No Safe Haven 149 2. Migratory pathways to Greece To understand the specific character of clandestine migration to Greece, this chapter will give a short description of migratory pathways to Greece as they have developed in the last fifteen years. It is generally accepted that since the 1990s Greece has become an important host country for labour migration and also for transit migration from the East to the West, that is, into the more industrialized countries of Western Europe. Looking at the available statistical data it is impressive to note that within a decade Greece has changed from a country sending labour migrants to Western Europe, America and elsewhere to a country receiving economic migrants from the neighbouring Balkan countries, from countries of the former Soviet Union and also from the Middle East and East Africa (Bacas 2002). Greece has experienced major changes in the composition of its population from the national census of 1991, where the percentage of foreigners in Greece was about one percent, to the national census of 2001, where the percentage of foreigners was about seven percent, until today, where approximately ten percent of the population are foreign labour migrants and their families in a country of 11.3 million inhabitants in total.6 The reasons and effects of this recent immigration flow into Greece are widely discussed in the national press and the subject of a number of scientific studies and research projects in Greece which cannot be presented here in detail.7 In relation to the ongoing discussion on irregular migration in Southeastern Europe, it is important to note that the large-scale arrival of economic migrants to Greece after the fall of the Iron Curtain was based mainly on irregular border crossing and thus could be characterized as illegal immigration.8 In the period after 1990, hundreds and thousands of economically motivated migrants from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Soviet Union crossed the Greek-Albanian and the Greek-Bulgarian borders clandestinely and by disregarding national and European visa regulations. Most of the migrant workers who arrived in this period not only entered the country clandestinely, but also 6 7 8 An overview on recent population changes in Greece due to labour immigration after the fall of the Iron Curtain is given in Kasimis/Kasimi (2003) and Lauth Bacas (2002). An overview of recent research as well as Greek and international literature on labour migration to Greece is presented by Petronoti, Triantafyllidou (2003). On the social condition of illegality in migration processes see Chavez (2007). Important for a better understanding of recent transnational migration flows is the contribution of Glick Schiller et al. (1994): “From migrant to transit migrant”.