MIGRANTS AS A POLITICAL ENTERPRISE: THE GREEK-ALBANIAN CASE
The following article is excerpted from a paper presented at the Prague Conference of the European Group for the Study of Social Deviance and Control by Vassilis Karydis, lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Democritus University, Thrace. The author's observations on the use of stereotypes linking minorities and immigration to crime as a public justification for both "law and order" policies and genuinely political aims diserve interest as an analysis not only of current developments in Greece, but also of generally applicable characteristics of the deliberate "blending" of the perception of crime and migration for political purposes.A year ago, I described the construction, against the background of a massive presence of Albanian migrants in Athens, of the stereotype of the "dangerous Albanian". According to this stereotype, penniless, unskilled, predatory, violent and untrustworthy young males were responsible for most of the serious crimes committed in the capital. My claim that this was a false stereotype, not supported by a careful assessment of the indices of criminality, was recently verified by the presentation of police statistics for the previous two years. These figures show that, while foreigners make up 5% of the population as a whole and 10% of the active population (the overwhelming majority of foreigners are young healthy males), they committed only 1% of the total number of crimes.
Nonetheless, despite of this fact, the fear of crime has increased not only in Athens but all over Greece, the public hysteria about an "Albanian threat" is still growing, and the the stereotype described above has been consolidated and amplified. Moreover, the matter has been further complicated by recent political maneouvres. Namely, the Albanian government deported an active priest of the Greek Orthodox minority located in Southern Albania (Northern Epirus), claiming that he was acting against Albanian state interests. As a reprisal, the Greek government took action against the illegal Albanian migrants in Greec. About 20.000 of them were arrested and deported within a week in the course of a huge "sweep-out" police operation. Commenting the operation the Minister of Public Order not only stressed, that Albanians were responsible for serious criminality and that their presence in the country created unemployment, but openly called on all citizens to co-operate with the police in hunting illegal migrants in order to put an end to the problems allegedly caused by their presence. Several cases of denounciation seem to indicate that the Minister's appeal to the public did not remain unheard.
Yet, the Greek-Albanian crisis caused by the above incidents was soon overcome by diplomatic channels and the usual pattern restored: illegal migrants performing underpaid and undesirable jobs, widespread fear of Albanian criminals, reduction of police activity to the usual level, headlines in the mass media for any crime committed by an Albanian, and racist attacks against Albanians now and then.
This development calls for an interpretation that differs to a certain extent from my previous analysis.
Specifically, I used the interactionist approach as a theoretical and methodological tool describing the process of interaction leading to the construction of a false stereotype through the action of law enforcement agencies and with the mass media acting as a mediator towards the collective social consciousness. According to this approach, the stereotype could be useful to the state power in that it reinforces social control over society, legitimises repressive laws and consolidates the consensus concerningthe (often arbitrary) action of law enforcement agencies. This assessment is valid. However, the overtly political element which has revealed itself since, underlines another dimension of the problem which I underestimated in my previous analysis limited to the "labelling" perspective. The reason why I insist on on this lack is that, in my view, the theoretical perspective employed in each particular case must fit the societal reality itself and not pre-conceived academic convictions. I will come back to this point later in this piece.
Before further interpreting the problem in question, I must state preliminarily that a consistent policy for the reduction of crime does not exist in Greece. The criminal justice system is characterised by an amateurish empiricism often leading to contradictory policies. It seems, for instance, that a "law and order" approach has been adopted in recent years, showing in tougher laws especially for drug related offences and to a general toughening of judicial decisions pertaining to pre-trial detention and the increase of penalty. This, in its turn, led to a sudden over-crowding in prisons and to the enactment of a new law facilitating early release in order to releive the prison system.
At the same time, criminologists are almost ignored. They never participate in decision making, while on the other hand scientific research is almost non existent due to the lack of funds, and theory often confines itself to the summary application of theoretical concepts reflecting the experience of other countries, mainly the developed Western European and Northern American societies. As a consequence, there are no clearly stated principles of policy, neither supported by research findings critical of the criminal justice system nor based on a public debate over the major issues involved. This situation obviously makes things easier for the administration since they do not really feel obliged to explain policy shifts in one direction or another.
In order to understand the following, one must know that the Greek government is a conservative "neo-liberal" government facing serious problems of cohesion, whereas the Albanian government is an authorian administration with a population at the borderline of existence. It is obvious that in the context of Balcan nationalism a subtile political game is taking place between the Albanian and the Greek governments. It concerns on the one hand the Greek orthodox minority living in Southern Albania and on the other hand the hundreds of thousands of illegal Albanian migrants in Greece. There are two components of this game:
- The political situation in the Balcans and the awakening of the most backward nationalism in which both countries did not avoid to engage (Greece over the name of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania with Serbia over the Albanian minority in Kosovo.
- The political, social, and economic situation inside each of the two countries which threatens the stability of both governments.
In the game, both sides recurr to methods of political "hostage taking" - the Albanian side by restricting the rights of its minority population, the Greek one by threatening to deport all Albanian migrants and thus causing serious problems to Albanian economy and society. Within this context, the stereotype of the "dangerous Albanian" has been used in strictly political terms, which I will refer to hereinafter.
In recent years criminological discourse and disarray has been confined between two main poles: On the one hand the conservative "law and order" wing which is currently dominant in many European and Northern American criminal justice systems and on the other hand the advocates of a social-democratic "left realism" striving for the application od due process and respect for human rights within the present system. Radical critique is presented as having retreated into obsolete neo-marxist premises of utopiandogmatism. Yet, one wonders how phenomena like the one examined here could be interpreted without making some use of key concepts of marxist theory and method pertaining to the repercussion of internal affairs in foreign policy and vice versa.
In the case of Albanian migrants in Greece we notice that in a sense political considerations transform the social reality. The Greek government deliberately refrains from finding a solution to the problem of illegal migrants and their real or supposed deviant activities. The power-holders to not just take political advantage of the false stereotype of the collective social consciousness or the prejudices of the law enforcement agencies which dictate a discriminatory policy against the Albanian migrants community, but, the other way round, the government itself actively cultivates the stereotype for threefold use: First, to facilitate the enactment of repressive criminal legislation and general penal practice making use of the prevailing hysteria; second, to make political gains by building up a profile of relentlessness and determination in defending internal security and public order against enemies, social or national; third, to, to dispose of a ready-for-use political weapon in case of a real deterioration of realations with Albania.
This is obviously the reason why the Albanian migrants are kept in a status of illegality, while at the same time they are highly visible all over Greece and the Greek government avoids to settle on one of the two existing policy alternatives: either to legalise the presence of the Albanians and contribute to the relief of social tensions and criminogenic conditions correlated with illegality, or to enforce the existing (draconian) law by deporting the migrants and preventing them from crossing the border. Instead, the government, in a rare demonstration of cynicism and hypocrisy, seems to have opted for a "third way" well suiting its political objectives, i.e, a the maintenance of a condition of semi-illegality resulting in a situation of continuous insecurity for the migrants. At the same time, the parliamentary opposition (socialist and marxist left) seems to accept this policy, afraid or unable to propose a clear-cut strategy towards a radical solution of the problem.. On the other hand, the people the people stand in confused apathy, everybody within his own party committmeng and in a more or less voter-client relationship.
My conclusion therefore is that if we exclude politics (in the very strict sense of the term) from the criminological discourse, we will find ourselves fighting against windmills while affirming that we are stepping on solid ground.
Vassilis Karydis
Contact: Vassilys Karydis, 56, Sina Str, 10672 Athens, Greece, Tel: +30/1 3612406, Fax: +30/1 3622067