian name for the Tsamis river which crossed theterritory of the Illyrian tribe of Thesprotes.35 The whole region known as Epirus exhibits a blurring of ethnicity, language and religious afliation withthe result of competing (and highly contentious)claims on the territory and people by the emerging

nation states of Greece and Albania at the end of the 19th century.

The London Ambassadors Conference of 1912allotted the region of Chameria (renamed Thes-protia in 1936) to Greece, so that only seven Cham villages are actually in Albania.36 The Cham are Albanian-speaking, with the mountain Chams

following the Orthodox religion and the coastaland low-lying Chams tending to be Muslim.37Therehave been three clear phases of emigration of theCham from northern Greece: during and after theBalkan Wars (1912-1914), after the signing of theLausanne Convention (1923), and at the end of WW II (June 1944 March 1945).38 The coastalChams, despite being Albanian-speakers, were

considered to be Turks by the Greek populationand authorities, whereas the mountain Chams were good Christian people.39 In 1913 Greekterrorist bands began to massacre and loot Albanian Muslims and their property; young men were exiled onto Aegean islands; and land andcrops were conscated, effectively forcing thepopulation to ee. With the signing of theLausanne Convention, Greece began, after some


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reluctance on Turkeys part, deporting AlbanianMuslims to Turkey: some 5,000 were sent before Albania protested to the League of Nations.40 A

Mixed Commission ruled in 1924 that AlbanianMuslims were excluded from the provisions, withthe Greeks subsequently claiming that the Cham were of Turkish and not Albanian origin. Mean- while, the Greek authorities lled Chameria withrefugees from Asia Minor in order to force Albanian Muslims to leave with some consider-able success, such that entire villages lost their

Albanian inhabitants.41

In 1926 the Greek government declared an endto its deportations of Chams and that they wouldhave the same rights as Greeks. However, no Albanian language schools were permitted, and Albanian was rarely heard outside private homes.42 With the invasion of Greece by Italian forces in1940, the Cham co-operated with the Italians

against the Greeks. When the Germans eventually began withdrawing from Greece in 1944, a few hundred Chams ed with them into Albania.

Rapidly, Greek guerilla forces began to terrorisethe remaining Chams, and some 35,000 ed to Albania and Turkey. Several massacres of Chamsby the EDES irregular forces under General Zervasare well-documented, with violent rapes andtorture of an estimated 2,771 Albanian civilians(men, women and children) over the period 1944-1945.43 Subsequently, the Greek state conscated

all the property of the Cham who had ed, citingtheir war collaboration as a legitimate reason forso doing. The 1951 Census recorded only 157Cham,44 and there are now some 14,000 Chamliving on the Albanian side of the border.45 They have never been granted a visa to cross the borderand visit their family graves or view their cons-cated homes: for the latter they are now demanding compensation.


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A G R E E K S T O R YGreeks, non-Greek Greeks,

Greek non-Greeks and others

Today, the Greek conception of citizenship isalmost exclusively that of ius sanguinis that is,transmission of citizenship by blood ties. This itself is a common enough notion, particularly for nations with a history of extensive migration and adispersed diaspora. What is more problematic inthe case of Greece, is that the now-discreditednotion of a static unchanging race [ phyli] trace-able back to Ancient Greeks underpins other cate-gories of relationship to the Greek nation. Those who reside outside Greece but have not acquiredGreek citizenship can claim these (mostly imagi-nary) ties with the pre-political race of Greeks:these ethnic Greeks are covered by the all-inclu-sive term homogenia[same origin].46

Greeks [ Ellines ]Greek citizens are supposed to be of the Greekrace, or at least to possess Greek nationalconsciousness if they are one of the very smallnumber of naturalised Greeks of foreign descent.

Non-Greek Greeks [ Ellines allogeneis ]This category refers to Greek citizens of non-

Greek descent: the most common situations are of members of the Muslim Minority in Thrace andSlavic Greeks in Macedonia or Thrace. It alsocovers naturalised persons who are of anotherrace.

Greek non-Greeks [ Allodapoi homogeneis ]Here, we refer to ethnic Greeks without Greek

citizenship the homogeneisresiding abroad.Even when they take Greek citizenship and live inGreece, they are still called homogeneis. There are various subcategories see below.

Others [ Allogeneis ]This means any race other than Greek.

Greek government policiesbased on race

Non-Greek Greeks Affecting allogeneisGreeks, there is a long

tradition of legislative measures aimed, in effect,at ethnic and ideological cleansing. A PresidentialDecree of 1927 states that Greek citizens of non-Greek descent who leave the territory with nointent to return shall lose their Greek nation-ality.47This was used for two decades against thou-sands of Greeks who migrated for various reasons,particularly affecting Vlachs and Slavomacedo-nians from northern Greece. The next piece of legislation was passed by the Parliament in 1947during the civil war, and this time was aimed atcommunist supporters who were eeing Greeceduring that period. Finally, in 1955, lasting until1998 when it was repealed, Art. 19 of the Greek

Nationality Code provided for the denationalisa-tion of citizens of different [ allogeneis] descent who left Greece with no intent to return.48Between 1955 and 1998, some 60,000 Greeks of different descent had their nationality removedand a large number were made stateless.49 As of 2004, six years after the offending article had beenrepealed without retroactive force, a declared

number of some 350 mainly Muslim residents of Greece were still stateless owing to the removal of their nationality.50

Homogeneis or ethnic GreeksThere is no coherent policy on homogeneis.

Historically, Greece has favoured use of this statusfor irredentism or discriminatory practices in the

following regions:51

(a) Greek communities in the Balkans, EasternMediterranean and the Black Sea regions;

(b) Greek minorities in Turkey, Albania and ona smaller scale, Bulgaria after the populationexchanges of 1923. These are the non-liberatedGreeks of the lost motherlands who found them-selves outside Greece;


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(c) Greek immigrant communities in the USA, Australia and Germany, results of the 20th century labour emigration;

(d) Greek communities of the former SovietRepublics, comprising Greek and Russian-speakingpeople from the Black Sea region;

(e) Political refugees who left for Eastern andCentral Europe during the civil war.

