Undocumented Migrants in Greece: Issues of Regularization

This article studies migration from Albania into Greece and schematically looks at the socio‐economic integration and/or exclusion of Albanians. It explores the issue of regularization: first, providing an explanation for the choices made by a government by using a simple game‐theoretic framework and, second, it outlines the current efforts made towards regularization of undocumented migrants in Greece. The game‐theoretic example shows that, under certain conditions, the optimal policy for a government is not to legalize an illegal immigrant, whereas under different conditions the optimal policy is to regularize. These conditions relate to factors such as the relative magnitude of the government’s payoffs which are in turn dependent on public opinion, lobbying activities, the presence of migrants' associations and the like. The article then reviews the case of Greece, where initially migrant workers were not regularized whereas at present there exists a new legal framework for their regularization. The character of Albanian migration into Greece reflects two things: the changing global nature of international migration and the way in which migrants in Southern Europe are embedded in the specific model of Southern European post‐industrial society.