“Because of the isolation during the years of communism, I wanted to know what kind of world was outside my country,” Shehu recalled. “I wanted to feel free and take my life into my own hands.”

Some of those reaching Greece claimed political asylum, but largely they entered illegally.

Today, roughly 500,000 Albanians have permanent residence in Greece, making them by far the biggest immigrant population in the country of 10.7 million.

Countless more, however, are in-between, plugging holes in the labour market while waiting years for residence permits and eventually citizenship.

Some recount bouts of xenophobic violence and racism directed against them. But while overt hostility is less visible today, institutional and informal discrimination against Albanians in Greece remains rife, to the degree that some find it easier to go by different names or change their faith.

The slow pace of Greek bureaucracy, and possible resistance to integrating Albanians, means many are made to wait years for the necessary papers to settle.

Shehu applied for citizenship in 2009, and received it in 2019.

“They are in limbo,” Shehu said of his fellow Albanians. “One foot in Greece, one foot in Albania.”

Call me ‘Yannis’

During the influx of the early 1990s, the conservative New Democracy party in power at the time – and again in government today – responded with strict new migration laws and sent Special Forces to seal the borders and round up migrants inside Greece who did not hold valid papers.

The measures had little effect, as the immigrant proportion of Greece’s population more than tripled to 7.3 per cent between 1991 and 2001. Albanians were the largest national group and now account for 51 per cent of Athens’ immigrant population.

Greece has made headlines more recently for the hostility aroused by the refugee crisis that erupted in 2015 with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of mainly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans to its shores by boat and dinghy from Turkey en route to Western Europe.

But for years, Albanians have been the target of violence and discrimination, as documented by international rights organisations and hate-crime monitors.

In 2018, Albanian’s foreign ministry condemned four Albanian deaths in Greece in one month, and called for Greek authorities to “stop the hate language that followed the events”.

In a press release, Alexandros Yennimatas, a spokesperson from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the condemnation, “generalisations” that, “do not correspond with reality.” 

“The decisiveness of the Greek authorities to crack down on crime in all its forms is a given. Likewise, we reiterate our self-evident condemnation of every form of violence and racism, which can lead to loss of human lives,” he added.

For others, discrimination was more subtle.

Altin, who declined to give his full name, arrived in the Greek capital, Athens, in 1995, and recalled working as a gardener for a Greek family. The family’s housekeeper told Altin’s boss that she was afraid of Albanians. Altin said the housekeeper later warmed to him and apologised, but today he prefers to go by the Greek name ‘Yannis’ at work.

He is not alone among Albanian immigrants in adopting Greek names. Some Muslim Albanians among them claim to be Orthodox Christians, believing they would be more readily accepted by the overwhelmingly Orthodox Greeks. Others christened their children in the Orthodox faith, regardless of their own beliefs.

Allessandra, who also declined to give her surname, arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos in 1996 under her original name Shpresa and with her daughters, Erjona and Roxhersa. But she had trouble enrolling them into Greek school.

“They told us to give them Orthodox names,” Allessandra told BIRN. “We were forced to mark Epiphany, but after that they went to school without any problem.”

The daughters are now called Maria and Sophia. “Things have got better,” said Allessandra.

Altin agreed: “Nowadays there isn’t much difference between an Albanian and a Greek,” he said. “I’m not saying that there’s no racism. There is – mostly from people who don’t know Albanians, or who are closed-minded and not interested in knowing the truth.”

Yet name changing is still a necessity for some. 

“There are so many Albanians who are forced to change their name,” said 31-year-old Nikolas, an Albanian construction worker on the island of Lefkada. He spoke on condition that his Albanian name was not published. “This is like changing who you are,” he said.

A friend, he said, changed his name from Emanuel to Manoli after his boss told him it would help him “gain my trust and get paid more.”

‘Lose-lose situation’

Infographic. Photo: BIRN/Igor Vujcic

Life has become more precarious for Albanian immigrants since Greece’s debt crisis exploded a decade ago, triggering round after round of biting austerity measures, driving unemployment up and wages down. Industries that traditionally rely on Albanian migrant labour were among the hardest hit.

Without jobs, Albanians risked losing their residence permits and many were forced to choose between staying illegally and returning to their homeland.

According to research published in 2012 by the Albanian Centre for Competitiveness and International Trade, a Tirana-based economic think-tank, roughly 18-22 per cent of Albanian migrants opted to return over a five year period.

The crisis altered migratory patterns between the neighbouring countries. While cross-border movement became more frequent, fewer residence permits were granted. In 2010, liberalisation of the visa regime meant Albanians could move back and forth without the usual papers required to cross borders. 

“The Greek economy is dependent on the Albanian labour force,” said Eda Gemi, Senior Lecturer of Political Sociology at the University of New York in Tirana and author of an upcoming book looking at return migration from Italy and Greece to Albania over the last decade.

Seasonal migration, Gemi explained, fills gaps in both Albania, which suffers from a labour shortage, and Greece, where small and medium-sized businesses are reliant on imported labour.

“We have a labour force which is on the move all the time, unregistered, which means that there’s going to be a huge burden in the future when it comes to pension schemes and the health service, especially for Albania.”

Gemi calls the phenomenon/pattern a “lose-lose situation”. 

“It’s just filling needs in the Greek economy,” she told BIRN. 

Seasonal workers in Greece are often semi-legal or ‘irregular’ migrants, without insurance, employment contracts or medical protection.

Marko, who asked that his name be changed for fear of suffering repercussions at work, said he was paid half the salary his Greek colleagues receive for picking apples in the small northern Greek city of Veria. His accommodation was an outhouse. 

“We had just one blanket for cover and that’s all,” Marko, 29, told BIRN. “We had to wash ourselves with cold water outside.”