In general, the homogeneiapopulations outsideof Greece shrank markedly, either owing to assimi-lation into the host country or actual migration toGreece. In the later case, as is made clear in ahighly condential Ministerial Decision of 1976,the Greek state refused to naturalise most of them whilst simultaneously giving them Greek passports.They thus created a new class of person, unknownin international law, somewhere between citizenand alien.52There is also the remarkable result that

the children of such parents, despite being born inGreece and claiming Greek ethnicity, would be left with a foreign nationality. The motivation for thispolicy was to retain a political bargaining chip withthe neighbouring country [Turkey, Albania etc.] by claiming some Greek presence on that territory.This policy was continued until well into the 1990s, when it became politically expedient to grant citi-

zenship to homogeneisfrom Pontos.Ethnic Greeks originating from the area known

as Pontos [category (d) above] had started arrivingas refugees in the 1980s, and in 1993 Law 2130/1993 was passed granting special visas forentry to Greece as repatriates [ palinnostoundes]alongside publicity campaigns in Russia and elsewhere, exhorting Greeks to return to their mother-land. Informally, during the 1990s Greek localauthorities started to grant citizenship and votingrights for this category of homogeneis, in order toraise support for the ruling political party. By theend of the 1990s, it emerged that about half of thePontians had entered Greece on tourist visas and were technically illegal immigrants: Law 2790/2000 was passed allowing them to gain Greek nationality

regardless of how they had entered Greece. Over150,000 persons are thought to have been given citi-zenship, but the data (as for nationality awards)are suppressed. The principal nationalities thoughtto have arrived over the 1990s are mainly Georgians(81,000), Kazakhstanis (31,000) and Russians(24,000).

Ethnic Greeks from Albania arriving after 1991[category (b)] were refused Greek nationality,putatively because of an alleged agreement withthe Albanian government (which is denied by Albania) and in 2001 they were given a Special Identity Cardof three years duration, in place of citizenship. In 2006, these were withdrawn andthey are now allowed to apply for Greek nationality,although few have received it. Over 200,000 of theseCards were awarded; this gure was originally keptsecret, since it is well in excess of the number of

ethnic Greeks living in southern Albania.

Reliving the past in the present

As we have seen, for the greater part of thetwentieth century, both the Greek state and society can be characterised as exhibiting a very high

degree of politicisation of ethnicity. Yet by 1990,Greek society had largely incorporated its diverseethnic groups and constructed an imaginedcommunity53 with a shared belief in its commonhistory and roots, albeit with a large dose of imagi-nation. (The great exception lies in the highly marginalised Muslim community of Western Thrace ethnic Turks, Pomaks and gypsies.) For the rsttime in its history, Greece was stable, moderately prosperous, and without visible signs of ethnic divi-sions. To a remarkable extent, the diverse regionaltraditions of dance, music, costumes and folklore even of the hated Chams had been brought underthe broad umbrella of Hellenism and unconsciously embraced across the land.

This brief period of ethnic consonance endedabruptly with two distinct types of immigration:


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A G R E E K S T O R Yfrom the East, starting in the late 1980s, came

ethnic Greeks encouraged by the state butdisliked by the general population. From the West,in 1991 Albanians started to cross illegally theinsubstantial mountain border with Greece afterthe breakup of one of the most repressive andisolated political regimes in communist Europe.54Rapidly, illegal migration from other neighbouringBalkan countries also took off, with the migrantsnding illegal employment in the sparsely-popu-lated agricultural areas and later in construction,family businesses and the home.55These two sortsof migration reawakened memories of the terribleperiod of ethnic strife earlier in the century, andlevels of xenophobia and racial intolerance inGreek society rapidly escalated. Even though immi-grants were essential for much of the Greekeconomy,56Greek society rejected and even fearedthe presence of these old ethnic groups who were

arriving en massein Greece. This was all the morepronounced in that the principal immigration intoGreece was, and remains, from nearby Balkancountries: Albanians, both non-Greek and homogeneis,make up 60-70% of immigrants; Georgians,mainly homogeneis, are the second largest groupbut are invisible because they were granted Greeknationality rapidly; Bulgarians and Romanians are

the third and fourth most important group; andrecently Ukrainains, both non-Greek and homogeneis, have reached the same proportions asRomanians. Today, immigrants make up around10% of the total population quite a high propor-tion, but even more remarkable in that most of these migrants arrived after 1991.

The articles in this issue all address, although in very different ways, the role of ethnicity in Greecesrecent experiences with migration. Hans Vermeulen, in an important study of Greek post-warmigration to European countries, examines thecharacteristics of Greek migrants behaviourcompared with other emigrant communities. Heconcludes, inter alia, that there is a distinct Greekpattern of integration, which is characterised by a

high degree of social cohesion and strong ethno-national identity, along with a close relation withthe home country. Marina Petronotis fascinatingstudy of Greek-Turkish marriages is also a study of how Turkish refugees can assimilate into the envi-ronment of a Christian Orthodox state. Ambigui-ties, contradictions, and the role of personal orfamilial interests emerge as being at least as impor-tant as religion, ethnic identities and collectivememory.

The article by Eftihia Voutira and ElisavetKokozila contrasts the contemporary Greek policy for ethnic Greek repatriates with the punitive andunsympathetic state response to non-Greekasylum-seekers; they emphasise the primary role of history in shaping Greek cultural and politicalconceptions. Their research also exposes a repro-duction in the 21st century of the state-society

disjuncture which occurred originally with the 1923Exchange of Populations: of particular importancehere is the high level of social compassion andacceptance of non-Greek child asylum-seekers incomparison with exclusionary state bureaucraticpractices and policy.

For a remarkable revisiting of the 1923 Greek

refugees phenomenon, we can hardly nd a bettercase study than that provided by GaryfalliaKatsavounidi and Paraskevi Kourti. They examinethe evolution of the community of Soviet Greekreturnees in the city of Thessaloniki, in terms of itssocial, locational and architectural situation inGreek society. The contemporary social exclusion of the new Greek communities (ghettos) and otherpatterns of behaviour seem to reproduce almostprecisely the reception of the 1923 refugees.

