Back in the day, the overwhelming majority of Greeks stayed in their villages. Even moving to the nearest town or city was a big decision that had to be carefully considered. Apart from being a difficult journey – usually carried out on foot and occasionally by mule – there was the severing of ties with family and friends, with the exception of a few letters here and there, and they, too, often had trouble reaching their destination.
The ability to own a car made things easier and, more importantly, cheaper. Domestic migrants could suddenly return to their villages for Easter, Christmas and the summer holidays. Progress in transportation (and especially air travel) also made it possible for those who had moved further afield to travel back home. Today there are Greeks who work in other European countries and fly back for the weekend – and it’s not just the Euro MPs.
Technology slashed the cost of travel, sending Greeks further away, and, in the meantime, economic prosperity in the West expanded the divide between developing and developed countries, while take-up declined for manual labor and other jobs requiring few skills in Europe and the rest of the West. “Who works on the farms anymore? Who works construction?” old-timers will ask. Up until a few years ago, the answer was “Albanians.” But they’re not interested anymore either. Many worked very hard for many years, put away a decent amount of money and went back home. Others who came to Greece in the early 1990s are now getting ready to retire. Their children are completely assimilated into Greek society and have the same work ethic. So the only hands left to work on the farms and construction sites are the more recently arrived immigrants, but we don’t want them here.
The first influx of Albanian laborers was also met with racist reactions from Greek society, but these soon died down for two reasons. First, the ideological dominance of the Left quelled such racist rhetoric. Secondly, and most importantly, the cheap and uninsured labor provided by foreign workers synched well with the small scale of Greek business and the needs of a burgeoning middle class that needed someone to trim the hedges, build the wall at their summer home and look after their aging parents. Immigration is, first and foremost, driven by economic expediency: both for those leaving their countries and those welcoming them into theirs.
The economic situation has now changed, not just in Greece but everywhere. The West is no longer optimistic about the future. And it is this pessimism that the far-right is taking advantage of with its anti-immigration rhetoric. But to be honest, it does hold the key to the migration issue, because whenever populists have taken over, they have made such a mess of the country that even immigrants don’t want to come anymore.