German Council on
Foreign Relations
New Faces Conference Paper
Citizenship in Greece
Impossibility for the Second Generation of Migrants
Christos Iliadis
Summary
Greece has recently seen intense internal debate over “second-generation”
migrants and their right to citizenship. The country’s citizenship code, launched
in 2010 by the center-left government, introduced citizenship not only as part of
state sovereignty but also as a right for those meeting certain criteria. However,
in early 2013, key provisions of the law were ruled unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court on the grounds that the Greek “national community” should be
protected from losing its character. As a result of this ruling, hundreds of
thousands of children of migrant origin do not today have a right to Greek
citizenship. The naturalization process will, moreover, remain extremely difficult
and expensive for them when they become adults. This article argues for a new
politics of citizenship that promotes citizenship participation, approaching
citizenship as a practice of freedom and not only as a legal relation defined by the
state.
The content of this paper does not reflect the opinion of the DGAP.
Responsibility for the information and views expressed herein lies entirely
with the author.
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Citizenship in Greece
Impossibility for the Second Generation of Migrants
Christos Iliadis
Introduction
Migration poses new challenges to the traditional conception of citizenship. It
introduces a rupture in the link between the “citizen” with the co-national.
These challenges are vivid in countries of the northern Mediterranean, which
receive high numbers of immigrants from regions located to the south. The
debate in Greece over “second-generation” migrants and their right to
citizenship is characteristic of a dispute over different conceptions of citizenship.
The country’s citizenship code, launched in 2010 by the center-left PASOK
government, introduced citizenship not only as part of state sovereignty but also
as a right for those meeting certain criteria. Key provisions of the law were soon
ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Greek
“national community” should be protected from losing its character. As a result
of this ruling, today hundreds of thousands of children of migrant origin do not
have a right to Greek citizenship, and obtaining citizen status through
naturalization is extremely difficult for them and their families even when they
become adults. This article argues for a new politics of citizenship that will
promote citizenship participation, approaching citizenship as a practice of freedom
and not only as a legal relation defined by the state.
What is Citizenship? Different Forms and Functions
New approaches extend the traditional conception of citizenship beyond legal
rights and formal membership into a society. Citizenship is not only considered
a formal relationship between an individual and a state, or a privilege of the
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sovereign. Rather, it is an identity for the subject and a right that is forged by
participating in everyday practices with fellow citizens.
As a legal category, citizenship constitutes a formal relationship between an
individual and a state, defining certain rights and responsibilities. In this formal
relationship, citizenship:
•
defines an “us and them” relationship, creating a community of those
who hold the same citizenship and leaving out those that do not;
•
is a name for the individual given by a state; a state calls someone a
“citizen” (e.g. Greek, or a Turk) or a “third-country national”; this
designation – like all designations – describes a citizen (“Greek citizen”)
but also constitutes a citizen by saying to someone that he/she “is a
citizen” with certain characteristics, rights, and responsibilities;
•
shows who the state wants for its citizens and who it wants to exclude;
when a state grants citizen status to an individual, it implies a desire that
this individual should be a citizen and its faith in the individual’s ability
to honor this status.
In addition to a formal relationship between an individual and a state – and to a
certain extent, as a result of this formal relationship – citizenship has another
crucial characteristic. It constitutes a certain identity for the subject. This identity
is formulated not only by the formal status of a “citizen” but also by his or her
participation in everyday practices with fellow citizens. In that way, citizenship is
a form of belonging (and not a legal term) that is developed through the
interaction with others and through participation in public processes.