Kira Kaurinkoski provides us with a detailedexamination of one immigrant nationality group Ukrainians comprised of two ethnicities. Herarticle shows that after arrival in Greece theirpaths rapidly diverge, as the ethnic GreekUkrainians benet from the privileged policies


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accorded them by the Greek state. The role of Greek ethnicity is also paramount in matters of self-identication, and ultimately integration intoGreek society. The nal article, by Ilias Roubanis,also emphasises the role of history in shaping Greekresponses to immigration. He makes a bold plea fora reinvention of modern Hellenism, away from theethno-nationalist exclusion which characterisedGreece in the late nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, and towards a modern, inclusive andmulti-cultural conception of what it means to be aGreek. This appeal for modernisation, to freeGreeks from the chains of history, conjures upmemories of the cosmopolitan Ottoman Greek asopposed to the Balkan peasant: perhaps the way tothe future really is through the past.

Martin Baldwin-Edwards

and Katerina Apostolatou

1- Thanos Veremis (2003): 1922: Political Continuationand Realignments, in Rene Hirschon (ed),Crossing the Aegean, Oxford: Berghahn Books, p. 55.

2- Tasos Kostopoulos (2003): Counting the Other: Of-cial Census and Classied Statistics in Greece (1830-2001), Jahrbcher fr Geschichte und Kultur Sdosteuropas, 5,p. 57.

3- Ibid. p. 59.4- Report of the International Commission to inquire into

the causes and conduct of the Balkan Wars, Washington DC:Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1914.

5- Ibid.,p.152.6- Ibid.,p.155.7- Dimitri Pentzopoulos (1962; 2002):The Balkan

Exchange of Minorities and its Impact on Greece, London:Hurst & Co., p. 57.

8- Ibid. pp. 60-61.9- Bruce Clark (2006):Twice a Stranger, London: Granta,

p. 46.10- Veremis op. cit.p. 61.11- Rene Hirschon (2003): The Consequences of the

Lausanne Convention, in Hirschon op. cit.p. 19.12- Pentzopoulos op. cit.p. 136.

13- Hirschon op. cit.p. 19.14- Steven Bowman (2002): Jews, in Richard Clogg (ed),

Minorities in Greece, London: Hurst Co., p. 71.15- Christopher Lawrence (2005): Re-Bordering the

Nation: Neoliberalism and Racism in Rural Greece, Dialec-tical Anthropology, vol. 29, p. 321.

16- Philip Carabott (2003): The Greek state and its Slav-speaking citizens, Jahrbcher fr Geschichte und Kultur Sdosteuropas, 5, p. 149.

17- Philip Carabott, op. cit.,pp. 142-3.18- Tasos Kostopoulos op. cit., p. 66.19- Philip Carabott, op. cit.,pp. 151-3.20- Philip Carabott, op. cit.,pp. 155.21- Tasos Kostopoulos op. cit.; Martin Baldwin-Edwards

and Katerina Apostolatou (2008): Statistics and Reality:Greece, in H. Fassmann, U. Reeger, W. Sievers (eds): Statistics and Reality: concepts and measurements of migration in Europe, Amsterdam : Amsterdam UP.

22- Julie Vullnetari (2007): Albanian Migration and Development, Amsterdam: IMISCOE Working Paper No. 18, pp.9, 14.

23- Tasos Kostopoulos op. cit., p. 65.24- Osservatorio Balcani Guide per Area Balcani (2002):

Albanesi in Grecia: immigrati e comunit autoctone,http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/article- view/1430/1/66/.

25- T. J. WinnifrithVlachsin Richard Clogg (ed.) (2002): Minorities in Greece. Aspects of a Plural Society,p.115..

26- Thede Kahl (2002): The ethnicity of Aromanians after1990, Ethnologia Balkanica, vol. 6, p. 145.

27- Tasos Kostopoulos op. cit., p. 64.28- Thede Kahl op. cit.,p. 153.29- Winnifrith op.cit. p. 118.30- I. Hassiotis (2002): Armenians, in Clogg op. cit.,p. 95-7.31- Hassiotis op. cit.,p. 107.32- Bowman op. cit.,pp. 71-2.33- Bowman op. cit.,pp. 77-8.34- Sarah F. Green (2005): Notes from the Balkans:

Locating marginality and ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian

border, Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, pp. 74-5.35- Miranda Vickers (2002):The Cham Issue: Albanian national and property claims in Greece, Conict StudiesResearch Centre, Defence Academy of the UK. Paper G109, April 2002..

36- Ibid.,p. 2.37- Miranda Vickers (2007):The Cham Issue: Where to

Now?Conict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the UK. Paper 07/01, January 2007..

38- Vickers (2002) op. cit.,p. 2.


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39- Vickers (2007) op. cit.,p. 2.40- Vickers (2002) op. cit.,p. 4.41- Vickers (2002) op. cit.,p. 5.42- Georgia Kretsi (2002): The secret past of the Greek-

Albanian borderlands. Cham Muslim Albanians, Ethnologia Balkanica, vol. 6, p. 174.

43- Vickers (2002) op. cit.,p. 6; Kretsi op. cit.,pp. 182-3.44- Kretsi op. cit.,p. 186.45- Vickers (2007) op. cit.,p. 2.46- Dimitris Christopoulos and Konstantinos Tsitselikis

(2003): Impasses in the treatment of minorities and homogeneis in Greece, Jahrbcher fr Geschichte und Kultur Sdosteuropas, 5, p. 87.

47- Nicholas Sitaropoulos (2004): Freedom of Movementand the Right to a Nationality v. Ethnic Minorities, European Journal of Migration and Law, 6, p. 211.

48- Sitaropoulos op. cit.,p. 205.49- For some instructive case-studies of a few victims of this

policy, see Cem entrk (2006): Legalized Racism: Expatria-tion Applications on the bases of 19th Article of the Greek Citi- zenship Law and Problems of Victims, Federation of WesternThrace Turks in Europe, Report No. 2. http://www.abttf.org .

50- Council of Europe, ECRI Roundtable, Athens, 18November 2004. Personal evidence was provided to themeeting by some affected parties: the response from the Inte-rior Ministry was that they must apply for naturalisation in thenormal way i.e. as if they had never held Greek citizenship.

51- Christopoulos and Tsitselikis op. cit.,p. 88.52- Ibid.,p. 89.53- Paschalis Kitromilides (1990): Imagined communi-

ties and the origins of the national question in the Balkans,in Martin Blinkhorn and Thanos Veremis (eds), ModernGreece: nationalism and nationality, Athens: ELIAMEP.

54- See Baldwin-Edwards and Apostolatou op. cit.for adetailed account of immigration statistics and patterns of immigration into Greece since 1945.

