ABSTRACT
Until the 1990s, modern Greece had never experienced significant levels of foreign immigration, although mass migrations of Greeks themselves have been significant. Greek identity or ‘Greekness’ can be considered ‘an organic whole in which Greek Orthodoxy, the ethnos and the state are a unity’ (Pollis 1992: 171); thus Greece considers itself ethnically homogeneous, although with a few minorities. Even mass tourism has been viewed as a necessary evil, tolerated for economic reasons. Within this context it can be understood that the recent influx of permanent, semi-permanent and temporary immigrants from a variety of countries has created negative feelings among many Greeks. Some are unhappy merely because so many other languages are spoken, which makes them feel that they are not in their own country. Other social changes such as higher (although still low) crime rates and rising unemployment, which might otherwise be attributed to modernization and economic developments, have become linked in the public view with immigration. In this paper, we attempt to chart the available evidence about the employment of (mainly illegal) immigrants, their likely relationship to the employment and unemployment of Greeks, and the perceptions of various actors within Greek society.
