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as mentioned above, migrant life in Greece means a life of segregation defined and
enforced by engrained public categories of otherness.
Beyond the doubt among migrants that they may ever integrate with the
mainstream, a number of institutional and legal frameworks of migration in Greece until
the early 2000s ensured that this population was unable to represent itself politically
(Gropas & Triandafyllidou 2009). As mentioned above, my interviews with senior-level
lawyers at the ombudsman’s office and with administrators at several Foreigner’s
Bureaus confirmed that the state’s intention as these individuals understood it - was to
ensure migrants had no access to conventional citizenship (also observed by Gropas &
Triandafyllidou 2009). Migrants are to remain liminal, in the law and society, until
Greece can develop a strategy to reduce the human inflow from abroad and manage (or
reduce) their local integration. My consultants explained that at the heart of this move
was an attempt to avoid a “cosmopolitan” Greece whereby “Hellenism” might be
adversely affected by multiculturalism. This is not a new argument. Greece has long
been an area of interconnection and rich ethnic mosaic (Andromedas 1976), but
historically, the state has insisted to the contrary (Just 1989). It follows that attempts to
extend citizenship to individuals not of Greek descent has been met with resistance by
politicians and activists citing a need to preserve “Greek ethnicity”. To this end,
undocumented - and even documented migrants with no claim to a Greek heritage have
been barred from citizenship by extraordinary application fees, procedures, and
requirements among the most rigid and exclusionary in the EU (see the naturalization law
2910/2001, articles 58-64). At best, these individuals and their children can hope for