55- Martin Baldwin-Edwards and Joaquin Arango(eds)(1999): Immigrants and the Informal Economy in Southern Europe, London: Routledge.

56- Martin Baldwin-Edwards (2001): Southern Europeanlabour markets and immigration: a structural and functionalanalysis, in Employment 2002, Panteion University Press (inGreek). Also in English as Mediterranean Migration Observa-tory Working Paper 5, available from http://www.mmo.gr


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Greek mass migration to Europe asthe Greeks tend to say started a few years after the end of the civil war

(1949). Initially it remained at a low level, whereas transatlantic migration was more substantial. This changedquite suddenly in 1960 when 57 per

cent of the Greek emigrants left for European desti-nations, twice as many as in the previous year. Themassive exodus to Europe took place mainly between 1960 and 1965 and between 1969 and 1970(Emke-Poulopoulou 1986; Katseli and Glytsos 1989).The total volume of emigration, relative to populationsize, was larger than in the case of Spain or Italy.During the period from 1945 to 1974 almost one in six Greeks departed (Fakiolas and King 1996: 172). After1988, when Greeks could move freely in the EuropeanUnion, migration to Europe increased again, but thisnew migration falls outside the scope of this article which focuses on guestworker migration.

In the period 1955-1977 some 760,000 Greeksleft for European destinations. Germany attractedby far the largest share of these Greek guest

workers, more than four-fths of the total. Theother main destinations were Belgium, Switzer-land, Sweden and the Netherlands. Table 1 showsthe number of persons with Greek nationality inthese countries, from 1980 till 2000.

Greek communities also exist in other Europeancountries such as Austria, France, Italy and theUnited Kingdom, but these destinations did not somuch attract guest workers, but mainly students,artists, intellectuals, political refugees and busi-nessmen. Most countries had small Greek commu-nities before World War II. France is the only country which had relatively large Greek workerimmigration in the period from 1916 till 1931(Manitakis 2000). Many of the post-1950 labourmigrants to Europe returned to Greece after a few

The Greek labourdiaspora in Europe,its integration in the receiving

societies, especially Germany, andits relation with the home country


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years, although half a million Greek nationals werestill living in other European countries in 2000.Greek labour migrants started working in the

Belgian coalmines in 1953. In 1957 the Belgiangovernment signed a recruitment agreement withGreece after the inow of Italian workers haddecreased as a result of severe accidents in theBelgian coalmines (Alexiou 1993, Ventura 1999).

Working conditions continued to be very bad,however, and some Greek workers slipped over theborder to look for work in Germany or the Nether-lands. When they succeeded they broke theircontract with the Belgian government which hadobliged them to work in the mines for a year(Vermeulen et al.1985: 42-45). In 1960 Greece alsosigned a recruitment agreement with Germany, and

after that with Switzerland, the Netherlands andSweden. Many Greek workers, however, were notrecruited but came on their own initiative or wereinvited (Panayotidis 2001: 114-116; Vermeulen et al. 1985: 45)1.

Networks played an important role in the migra-tion process (Ventura 2000). The Greek populationof a given German city is often made up of migrantsfrom a few towns or villages. As Thrnhardtremarks, more than migrants from other Mediter-ranean countries, Greeks seem to migrate collec-tively (1989: 23; cf. Kolodny 1982). In 1966 Greeklabour emigration fell back to a very low level, dueto the economic crisis of that year. It increasedagain from 1968 onwards (see Figure 1, below). Themuch higher level of remuneration in Germany, the

political repression during the colonels regime(1967-1974), the continuing underemployment inthe countryside and the existing ties with family and friends abroad all contributed to this. A third of those who entered Germany during the secondimmigration period of 1968-1973 had been therealready before (Hopf 1987: 26).

Most of those who left for Europe came fromregions in Northern Greece (Epirus, Macedonia,Thrace) that had suffered heavily from a decade of war and civil war and from the political repressionthereafter. Though migration was mainly economi-cally motivated, the harsh political climate was farfrom irrelevant (e.g. Vermeulen 1976, 1979).Initially most of the emigrants were workers, but

after 1964 the majority were peasants. Only 9 percent of the Greek immigrants entered Germany asskilled workers, as compared to 8, 23, 29 and 31 percent of respectively the Spanish, Italian, Yugosla- vian and Turkish immigrants (Thrnhardt 2000:28). The level of education was low and illiteracy was not uncommon: even in the early 1980s, still 6per cent of the male and 21 per cent of the femalemigrants in Germany were illiterate. Some argue,nevertheless, that emigrants constituted a positiveselection from the total population of the regions of origin in terms of education and skills (esp. Hopf 1987).

Greek guest-worker migration was originally amale phenomenon and resembles in this respectpost-war guestworker migration from other coun-

Table 1:Greek nationals in ve selected European countries, 1980-2000 (in thousands)

Year 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Belgium 19,3 20,9 19,9 19,2Germany 297,5 280,6 320,2 359,5 363,2

Netherlands 4,1 3,8 4,9 5,3

Sweden 15,3 9,4 6,5 4,6 4,4

Switzerland 8,8 8,7 8,3 7,1 7,2

Source: OECD International Migration Statistics (1980-1995), European Social Statistics, Eurostat 2000 (Belgium Sweden 2000), Mahnig and Wimmer n.d. (Switzerland 2000)


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tries. But unlike Turkish and Moroccan migration,family reunication of the Greeks started within afew years after their arrival. In the Netherlands, forexample, women already started joining theirhusbands in 1965 and family reunication was at itsheight between 1968 and 1972. The children oftenremained in Greece, in the custody of the grand-parents, in order to allow women to work outsidethe home. In this way, husband and wife were ableto make more money and return home soon(Vermeulen et al. 1985: 50 ; for Germany see Gallo

et al. 2002 and Panayotidis 2001 : 124).Immigration countries lost their limited

interest in the often small Greek immigrant

communities almost completely somewhere in the1980s, the more so since they did not pose any greatproblems. From the Greek side, interest was moreextensive and long lasting. While research by indigenous researchers in the receiving societies was almost exclusively devoted to integration,Greek researchers in these countries or fromGreece itself focused on education, especially theteaching of Greek and bilingualism, return migra-tion and remittances (for Germany, see Papakyri-akou and Leist 2001). The paucity of research, espe-

cially in countries other than Germany, hinders asystematic comparison of the integration of Greekguestworkers and their descendants in thedifferent countries of immigration.

