Griechenland und seine Ausländer: Integration und Exklusion in Zeiten der Krise
Greece and its Foreigners: Integration and Exclusion in Times of Crisis

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. This article examines the arrival of undocumented immigrants in Greece during the last two decades. In a first step, it discusses the entry in the 1990s of massive numbers of economic immigrants from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Soviet Union. This development turned Greece into a country of immigration. Although they came without entry permits and had no legal right to stay, hundreds of thousands of immigrants were granted legal status retrospectively in 1997, 2001 and 2005. As a result, by 2010 Greece had 955,000 legally documented economic immigrants. In a second step, the article analyzes the clandestine arrival of immigrants and refugees from conflict regions in Asia and Africa. It is estimated that since 2001 about 400,000 undocumented immigrants crossed the border from Turkey and now live in Greece in a “grey zone” of society.

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