Linda Bosniak has summarized the different characteristics of citizenship as
follows: “For liberal and democratic societies citizenship is always dual and
contradictory.” On the one hand, “citizenship functions as the basic framework
for inclusion and democratic belonging (universal citizenship)” but on the other
hand, “citizenship presupposes the existence of a limited and bounded national
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community based on the exclusion of non-members (bounded citizenship).”1
That is why identity is one of the core elements of citizenship, and the latter is a
mechanism of subject formation.2
It is these two forms of citizenship that one recognizes in the words of Odysseas
Tsenai, an ethnic Albanian who became the center of a dispute on whether
Albanians should be able to hold the Greek flag during school parades. When
Tsenai was asked “did you feel like a foreigner while living in Greece?” he
replied: “Of course I felt like a foreigner with the Greek flag incident, or
whenever I had to go to a public authority. But in my everyday life with my
friends and classmates I do not feel like a foreigner.”3
The Debate over “Second-Generation” Migrants in Greece
In Greece – as in many other countries – citizenship is mainly considered a
privilege that the state gives to those capable of honoring it. That is why the
Greek state has historically granted citizenship to certain groups or individuals
because they were considered “of the same soil” as the Greeks (omogeneis) or
because of an individual’s impressive performance. The athletic prowess of
basketball player Giannis Adetokunbo is a recent example of the latter.4 On the
other hand, hundreds of thousands of Greek citizens were in the past deprived
of citizenship status because they were considered enemies of the state; many
Greek communists, Slavic-speakers of Greek Macedonia, and ethnic Turks of
Greek Thrace are three twentieth-century examples.
The citizenship code of 2010 introduced two key elements into Greek law that
broke with this tradition. First, it outlined the state’s obligation to explain its
grounds for rejecting an application. This secured the transparency of the
process, as all rejections could be subject to appeal and removed citizenship
from the “dark” area of state sovereignty. Second, citizenship became a right of
those fulfilling certain criteria and not just a privilege granted by the state.
Candidates who met the criteria – i.e. those born in Greece or who had attended
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Greek schools for six years and whose parents had lived legally in the country
for the previous five years – were now able to obtain Greek citizenship simply
by applying for it, without needing to undertake the difficult and expensive
naturalization process. The law, furthermore, was to give legal migrants the
right to vote and run in local elections.
The 2010 citizenship code provoked a long and angry political debate on who
should be a Greek citizen. Indeed, it was the last big public debate to take place
before Greece officially entered into economic crisis some weeks later.
Politicians, academics, journalists, students, human rights activists, the church,
second-generation migrants, and everyday people expressed their opinion on the
bill. And rightly so: for the first time in Greek political history, a nationality code
would make more categories of people eligible for acquiring citizenship. That
represented a U-turn away from the traditional conception of Greek citizenship:
the sole privilege of those born to at least one Greek parent.
After an appeal in the Supreme Court, two key provisions of the citizenship law
were deemed unconstitutional and were cancelled in April 2013. It was
determined that Greek citizenship cannot be automatically granted to secondgeneration migrants and that non-citizens cannot vote in local elections.
One of the basic claims of the court was that citizenship should be linked to
Greek national identity. Citizenship should therefore be “the final step of an
integration process for those that have acquired an original bond with the
dominant community,” as the Court put it. In contrast, the criteria of 1) birth to
parents legally staying in the country and 2) studying for at least six years in a Greek school
were for the court “formal criteria” that are not able to manifest this original
bond.
The Supreme Court decision introduced certain characteristics to Greek
citizenship and defined them as constitutional. First, citizenship is viewed as part
of the sovereignty of the state, not a right for people who meet a set of
standards. Second, citizenship should be granted at the end of an integration
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process and not as part of an integration process. In order to become a (Greek)
citizen, a candidate should thus be already part of the Greek ethnic community.
Also, a foreigner (or the child of a foreigner) should, according to the court,
manifest an “original bond” to Greek society before he or she obtains Greek
citizenship. An individual’s naturalization process – even for children who were
born and raised in Greece – should therefore be the only route to obtaining
citizenship. Finally the court introduced the distinction between those of “Greek
soil/origin” and those that are not, arguing that the first should have priority
over others in terms of citizenship.
The court’s decision and the interpretation of Greek citizenship that it fixed as
constitutional have certain implications, not only for the perception of Greek
citizenship but also for hundreds of thousands of Greeks of other ethnic
backgrounds who cannot obtain the Greek citizenship. Today, for the first time
in the country’s history, almost 10 percent of Greece’s population does not
possess Greek citizenship.5 Migrants and (especially) their children who have
lived for years in the country and consider Greece their only home do not in
practice have access to citizenship or the right to vote. Children and the youth
belonging to the second generation include up to 200,000 people, and the
number is growing.6 These children and young adults born to immigrant parents
are considered (and treated as) “aliens” and “third-country nationals.” They
often have no official documentation and no rights at all. In the best cases, they
are able to obtain the status of “long-term resident.” Such children, born or
raised in Greece, within the European Union, have access to formal citizenship
only after they are 18 and only through a naturalization process on an individual
basis. In practice, very few of them go through this process, as it is expensive,
very bureaucratic, and time consuming. They get by with a temporary residence
status which they need to renew every few years and they can lose it at any time
if they are not able to find a job. Even if they feel and live like Greeks, they do
not hold Greek citizenship.