Source: Glytsos and Katseli (2000). The gure is mainly based on data from the Statistisches Bundesambt and the National Statistical Service of Greece.

Figure 1:Greek migration to Germany and Greek return migration

N u m

b e r o

f m

i g r a n

t s

Year

Emigration to Germany Remigration to Germany


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E E K L A B O U R D I A S P O R A I N E U R O P EReturn migration and the

integration of returnees

By the middle of the 1960s, there was already acertain concern in Greece about the effects of large-scale emigration. Employers complainedabout the lack of skilled labour and Zolotas, thegovernor of the Bank of Greece, urged the govern-ment to promote return migration (Zolotas 1966:59-60). Employers tried to convince skilled Greek workers in Germany to return, but without success.

The skilled were actually the least-motivated toreturn (Kayser 1967). Return migration was also viewed as a way to combat the demographic crisis,since population growth was minimal as a result of low fertility and emigration. This was considered adanger for the survival of the nation, given the fastgrowth of the Turkish population and the depopu-lation of the border areas (Vermeulen et al. 1985:

133). Labour shortages soon became even moremanifest and contributed to a new phenomenon:immigration. According to one author, there werealready 15,000 to 20,000 foreign workers in Greecein 1972 (Nikolinakos 1973b : 6 ; see also Nikolinakos1973a: 147-150).

The rst large-scale return migration move-

ment in 1966-1967, however, was not caused by labour shortages in Greece, but by the economiccrisis and the pressure exerted by the Germangovernment on unemployed immigrants to return. When the crisis was over, emigration increasedagain. The second wave of return was again a resultof economic crisis, the oil crisis of 1973, but thistime pull factors also played a role. The economicsituation in Greece had improved towards the endof the colonels rule (1974). Though the improvingGreek economy played a role, return migration wasless economically motivated than the initial migra-tion. The desire to have children educated in Greekrather than in German schools, homesickness andhealth problems were more important (e.g. Faki-olas and King 1996: 175). The large-scale returnmovement reduced the Greek population in

Germany from about 400,000 in 1973 to about300,000 in 1978. In the mid-1980s, one in ten Greeksliving in Greece had spent part of his or her life inGermany; in Northern Greece, one in six (Hopf 1987). Over time, Greeks in Germany have shown astronger tendency to return to the country of originthan have other immigrant groups (Brecht inParaschou 2001: 99; cf. Skarpelis-Sperk 2000). Thisseems to hold also for the second generation(Schultze 1992: 264). Greeks have made ample useof the opportunities for free movement offered by

Greeces Accession to the European Community in1988. Movement back and forth between Greeceand Germany is very common.

The shortages on the Greek labour market andthe demographic crisis had manifested themselvesincreasingly during the military dictatorship (1967-1974). The junta government took a number of

measures to curb emigration and promote returnmigration, with little success. After 1974, the new democratic governments continued their efforts topromote return migration and the re-integration of returnees and children, especially from 1980onwards. The government took several measures tointegrate children of returning migrants in theregular school system. Several models were used

(e.g. special reintegration or remedial classes). Atabout the same time, the employment ofce(OAED) opened new branches in Athens and Thes-saloniki to help returning migrants nd work. Already two years earlier the Greek Orthodox Church, in cooperation with the German Evange-lische Kirche, had opened a centre for the reinte-gration of returnees in Athens and a second one inThessaloniki in 1980 (Vermeulen et al. 1985: 133-135). The repatriation policies were not very effec-tive: most Greek migrants had already returnedfrom Western Europe before the measures of theearly eighties to promote return were taken(Glytsos 1995: 159). The educational integrationpolicy was not very effective either. Major problems were the dispersal of returnees over the country and the need for special treatment versus the


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danger of separating returning children from theirschoolmates.

The majority of the return migrants establishedthemselves in urban centres, even if they had livedin villages before emigration in this way rein-forcing the process of urbanisation. Thosereturning to the countryside had on average savedless money than those going to the cities. A highpercentage of returnees a little more than a thirdaccording to one piece of research (Unger 1983:

226) eventually opened small businesses, partly because it was difcult to nd jobs that couldmatch their new standards regarding remunerationand working conditions. Many return migrantsenjoyed being home again, among family, and to livethe Greek way again. But they were more negativeabout Greece than those who had never left espe-cially about labour relations, social services,

bureaucracy and corruption (Bernard and Comitas1978). Women were even more negative than men,feeling that they were losing some of the freedomsthey had gained in Germany. On the other hand,ideas and norms regarding gender roles and inter-personal relations of returnees did not differ muchfrom those of non-migrants (Vermeulen et al.1985:143). Many returnees regretted their return 53

per cent in the early 1980s according to one source(Unger 1983 : 254) and not a few of thememigrated again, often after their savings werespent. Children who had to interrupt their schoolcareer in Germany to return with their parents hadmany difculties in adapting to Greek education.Notwithstanding the existence of national schoolsin Germany, children had difculties with theGreek language, particularly in its written form.Parents tended to underestimate their childrensproblems in school (Kollarou and Moussourou1981: 54). Research by Hopf (199 : 25) showed thatchildren of returnees had lower grades than theirpeers without migration experience, especially if they had come to Greece when older. On the posi-tive side, Hopf notes that there is little socialdistance between these two categories of children.

Integration

The data on the integration of Greek labourimmigrants and their children in the Europeancountries considered here are fragmentary andthere is little information on the recent period(1985-2005). Germany constitutes only a partialexception. Though the research on Germany is farfrom ideal there is, for example, no systematicdistinction between the rst and second generation(i.e. children born in the country of immigration)

I will focus on Germany after a brief exposition onthe rst phase of integration (until 1980-1985). Ipay special attention to characteristics that distin-guish the integration process of Greek immigrantsfrom that of other groups in Germany. Theemphasis will therefore be on comparative, quanti-tative research.

