Country Dossier Greece: WP7 - Return Aspirations and Trajectories of Migrants

This Country Dossier focusing on Greece is part of Work Package 7 of the GAPs project. It examines migrants’ experiences in Greece, both as a settlement and transit country, focusing on shifting aspirations, social integration, and mobility decisions, especially as regards the ‘pre-return phase’. The ‘pre-return phase’ is perceived broadly, to include migrants who are found in the ‘spectrum of risk of return’, including those who are at close or mid-term risk of return, either today or in the near future. Moreover, recognising that return is part of complex, non-linear migration trajectories, the dossier also highlights patterns such as onward movements, re-orientations, periods of rest, and intermediate settlements. These trajectories include multiple returns to countries of origin, re-migration to Greece, or circular migration. Migrants’ return experiences encompass both forced and assisted voluntary returns, viewed as part of a continuum of coercion rather than a strict dichotomy.

The Dossier, first, examines migrants’ agency in their movements and the reasons behind them, including not only migration to Greece but also their complex and non-linear trajectories. Second, it investigates the integration context in Greece, focusing on issues related to economic and labour precarity, housing instability, processes of irregularisation, institutional racism, policing, deportability, and the barriers to accessing essential services. It argues that the social and economic context of settlement and integration in Greece, as determined also by the governance of migration, both has affected previous mobilities and impacts on perceptions and future aspirations. Third, the Country Dossier analyses social networks, family and institutions by focusing on the neighbourhood level (though not exclusively) to shed light on relationships ranging from mutual care and racism, on the importance of friends and family and on migrants’ involvement in migrant communities and other political organisations. Fourth, it discusses migrants’ perceptions of returning to their country of origin, followed by their views on the possibility of migrating elsewhere. Importantly, a range of mixed drivers of return decision emerge, including irregularisation and the non-possession of a stable and long term legal status, the employment precarity and labour exploitation, health issues and physical exhaustion among others. Finally, the Country Dossier proposes a flexible typology of migration trajectories, grounded in the research findings and shaped by the prevailing social, political, and economic conditions in Greece.

The findings are based on both desk research and primary research involving 30 interviews with migrants who are found in the broad ‘spectrum of risk of return’ either today or in the near future. The interview sample included participants currently holding regular status after experiences of irregularisation in the past, as well as irregularised migrants, including long-settled ones, people who have recently arrived and remained irregularised, and rejected asylum seekers from countries with ‘low recognition rates’. Field research also included several ethnographic tools such as field visits, observations and guided tours in different places in Athens.