Immigrants seeking their future in Greece/EU 

Back to: History and Background of Migration in Greece

While for the first half of the twentieth century, immigration mostly flowed outwards from Greece, several occurrences in the last quarter of the twentieth century led to a change in the migration patterns in Greece. 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.

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.¹

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, co-ethnic Greeks from former Soviet bloc countries and the Balkans, and economic migrants from Albania and Eastern European countries like Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland, flooded into Greece.²

From 2007, the number of irregular migrants and asylum seekers arriving in Greece by boat (from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Afghanistan, among others) via the Aegean Sea increased significantly. In 2015, arrivals of refugees by sea increased dramatically 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 2014.³ [weglot-image en=“/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/common-nationalities-sea-arrivals.png“ gr=“/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/common-nationalities-el.png“ alt=“Most common nationalities sea of arrivals“ lightbox=“1″ class=“fullwidth“ caption=“Source: UNHCR, OPERATIONAL PORTAL, Mediterranean Situation – Greece“]

According to data from Frontex, Greece is the major gateway of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia. However, over the last few years, a shift from the sea to the land borders has taken place, resulting in increased illegal border crossings at the Greek land border with Turkey (Evros), mainly because the Greek state was assisted by Frontex in patrolling the sea borders. These illegal border crossings constituted approximately 85 per cent of all the detections of illegal border crossing at the EU-level. The majority of these irregular migrants, view Greece as a gateway to the European Union.

1. Kiprianos, Pandelis, Stathis Balias, and Vaggelis Passas. „Greek policy towards immigration and immigrants.“ Social Policy & Administration 37.2 (2003): 148–164
2. Triandafyllidou, Anna. „Greek Immigration Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century. Lack of Political Will or Purposeful Mismanagement?.“ European Journal of Migration and Law 11.2 (2009): 159–177
3. „Refugees/Migrants Emergency Response – Mediterranean, Greece“. UNHCR. 13 February 2016