The rst phaseDuring the sixties and early seventies the greatmajority of Greek men and women worked inindustry. But while men worked mainly in heavy industry (e.g. metal industry and car factories) women worked usually in such sectors as theassemblage of electrical equipment. They also worked more often in the service sector. Most

women worked outside the home. In Germany,Greek women participated more in the labourmarket than Italian women (Gallo et al.2002: 776).In the Netherlands, 55% worked outside the homein the early eighties, 21% were unemployed, 6% were disabled and only 18% had never participatedin the labour market (Vermeulen et al.1985: 59-62).The oil crisis of 1973 led to large-scale unemploy-ment and a restructuring of the economy. Espe-cially in Germany, the government promoted returnmigration. As a result of the more lenient policy inthe Netherlands, fewer Greeks returned, but thepercentage ending up in the categories of unem-ployed or disabled was higher. Another effect of the restructuring of the economy was that both women and men moved from employment inindustry to work in the service sector. Working for a


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T H E G R E E K L A B O U R D I A S P O R A I N E U R O P Ecleaning agency became fairly common, especially

among the Greeks in Sweden.

In the seventies, and partly as a reaction to thecrisis, more and more Greeks started a small busi-ness. Very often they started a Greek restaurant,but sometimes a grocery, a building company, atourist business, a business trading furs, amongstothers. In the Netherlands, this developmentstarted around 1975. In the early 1980s, some 10-15per cent of Greeks had their own business a very

high percentage in comparison with other groups(Vermeulen et al. 1985: 110-130). In Germany, theproportion of self-employed rose from 3 per cent in1976 to 10% in 1982 (Hopf 1987: 67).

The German caseOne of the most important characteristics of the

integration pattern of people of Greek descent in

Germany is the remarkable growth of self-employ-ment since the mid-1970s (Panayotidis 2001: 284).Having ones own business is an ideal of many Greeks in Greece as well as in the diaspora. And itis not only an ideal. Many Greeks in Greece do havetheir own business.2The growth of Greek entrepre-neurship in Germany has been fostered by the entry

of Greece into the European Community in 1981, which facilitated setting up ones own business, andby increased tourism to Greece which created amarket for Greek restaurants (Panayotidis 2001 :290, 292). The growing number of Greek enter-prises both reected and contributed to a morepositive attitude of Germans to the Greek immi-grant community. Fairly soon, the Greeks had thehighest proportion of entrepreneurs.

According to the micro-census of 2004, the

proportion of entrepreneurs among persons withGreek nationality reached 15.5% (see Table 2); for1995 it had been12.7 per cent (Seifert 2001: 25). Inboth years this was higher than for other ethnicgroups distinguished in the research. With 13.1 percent in 2004, the Italians came closest to theGreeks, while Turks remained far behind with 5.8per cent (Germans at 10%). More than half of the

Greek entrepreneurs work in the hotel, restaurantand catering industry. Female entrepreneursconstitute 24 per cent of the total as against 29 percent for Germans and 20 and 19 per cent for Italiansand Turks (Leicht et al.2005 : 15). Among Germans,the percentage of entrepreneurs increases withincreasing education. This holds more or less also

Table 2:Self-employment of persons of immigrant origin in Germany

Characteristics Originof self- Total of persons of employed Greek Italian Turkish foreign nationality

Foreign nationality 26 000 46 000 43 000 286 000

German nationality 1 500 3 500 17 500

Total 27 500 49 500 60 500Percentage women 24,0 19,6 18,6 26,2Percentage of self-employed with non-German 9,1 16,1 15,0 100,0nationality Percentage ofself-employed 15,5 13,1 5,8 9,6in ethnic group

Source: Leicht et al.(2005 : 5). The data are derived from the micro-census 2004.


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for Italians, Turks and other foreigners, but theGreeks form an exception. For Greeks, thepercentage of entrepreneurs is also high at the

lower educational levels (Leicht et al.2005). Estab-lishing ones own business is not a sign that one haschosen to stay forever in Germany. Panayotidis(2001 : 305) found no difference between entrepre-neurial and other Greeks in Bremen regarding their wish to return sooner or later to Greece.

Though there are many Greek entrepreneurs,the majority of Greek immigrants still work as wage-earners. In 1999, 70 per cent of the men worked as un-skilled or semi-skilled workers, 19 percent as skilled workers and 11 per cent asemployees (see Table 3). The percentage of skilled workers was lower than for any of the otherMediterranean groups, including the Turks; and thepercentage of un-skilled and semi-skilled workershigher, except for the Turks. The pattern for womenis similar, the major difference being that among allMediterranean groups, including the Greeks, thepercentage of skilled workers is lower and that of employees higher than for men. The general shifttowards the tertiary sector which had started in theearly seventies strongly affected the position of Greek and other immigrants. By 1999 thepercentage working in the secondary sector had

dropped to 50 per cent for men and 36 per cent for women. In 1980 this was still 77 per cent and 75 percent, respectively. The participation of Greek men

in the building sector was, and remained, very low (5-6%) in contrast to the Portuguese (20%) andItalian men (14%). Greeks show a relatively highdegree of participation in the sectors of trade andcommerce (men 16%, women 20%) and household-related services (18% and 25%, respectively).3

Unemployment gures among the Greeks arerelatively high. Ever since 1980 they have beenconsistently higher than those for the Portuguese,the Spanish and the (ex-)Yugoslavs. They havebeen close to those of the Italians. Of the Mediter-ranean groups only the Turks have had a continu-ously higher unemployment rate. In 2000 the unem-ployment rate for the Greeks was 16 per cent asagainst 15 for the Italians, 12 for the Portugueseand Spaniards, 11 for the Yugoslavs and 21 for theTurks (Seifert 2001: 14). Theoretically there may be several reasons for the relatively high rate forthe Greeks. First of all, differential discrimination:Greeks could possibly be more discriminatedagainst than members of the other three groups.This seems highly unlikely, though. Erwin Scheuchcharacterized the attitude of Germans towardsGreeks, Spaniards and Yugoslavs in 1982 as neutral

Table 3:Occupational position according to nationality and gender in 1999, in percentagesMen Women

Employee Employee

Country of origin

Germany 25 31 44 20 4 76Turkey 71 23 6 70 5 25Ex-Yugoslavia 57 35 8 64 6 31Italy 63 27 11 61 6 32Greece 70 19 11 72 5 24Spain 49 30 21 46 5 49Portugal 67 26 7 70 6 24

Source: Seifert (2001:18)

Unskilled/ semi-skilled worker

Skilled worker

Unskilled/ semi-skilled worker

Skilled worker


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T H E G R E E K L A B O U R D I A S P O R A I N E U R O P Eto positive, as against the neutral towards negative

attitude in the case of the Portuguese and Italians(see Thrnhardt 1989 : 13-14). Other researchconrms this. Greeks are considered inconspic-uous strangers according to Marinescu and Kie(1987). Another explanation might be found in thehigh degree of ethnic cohesion about which morebelow. This may have restricted their access to theGerman labour market (e.g. Thrnhardt 2000: 36). A third possible explanation can be found in Greekentrepreneurship: it is very protable to have

unemployment benet and at the same time workor help out in the business of a family member, e.g. your son.