Another fruit-picker, 43-year-old Latif, who also withheld his name, said his employer was making offensive jokes and refused to pay him for overtime or night shifts.

“‘Albanians don’t have a god’,” he quoted his boss as telling him. “This was very offensive and touched me deep inside. But I bowed my head and thought about my kids back in Albania and the money I was making.”

Latif said it was too risky to complain.

“If you dare, they threaten you with deportation or with the police,” he said.  

Neither the Greek interior ministry nor the Albanian foreign ministry responded to requests for comment regarding the treatment of Albanians in Greece.

Border violence and historical disputes

Infographic.Photo:BIRN/Igor Vujcic

In a 2013 study of Greek attitudes towards Albanians, carried out by the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, ELIAMEP, 41 per cent of respondents cited issues relating to Albanian immigration as the key problem in bilateral relations between Greece and Albania. Fifteen per cent cited ‘Albanian expansionism’.

While diplomatic relations between the two nations are relatively good, some niggling historical disputes remain. 

Greece and Albania, for example, are still technically in a ‘state of war’ dating to 1940 when Italian fascist forces in Albania invaded Greece. The neighbours signed a friendship agreement in the early 1990s and pledged in 2016 to end the formal state of war, but despite renewed attempts in 2018 to resolve the issue, it remains in place. 

Border incidents, at the same time, continue to exacerbate tensions.

In 2013, Greek police shot two Albanian brothers in the border region, saying the Albanians had opened fire first when officers trying to prevent illegal fishing came across them on Greek territory near Small Prespa Lake. One Greek police officer also died and two automatic rifles were confiscated, police said.

Relatives of the brothers, however, feel they were killed as a deterrent to other Albanian fishermen. 

“They went fishing in the early morning and didn’t come back,” said Alma Fixha, the sister of the two fishermen. “They worked this job their entire lives, but that night would be their last.”

“Since this thing happened, Albanians never dare to go fishing in the lake and for six years now my family and I don’t eat fish anymore,” said Fixha.

In 2018, a Greek Albanian man called Konstantinos Kacifa died following a shootout with Albanian police in the village of Bularat, six kilometres from the border, with reports at the time saying Kacifa fired on the officers after they removed a Greek flag he had raised at a cemetery for Greek soldiers.

Sixteen months later, Albanian prosecutors ruled he had killed himself to avoid surrender.

The shooting strained relations between the two countries, and led to a string of incidents targeting Albanians in Greece. A bomb scare, arson attack and the burning of an Albanian flag during a protest near the Greek parliament prompted the Albanian foreign ministry to summon the Greek ambassador to Tirana and express concerns. 

“We requested from the ambassador Greek authorities to condemn these grave acts that damage the climate of friendship between neighbours,” the ministry said in a statement.

Both shootings took place in a border region known to Greek nationalists as ‘Northern Epirus’, in reference to the ancient region of Epirus that straddled northwestern parts of modern-day Greece and southern Albania. 

After World War Two, Greece expelled the Muslim Chams, a sub-group of Albanians, from the border region. The Cham community continues to demand the right to return and reclaim its property but successive Greek governments have denied any such issue exists and accused the Chams of collaborating with the Nazis during the invasion of Greece.

Disenfranchised

Infographic. Photo: BIRN/Igor Vujcic

Albanian journalist and historian Arben Llalla, who was chairman of the Forum of Albanian Immigrants in the northern city of Thessaloniki in the 1990s, said Greek media bore much of the blame for the plight of Albanian immigrants.

“The majority of the Greek people are humane and pro-immigrant,” he said. “But it is the state structures through their media that incite hatred by feeding the Greek people news against immigrants.”

In the 1990s, Albanians were stereotyped in the Greek press and became associated with criminality.  

While discrimination has lessened, Llalla feels “every murder, every theft is blamed first on Albanians.” 

In a 2011 study of the Greek media, Liza Tsaliki, an associate professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, found that a quarter of articles about Albanians in three newspapers of varying political orientation concerned criminality and deviance.

The refugee crisis is fuelling xenophobia anew.

According to the European Commission, between 2015 and 2016 the percentage of Greeks who believed immigration to be among the country’s greatest concern jumped from 27 per cent to 41.5 per cent. 

Ermal Sulaj, who arrived in Greece in 1997 at the age of 15 and is now the director of the Federation of Albanian Communities in Greece, said discrimination “is no longer what it was before”.

But, having represented the Greek Albanian community on parliamentary committees, Sulaj said the main issue facing Albanians was the right to vote. In Greece, that right is denied to non-EU nationals who are resident in the country.

“We pay all the local government taxes that the locals do,” he said. “Denial of voting is de facto discrimination and Greece should be doing what other European countries do.”

“Having the vote is where your rights start,” Sulaj told BIRN.

In February 2019, towards the end of its term in government, the now-opposition left-wing SYRIZA party proposed a reform to the constitution to allow foreign nationals with permanent residence in Greece to vote and stand for office in local elections.

The debate was cut short, however, when New Democracy took power in July of that year after running on, among other things, a pledge for a tougher line on immigration.

Gemi pointed to the fact that, while Albanians represent a significant demographic in Greece, none of the political parties feature Albanian representatives. According to him, SYRIZA held talks with Albanian community representatives before the last local elections in 2019, but there was no breakthrough.

“[Political parties] were afraid of the political cost with the traditional electorate,” Gemi said. 

Since taking power from SYRIZA, New Democracy has pursued ever stricter policies on migration and asylum.

“It sounds fatalistic but I don’t think there will be any Albanian candidates in any party called Eda or Fatos,” Gemi said. 

“Of course, you might have Haris or Yanni, but they won’t present themselves as part of the Albanian community.”

This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of BIRN and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.