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The ever-increasing number of people who have lived in Greece for years –
many of them with their families – and act as Greeks without possessing Greek
citizenship, gives rise to what has been called “impossible citizens.” Their
inclusion in Greek society is a social reality but a legal impossibility.
New Politics of Citizenship
The annulment in 2013 of the 2010 citizenship code, taking place in a period of
economic crisis that affects not only individual but mainly social rights, deepens
the democratic deficit and has a negative effect on democratic processes in
Greece. Because of it, a large number of people who consider themselves Greek
are officially treated as aliens, unable to participate in the public sphere on an
equal footing with Greek citizens. A new politics of citizenship is urgently
needed, one that will promote citizenship participation and approach citizenship
as a practice of freedom and not only as a legal relation “owned” by the state.
Citizenship as a practice of freedom should include all those who have
developed bonds with their country of residence in order to participate equally
by having a say and negotiating how power is exercised and who exercises it.
Political struggles for more democratic forms and practices of participation,
together
with
established
struggles
of
democratic
participation,
can
fundamentally change the ethos of citizenship and democracy.
Christos Iliadis is a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University
(Athens) and works as a trainer-facilitator for the Council of Europe on
Roma integration in Greece. He earned his BA in political science and
history from Panteion University (Athens) and his MA in political
science from the University of Athens. An alumnus of EUMEF, he
obtained his PhD from the department of government at the University
of Essex in 2012.
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This paper is based on a presentation made at the “New Faces Conference: Citizenship and
Political Participation in the Mediterranean” in February 2014, held within the framework
of the EU-Middle East Forum (EUMEF) at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
EUMEF is a dialogue and exchange platform on developments in the Arab region and
Europe geared toward young and mid-level professionals from North Africa, Turkey, and the
EU. This publication is part of a series intended to showcase a new generation of scholars,
politicians, journalists, and representatives of civil society and shed new light on legal, political,
and media developments as well as broader social trends in the EU and its Mediterranean
neighborhood. It is realized with the support of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations
(ifa e.V.) and the German Federal Foreign Office.
Notes
Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton,
2006), pp. 8–9.
2
See also: William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (London, 1974); Mae M.
Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton,
2004); Andromachi Papaioannou, “Who Can (Not) Be Greek? Citizenship, Identity and
Belonging among Youth of Sub-Saharan African Background in Athens” (PhD diss.,
University of Bolognia, 2013); James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge,
2010).
3 Odysseas Tsenai, interview (in Greek), Antapokritis, February 10, 2010
<http://antapokritis.wordpress.com> (accessed, October 15, 2013).
4 Giannis Antetokounmpo is a typical “second-generation” migrant. Born in Athens in
1994 to Nigerian parents, Giannis does not have Nigerian nationality, as he has never been
to the country. Nor, after 19 years in Greece, could he obtain Greek citizenship. He lived
with a residence permit until April 28, 2013, when he entered his name into the 2013 NBA
draft and was selected fifteenth overall by the Milwaukee Bucks: a spectacular position, and
the highest ever for a “Greek” player. Less than two weeks later, on May 9, Giannis
officially obtained full Greek citizenship. The intervention of the prime minister was
required – along with numerous pictures with him – for a 19-year-old boy born and raised
in Greece to become a Greek citizen.
5 The International Organization of Migration estimates the percentage of immigrants in
Greece in 2013 to be 8.9 percent of the total population. If to that number we add
refugees, asylum seekers, and others under international protection (almost 73,000
according to the UNHCR), we reach 9.5 percent. Other estimates hold the percentage of
migrants (both regular and irregular) in Greece to be over 10 percent.
6 The estimate is based on official data on schooling of children without Greek citizenship
(almost 120,000 in 2010 according to the official Institute of Education, IPODE), plus the
number of births over the past five years.
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