The eld of education offers other interestinginsights into the Greek mode of integration. Twofeatures return frequently in the literature : the so-called national schools and the relatively good

educational performance. Greek parents, in Greeceas well as in the diaspora, consider the education of their children of great importance and are willingto invest a large share of their time, energy andmoney in it (see e.g. Hopf 1987, Tsoukalas 1976, Vermeulen and Venema 2000). In this respect they resemble the Spanish immigrants. There is animportant difference, however. From around 1975Spanish parents opted for full integration in theGerman school system and abolishing specialSpanish classes where they existed, even againstthe wishes of German school authorities (Thrn-hardt 2005). Many Greek parents, on the otherhand, opted for national schools. The rst nationalschool was already founded in 1966, in Nrnberg.From 1981 onwards the Greek state became very active in developing a network of Greek schools inGermany (Dietzel-Papakyriakou and Leist 2001:30). There are around forty such schools inGermany. Though more and more parents preferGerman public schools, still about 20 per cent of Greek pupils attend the national schools.

What the term national school stands for differsbetween the different states ( Lnder) of Germany,

as a result of their relative autonomy in the eld of education. National schools exist for the primary and secondary level of education. The secondary level consists of three years gymnasium( gymnasio), followed by three years lyceum(lykeio). This is the same as in Greece. The nationalschools also have the same curriculum as in Greeceand they are partly or completely depending onthe state nanced by the Greek government. Thenational schools may be attended in addition to theregular German schools or instead of them, again

depending on the state. The Greek national schoolshave been an object of erce debate, both withinand outside the Greek community and this relatesto other debates, such as the one on the (dis)advan-tages of bilingual education (Dietzel-Papakyriakouand Leist 2001: 31-32). One reason why Greekparents send their children to the national schoolsis that they prefer their children to continue their

studies in Greece. The secondary national schoolsgive access to higher education in Greece as well asGermany, in both cases on certain conditions (suchas proof of good knowledge of the relevantlanguage). Most problematic is the transition fromthe national schools to vocational training and thelabour market. This results not only in the under-representation of Greek children in vocationaltraining, but also contributes to the high level of unemployment among the Greek population. Itshould be added that Greek parents in Greece as well as in Germany prefer a general, humanisticeducation, preferably at the university level andtend to hold vocational training in low esteem.4

Young Greeks perform relatively well in Germaneducation, notwithstanding the low level of educa-tion of the parents. Hopf (1987: 67-81) shows thatthe participation of Greek children in the Realschuleand theGymnasium the types of secondary education that provide access to highereducation has increased remarkably over the years and that children of Greek origin performbetter than those of Italian origin. Research by Alba, Handl and Mller (1994) and others indi-


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cates that Greek participation in the gymnasium ishigher than among the population of Italian, Yugoslav and Turkish origin. As several authors

remark (e.g. Seifert 2001:10) the existence of national schools strongly contributes to this. Hopf is very optimistic about the future. He expected in1987 that Greek pupils would outperform theGerman ones in 10-15 years (Hopf 1987:81), giventhe existing trend and the educational potential

high degree of ethnic cohesion. The importance of a Greek education can be illustrated by theresearch of Schultze (1992), with a study of 530 young Greeks 15-24 years old, a little more thanthree quarters of them born in Germany. 81 percent of students following Greek education hadonly Greek friends while 85 per cent of thoseattending German schools had a very mixed circleof friends, consisting of Greeks, Germans and other

Table 4:Percentage of pupils in special and grammar schools

( weiterfhrende Schulen ) for some Mediterranean groups, according to nationality.

Nationality Number Percentage attending Percentage attendingof students special schools grammar schools

Spanish 4,948 7,7 54,3Greek 19,162 9,3 42,1Portuguese 7,883 11,8 36,8Italian 41,191 14,3 30,7

Source : Thrnhardt (2005:103).

Table 5:Students among children of immigrants born in Germany, with foreign nationality

Nationality Children of immigrants born in Students (2) as percentageGermany with foreign nationality (1) (2) of (1)

Spanish 29,951 1,594 5,32Greek 94,744 3,962 4,18Turkish 654,853 18,386 2,80Italian 173,184 3,287 1,87

Source : Thrnhardt (2005:105).

among the Greek population. Data from 2002,provided by Thrnhardt (2005 : 103, cf. Seifert 2001:8-12) show, however, that this is not the case. The

percentage of pupils in special education is higherand the percentage following secondary schoolsproviding access to higher education is lower thanamong the Spanish (see Table 4) and only theSpanish come near to the German average.

Data on university attendance show the same

pattern. Compared to other Mediterranean groups,children of Greek immigrants, born in Germany and with German nationality, perform well compared tothose of Turkish and Italian origin, but below thelevel of children of Spanish origin (see Table 5).

The high return migration, the importance thatGreek parents attach to a Greek education and thehigh level of entrepreneurial activity all indicate a


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T H E G R E E K L A B O U R D I A S P O R A I N E U R O P Eimmigrants or children of immigrants. Those

attending Greek schools were also less inclined toobtain German citizenship and wanted much more

to return to Greece. The relationship betweenethnic entrepreneurship and cohesion is best illus-trated by an example. The growth of entrepreneur-ship in Bremen (Panayotidis 2001) started in themid-seventies. In 1996-1997, when Panayotidis didhis research, 20 per cent of the interviewees wereself-employed. If we look at the children of theinterviewed who are on the labour market we see

that 14 per cent work in their parents enterprise, 7per cent in those of friends and family members, 13per cent are self-employed. So a total of 34 per centare working in the ethnic economy. But besides thechildren there are also other Greeks who work orhelp out in Greek restaurants or other Greek enter-prises. It is thus quite clear that many Greeks are,one way or another, involved in the ethnic economy

strengthening in this way family and ethnic cohe-sion.

