1 Introduction

In the past few years, in a period when Greece has been suffering deeply from the economic crisis, concomitant austerity measures and their social and political consequences, emigration is on the increase. More than 400,000 Greek citizens are estimated to have left the country after 2009,Footnote 1 making Greece a country with one of the highest emigration rates in the EU. But the crisis does not only feed the resurgence of Greek emigration in terms of volume, but also brings qualitative changes.

While most of the pre-crisis emigrants saw their migration as a significant career move and many planned to return to Greece eventually, only a minority of the post-2009 migrants view their emigration in that way. Most of them emigrate because they feel they have limited prospects in their home country and due to their overall disappointment in the socio-economic situation in Greece. Such feelings often go hand in hand with a deep disillusionment with the Greek political establishment and with state institutions (Labrianidis and Pratsinakis 2016). A transformation seems thus to be underway: migration is now more often a matter of necessity than one of choice. Necessity is here understood not in the limited sense of absolute economic need, but rather framed in terms of a wider context of lack of prospects in Greece (Triandafyllidou and Gropas 2014; Pratsinakis et al. 2017).

A characteristic subgroup of the new crisis-driven emigration concerns families leaving Greece for the well-being of their children or for restoring the earlier standard of living of the family, as well as couples who move in order to start a family life abroad. While during the post-war decades, family migration happened as part of a two-stage process with family members joining the primary (mostly male) migrant, in the current circumstances of austerity-induced migration and in the context of free mobility within the EU, decisions are also taken and realised by nuclear families. This experience raises questions about how emigration decisions are taken, what are the migration aspirations of different family members and what are their experiences and strategies abroad after migration. Limited research has been done so far in tackling those questions and the present volume aims to close this gap in the literature. This chapter in particular, takes the bird’s eye view on family-related migration from Greece at times of crisis, aiming to contextualise it as part of the outflow. First, it draws on quantitative data to present the magnitude, dynamics and demographic makeup of the current crisis-driven emigration and then singles out the particularities of family-related migration, focusing on migration within Europe and more specifically the Netherlands and Greater London. Before delving into the research findings, the methodology and theoretical framework are outlined.

2 Data and Methods

The paper draws on two data sets. The first one was compiled via a nationwide representative survey (HO survey) that was conducted through the London School of Economic’s Hellenic Observatory grant in 2015 and the second via an online survey conducted in Greater London and the Netherlands in the context of the EU-funded Marie Curie EUMIGRE project. The HO dataset is used to describe the main characteristics of the new emigration as a whole. It was carried out from March through to April 2015 by telephone interviewing, using the Greek phones database (www.greekphones.gr) that contains more than 6,000,000 landline numbers, aiming to provide a comprehensive overview of the key characteristics of the outflow. It was administered by the University Research Institute (EPI) at the University of Macedonia through a stratified sampling method based on the household as a unit of analysis. A structured questionnaire was addressed to a total of 1237 households comprising 3970 people and generated information for 248 emigrants, approximately one third of whom had left Greece after 2010. Each participant was first asked to provide detailed personal information and information about the composition of the household she/he formed part of. She/he was then asked questions about the migration intentions of the members of the household and the migration practices of the members of her/his household and descending nuclear family.

The second dataset was compiled through a combination of sampling methodologies aiming to capture the views and experiences of the migrants themselves while focusing on the Netherlands and Greater London. Due to the lack of a sample frame, transnational populations such as those addressed in the present study are impossible to reach using traditional survey modes. To account for this limitation, the EUMIGRE survey relied on a strategy that combined web-based “respondent-driven sampling” (RDS) and opt-in online survey sampling. According to RDS, a diverse group of respondents, the so-called seeds, initiated the respondent recruitment in the Netherlands and Greater London in the following manner: once they filled in the online questionnaire, they were asked to send invitations with a personalised survey link to up to three of their Greek acquaintances in the Netherlands and Greater London (people who are older than 20 years old and have stayed in the Netherlands or the UK for a minimum of 6 months). New referrals were asked to recruit further, creating several chains of referrals.Footnote 2 370 respondents in the Netherlands and 100 respondents in Greater London were recruited through this method and the sample was expanded further via the opt-in methodology generating a total of 996 respondents. The link of the survey was posted on the website of the EUMIGRE project and it was disseminated via Facebook group pages of Greek communities in London and the Netherlands targeting categories (such as people with lower educational attainments) that were not sufficiently included via the RDS methodology. Out of the 996 respondents, 277 had emigrated together with their partner, 192 are parents and 107 emigrated together with their children. 799 respondents had emigrated from 2010 onward and the remaining 197 from the early 1990s until 2009.

Finally, except from the data of those two surveys, the paper uses material from qualitative research also carried out in the context of the EUMIGRE project. This research included 48 interviews in total (4 of which concerned migrants who had left Greece together with their family), as well as data gathered through participant observation as part of my voluntary work in Amsterdam in the Greek community organisation “Neoafihthendes” that provides information and support to newcomers in the Netherlands.

