In the summer of 2025, I traveled to Greece for a research trip and, during a break from the “migration seminars,” I took a walk in the Attiki neighbourhood of Athens. On a nearby wall, a striking piece of graffiti welcoming immigrants loomed as a sharp rebuke to the myths and political lies told about immigrants. The graffiti is a stark reminder that the truth of Europe’s migration policy resides not in the polished legislation or press conferences, but in the margins: the streets, in art, in the voices of those living the consequences of Europe’s migration policy.
That memory returns now as two Mediterranean European Union (EU) states move in sharply different directions. In Greece, the government is pushing a new migration bill, which is likely to entrench a hardline approach against the people seeking protection. On the other hand, Spain has announced plans to legalise the status of approximately half a million undocumented migrants, many of whom have overstayed visas.
On the face of it, these two different directions represent a familiar split in the EU’s migration policy: deterrence versus regularisation, and border control versus integration. The contrast begs the question: what does Europe do with the people who are already here, already contributing, already surviving, albeit often without rights?
Greece: Legislating Deterrence at the Margins of Europe
Greece has long been positioned as Europe’s gatekeeper tasked with preventing migrant arrivals before they reach the EU interior. As a key entry point to the EU, Greece has indeed borne the pressure of arrivals, EU border expectations, and domestic “right-wing” politics. This has coalesced into a system characterised by overcrowding reception centres, legal bottlenecks, and deliberate pushbacks at land and sea frontiers. Rather than addressing these structural fault lines, the draft law of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum risks normalising them through law.
In explaining the essence of the bill, the Minister of Migration and Asylum, Thanos Plevris, is quoted as saying:
“When someone is denied asylum and has violated Greek law by remaining illegally in Greek territory, they will be subject to administrative detention and electronic surveillance and criminal sanctions.”
The essence of the bill is that migrants who entered the country illegally cannot acquire legal status. In other words, the migrants who are in the country “illegally” will remain “illegal” and face arrest, imprisonment, and deportation.
The bill has drawn widespread condemnation from human rights NGOs, civil society, and left-wing politicians in Greece. They are of the view that the bill is not only strict but will also normalise a logic that has shaped Greek migration governance for years: deterrence first, protection second.
Giorgos Psychogis, the deputy leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA-PS), and civil society organisations warn that the new migration law would expand detention practices, restrict procedural mechanisms, and intensify penalties, pushing migrants into legal precarity rather than lawful status.
The draft law is condemned on the following legal bases:
Overly restrictive “second chance permit”: Article 40 excludes long-term residents who became irregular due to administrative or formal errors, despite deep social and family ties to Greece, exemplified by long-standing migrant workers facing deportation.
Residence permits tied to short-term unemployment: Provisions allowing permit loss after just 3–6 months of unemployment create chronic insecurity, particularly harming migrants in seasonal and precarious sectors.
Problematic and regressive policy language: The use of the term “illegal immigration” is condemned as politically charged, outdated, and inconsistent with international and official diplomatic terminology.
Erosion of integration and civil society protections: The abolition of the ten-year permit for unaccompanied minors and restrictions on NGOs undermine long-term integration efforts, the rule of law, and the right to association, prompting calls to limit administrative detention and adopt rights-based reforms.
Arguably, by codifying exclusion, Greece’s approach has made protection conditional, procedural, and increasingly inaccessible. Harsh measures are defended as necessary to discourage arrivals, even as evidence shows that people continue to move despite rising risks. Conflict, persecution, and economic precarity do not disappear because borders harden. Instead, migration routes become more dangerous, increasing reliance on smugglers and intensifying human suffering.
Spain: Regularisation as Recognition of Social Reality
As Greece adopts a punitive approach, Spain tilts towards regularisation and integration.
Elma Saiz, Spain’s minister for inclusion, social security, and migration, views the policy as a “migratory model based on human rights, on integration and on coexistence that’s compatible with both economic growth and social cohesion.”
“…legality is a pathway to dignity and not a reward for it.”
The regularisation programme aims to legalise 300,000-500,000 undocumented migrants and will be implemented between April and June 2026. The core objective of the formalisation of undocumented migrants is to bring people already living and/or working in Spain into the legal labour market. This will enable them to pay taxes and contribute to social security, rather than remaining in the shadows of the informal economy.
To qualify for the programme, the applicants must not have a criminal record and should already have been in Spain before Dec. 31, 2025. The applicants should also prove at least five months of continuous residence and meet at least one of the following criteria:
- They have worked or can present a job offer
- They live in Spain with their family unit (for example, school-age children or children with disabilities)
- They are in a certified situation of vulnerability
This move reflects Spain’s demographic and labour challenges, which ironically mirror those plaguing the broader EU. An ageing population and labour shortages make exclusion economically unsustainable. Granting legal status to undocumented migrants should not be seen as condoning irregular migration; it should be viewed as a way to reduce exploitation, increase tax contributions, and improve social cohesion. Ultimately, it restores a degree of legal certainty for people who have already built lives, families, and communities in Spain.
In Greece’s controversial bill, Article 40 provisions of the “second chance permit” are narrow and may create a situation of precarity for migrants. A case in question is one cited by Mr. Psychogis of an Albanian worker who came to Greece in 1992, has children in schools, but is at risk of deportation due to a formal error in his application. Spain has gone against such absurdity of excluding the very people who are an organic part of the local societies, but are somehow labelled “illegal.” In the words of Edith Espínola, of the movement Regularización.Ya (Regularization Now):
“Regularisation makes you feel like a citizen and a person. It stops you feeling like an object, and it lets you fight for your rights. You know those rights are yours, but they’re never really yours until you have a plastic card that says you’re a resident of this country”.
Espínola, who is also the director of the Empowerment Center for Domestic and Care Workers (CETHYC), continues to represent migrants and anti-racist associations for the regularization of migrants in Spain. She also offers training to help migrants recognise exploitative practices.
Related Articles
Here is a list of articles selected by our Editorial Board that have gained significant interest from the public:
- Europe’s Double Face on Migration
- The Convoluted Logic Behind the UK’s Draconian Immigration Laws
- The Artificial Political Divide: How France’s Immigration Debate Masks Social Reality
- “Plain Wrong and Racist”: Britain’s New Migration Plans
- Europe’s Refugee Crisis Is a Crisis of Humanity, not Migration.
What Kind of Europe Is Being Built?
The divergent paths taken by Athens and Madrid illuminate a fundamental tension at the heart of EU migration governance in Brussels. The question for determination remains: are irregular migrants a threat to be contained or residents to be integrated? Arguably, Spain’s regularisation initiative embraces a practical and moral reality. It acknowledges that undocumented migrants are already embedded in the socio-economic and political fabric of their host societies.
The relationship is symbiotic, and legality is a pathway to dignity and not a reward for it.
Greece’s proposed draft law, by contrast, is punitive and prioritizes deterrence over humanity. The problem with this approach is that it risks creating a permanent underclass of people trapped in legal limbo. It says someone amongst us is the odd-looking fellow and does not belong. The reality that should sink in here is that EU economies continue to rely on migrant labour while maintaining legal systems that make regular entry and residence almost impossible. Therefore, legislation against irregular migration is not a pull factor, but the demand for labour combined with the absence of accessible pathways.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In The Cover Photo: Syrian and Iraqi refugees arrive at Skala Sikamineas, Lesbos, Greece, October 2015. Cover Photo Credit: Ggia.
