The Greek Refugee Crisis

Synonyms

Greece; Immigration policy; Refugee crisis; Schengen agreement

Definition

Refugee policy consists of measures taken by governments to regulate the transit across national borders of those people fleeing persecution or open conflict at home.

Introduction

Efforts to address the refugee crisis in Greece (2012–2016) have mostly failed to produce the desired results with few prospects for improvement in the future. The complexity and transnational nature of the refugee issue coupled with austerity and lack of administrative capacity in Greece pose nearly insurmountable problems to effective policy and implementation. The refugee crisis is important not only because it has received inadequate scholarly attention so far but also because at its core, the Syrian crisis represents what António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), claimed to be “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era” (Edwards 2014). By the end of 2015, 1,015,078 migrants had crossed the...