Ethnic cohesion is also evidenced in four otherfeatures. Greek immigrants dont marry often withnative Germans, have many co-ethnic friends, tendto keep their mother tongue over a long period of time and are not very eager to obtain German citi-zenship. Thrnhardt (2000 : 24) provides indirectcomparative data on the rst topic: 23 per cent of Greek-origin children are born out of mixedmarriages as against 81% of the Spanish, 42% of theItalian, 24% of the ex-Yugoslav and 14 % of theTurkish-origin children. The analysis of Alba et al.(1994: 230) shows that young people of Greekorigin have more co-ethnic friends than those fromItaly and ex-Yugoslavia. In this respect they aremore similar to the Turks. For language mainte-nance I have not been able to nd data comparingGreeks with other Mediterranean groups, butthere is no doubt that Greeks maintain their nativelanguage over a longer period of time than mostother immigrant groups (Gotovos 1997).5 This isundoubtedly related to the existence of Greeknational schools and to what Gotovos calls educa-

tional segregation. In his research among youngGreeks in Nordrhein-Westfalen (mentionedearlier), Schultze (1992 : 264) found that just overhalf of these mostly second-generation Greeksrejected the idea of acquiring German citizenship,even though that would not mean losing Greek citi-zenship.

Theoretically most interesting for under-standing the integration process of the Greek immi-grants and their children is the research carriedout during the last fteen years by Thrnhardt,Hunger and others on immigrant voluntary associa-tions and integration (e.g. Thrnhardt 1989, 2000,2005 ; Thrnhardt and Dieregsweiler 1999 ; Hunger2004, 2005).6 Greeks are well organised and have alarge number of voluntary associations. These asso-ciations are often directed at issues of (Greek)education and Greek culture and many have strongrelations with the country and regions of origin.Particularly important are the so-called koinotites,the Greek communities. Greeks started already inthe early 1960s to organize themselves in these kinotites and founded in 1965 a national andfederal organization (Verband der griechischen


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Gemeinden). Greeks resemble the Spaniards inbeing well-organised and in the importance of parental associations. They differ in being much

more oriented to the country of origin and themaintenance of national and cultural identity, while Spanish associations are more directedtowards German society.

The way the population of Greek origin inte-grates into German society has a number of char-acteristics that differentiate it from the pattern of

integration of other Mediterranean groups. First we notice a high degree of ethnic entrepreneur-ship. This relates to a high degree of ethnic cohe-sion, which is also visible in a high degree of socialization and marriage with co-ethnics.Greeks also invest a lot in the education of theirchildren and with success. From an early momentGreeks have fought for an education that would

maintain Greek identity in the next generation.This resulted in the foundation of many so-callednational schools The strong emphasis on ethno-national identity and relations with the homecountry, and often more specifically with theregion of origin is another characteristic of theGreek immigrant population. This is expressedalso in a continuing high return migration and inthe movement back and forth between Greece andGermany.

Thrnhardt and Hunger characterise theGreek pattern as pluralistic integration, and theSpanish one as assimilationist (e.g. Hunger 2004 :24, Thrnhardt 2000: 33-36). To characterise theGreek case, they also use the term immigrantcolony ( Einwandererkolonie; e.g. Thrhnhardt2000: 36). They see both as successful cases of internal integration ( Binnenintegration). Thisterm played a central role in the debate betweenElwert (1982) and Esser (1986) about the role of ethnic organisations in the process of integration.Elwert argued that these may contribute to inte-gration, while Esser stressed more the negative,segregationist dangers. Thrnhardt (e.g. 1989 :

24) and Hunger (e.g. 2004 : 24) have arguedrepeatedly that both the Spanish and the Greekcase are examples of the potential integrative role

of Binnenintegration, though they see theSpanish case as somewhat more successful thanthe Greek one. In their view successful integrationcan be reached both via an assimilationist andpluralist route.

Though the term social capital functions as animportant explanans in their work, Thrnhardt

and Hunger refer also to Greek history and tradi-tion though summarily and somewhat apodicti-cally to explain the Greek mode of integration.Hunger (2004:15) states, for example, that theGreek case is much more inuenced by historiclines of tradition and national experiences of Greekmigrants in earlier epochs, and continues: In allcases of Greek emigration, solidarity and group

cohesion play a central role for the self-under-standing and life accomplishment of Greeksabroad.

The Greek mode of integrationin international perspective 7

Though the information we have on the Greeksin Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzer-land is restricted and often outdated, what we know suggests that the character of the integrationprocess of Greeks in these countries is similar tothat in Germany. Some of these similarities havebeen noted in this article, but much more system-atic comparative research is needed to judge andexplain both similarities and differences.

The way the integration process unfolds in thecase of the Greeks in Germany also shows similari-ties to the case of the Greeks in the United States.In presenting this case I will again use a compara-tive perspective. In the American case it is mostinteresting to compare the pattern of Greek inte-gration with that of the Italians.


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T H E G R E E K L A B O U R D

I A S P O R A I N E U R O P EGreeks and Italians in the United States

In the period from 1880 to 1930, some 28 million

people migrated to the United States. About half of them came from Central, Eastern or SouthernEurope. Part of this stream of immigrants consistedof Italians and Greeks, who arrived mainly between1900 and 1920. There were many similaritiesbetween these two groups of immigrants. The scaleof the migrant group in relation to the population of the country of origin was approximately the same,

but because Greece was much smaller than Italy,the number of Greek immigrants in the UnitedStates came to no more than ten per cent of thetotal number of Italians there.

Return migration was high. About half of eachgroup returned home during the rst decades of immigration. Initially both communities were

composed largely of men. Most of the Italians camefrom Southern Italy, most of the Greeks from thePeloponnese. Many similarities strike the eyebetween these two regions such as family struc-ture, systems of inheritance, patronage, the role of godparents, and cultural codes of honour andshame.

Signicant similarities between the Italian andGreek immigrants can also be seen in their settle-ment processes. Both initially performed the samekinds of work, such as mining or railway construc-tion. Both settled predominantly in the cities, oftenthe same cities such as New York or Chicago. By andlarge, then, the conditions that the two groups hadto face their opportunity structures were aboutthe same.

Notwithstanding the many simila

Ethnicity & Migration: A Greek Story (2008)

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