Public Reporting of Criminal Activities to the Police in Greece: Is There a Difference when the Offender is Migrant?

At the beginning of the 1990s Greece, along with other European countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, was transformed from a country of emigration to a country of immigration. Since then, the phenomenon of migration in Greece constitutes the central topic of an endless debate amongst politicians, social scientists, the public and the media, which influences the perception, and most importantly the ‘positions’ and reactions of certain individuals and groups (to an unknown extent though), and consequently the state’s control apparatus. The notions of ethnicity and migration have started to concern Greece and become intertwined with several other issues in the social sphere. Migration in Greece, as well as in other countries of the EU and generally the western, rich world, has been identified with a number of ‘social problems’. Hence, there has been a general negative discourse about migrants and migration. The arrival of migrants has been often compared to unstoppable weather and natural phenomena or to invading hordes, their number has been described as a ‘crisis’, and their presence in a country has been discussed within the context of problems of integration and assimilation, unemployment, national insecurity, and crime. The London bombings of 7 July 2005 and the recent riots in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities fed debates of such nature. According to a recent Eurobarometer, immigration is a major cause of concern among the citizens of the 15 old member-states of the EU.