Introduction
Back to: History and Background of Migration in Greece
Based on the latest estimates,1 Greece currently has a population of approximately 11.12 million (August 2019). Since Greece is a country with negative natural population growth, immigration has overall become the sole source of population increase.
Over the past 120 years, Greece has experienced three mass migration phases.2 Overall, more than 1.75m Greeks sought their future abroad which has led to a great Greek diaspora.
In contrast, during the 1980s, Greece became a transit country for Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Africans. From the beginning of the 1990s, Greece started receiving large inflows of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the communist regimes, with some large numbers of migrants from Albania.3
More recent immigrant groups, from the mid-1990s onwards, consist of Asian nationalities—especially Pakistani and Bangladeshi—with more recent political asylum and/or irregular migration flows through Turkey of Afghans, Iraqis, Somali and others. From 2007, the number of irregular migrants and asylum seekers arriving in Greece by boat via the Aegean Sea increased significantly4 and reached its peak in 2015, mainly due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
According to the latest official census (2011), the population of Greece comprised Greek citizens (91%), Albanian citizens (4.5%), Bulgarian citizens (0.7%), Romanian citizens (0.4%), Pakistani citizens (0.3%) and Georgian citizens (0.25%).5 The latest data (2016), reported by the European Migration Network, shows that out of the total population in Greece (10.75 million in 2016), 11.3% were foreign and foreign-born (3.2% other EU Member states, 8.1% non-Member countries).