3 Families on the Move in the Period of Liquid Migration

Building on Zygmunt Bauman’s work on liquid modernity and liquid life (2000, 2005),Footnote 3 Engbersen et al. (2010) have proposed “liquid migration” as a term to describe the particularities of legally unconstrained intra-European migration. In subsequent analyses, Engbersen (2012) and Engbersen and Snel (2013) described “liquid migration” as characterised by temporariness, labour migration, legal residential status, unpredictability, individualisation, and a “migrant habitus” of open options and intentional unpredictability. Free mobility within the EU together with the new communication technologies and the fall in transport costs has made migration significantly simpler. It also made more “fluid” forms of migration, such as circular migration, more common. However, several characteristics that Engbersen and Snel attribute to intra-EU mobility, such as the prevalence of labour migration, unpredictability and temporality, may be better understood as distinctive of East–West European migration in the years that followed the EU enlargements eastwards (which actually forms the focus of their research) rather than defining characteristics of intra-EU mobility in large.Footnote 4

The prevalence of individualisation as well as the endorsement of lifestyles of mobility, which have been highlighted earlier by Favell (2008) as distinctive of mobility within Europe, may in fact be more defining characteristics of intra-EU migration. Favell pays attention to the emergence of major European cities like London, Amsterdam, and Brussels as dynamic hubs of the intra-European mobility of young workers, who choose to look for work on an individual basis. He further highlights how the possibilities granted through legally unconstrained mobility within the EU have impacted the life and mobility choices especially of provincial and peripheral citizens of the EU who leave their countries of origin frustrated with the limited career opportunities in their home countries or in pursue of personal freedom, adventure and self-fulfilment.

However, even if individualisation and lifestyles of mobility remain significant characteristics of intra-EU mobility, their centrality has lessened during the past few years in a period of multiple crises across the EU. Drawing on qualitative research, Bygnes and Erdal (2017) show how motivations to ensure a grounded and secure life for oneself and one’s family are very central among Polish and Spanish migrants in Norway. The current research on Greek emigration at times of crisis corroborates those findings and highlights that migration decisions are framed in terms of broader life aspirations, often concerning the family as a whole and/or the upbringing of children.

The significance of family considerations in migration decision-making has, until rather recently, been downplayed in academic research. Being consigned to the realm of tradition, family was thought of as solely having a constraining role in restricting mobility, while migration was conceptualised as the outcome of individual and decontextualised rationality (Kofman 2004). This reductionist approach is exemplified in neoclassical economics theory, which views migration as the response of individual rational actors to expectations for positive net return from movement. The early theorisations on family-related migration were in fact based on neoclassical economics theory and were thus only a small step away from this view. Such was the case of Duncan’s and Perrucci’s (1976) human capital model that investigates how the relative economic resources of husbands and wives influence the migration of the family. Later approaches within this framework accounted for the role played by gender norms in restricting women’s influence in the final decision (Shihadeh 1991; Bielby and Bielby 1992), or explored family bargaining models based upon game theory (Bergstrom 1996). Yet the role attributed to broader family considerations remained limited.

The new economics of labour migration theory (NELM) challenged many of the assumptions and conclusions of neoclassical theory and was developed, to a certain extent, in opposition to it. A key insight of this approach is that migration decisions are made by larger units of related people. Migration is conceptualised as a project planned collectively by individuals of the same household, family or community, not only to maximise expected income, but primarily to minimise risks and to loosen constraints associated with a variety of market failures, besides those in the labour market (Stark and Taylor 1991; Stark and Levhari 1982; Lauby and Stark 1988; Massey et al. 1993). The NELM approach describes multi-sited practices that combine migration and immobility. While some members of one household stay in the place of origin, others might move internally within the country, and others could migrate internationally (Massey et al. 1993).

NELM thus describes how economic drivers interact with broader social processes (Stark and Bloom 1985) and attributes a central role to families in the process of migration decision-making. It is still, however, anchored on an economistic understanding of migration processes. Emigration motivations, however, should not only be seen to pertain to economic drivers, but should instead be better assessed in the context of broader life aspirations. That seems to be particularly true for the emigration that takes place from Greece during the crisis period. Greeks may be fleeing the economic crisis in Greece, but the emigration of many of them is not solely aimed at their economic advancement or the attainment of better remunerations. Even though those remain important motivations, their relative significance seems to be reduced during the crisis compared to wider life considerations (see also Bartolini et al. 2017). And this seems to be particularly important for parents, as well as for several couples, who move to start a family life abroad.

4 Brain Drain and the Characteristics of the Crisis-Driven Greek Emigration

Since the end of the 19th century, Greece had been a major source country for emigration. It was in the mid-1970s that it acquired a positive migratory balance for the first time in its recent history, largely due to return migration from Western Europe. Emigration in subsequent years was limited and a few years before the crisis the Greek citizens were recorded to be amongst the least mobile Europeans. A Eurobarometer survey on geographic and labour market mobility, conducted in 2005, showed that Greeks were the least favourable Europeans (after the Cypriots) towards long distance mobility (European Commission 2006). Another survey, conducted in 2009, just a year before the crisis started deepening in Greece, showed that only eight per cent of Greeks envisaged working abroad sometime in the future (the lowest after Italians), and the share of Greeks who would be ready to work in other countries in case of unemployment at home was found to be well below the EU average (European Commission 2010).

Yet this was soon due to change. In 2014, more than one out of three Greeks claimed that they would be willing to emigrate in search for work (Newpost 2014), and the share appears to be markedly higher among the educated young adults who form the category most prone to emigrate. Despite the previously recorded scepticism towards emigration, many Greeks were forced by the circumstances to change their views on and plans about external mobility in a very short time span. The combined effects of recession, extreme austerity, and a concomitant generalised mistrust of institutions and the political system drastically transformed mobility intentions and forced many to actually take that step. As illustrated in Fig. 1, in a seven-year period from 2010 to 2016, almost 720,000 people, both Greek and non-Greek citizens, were estimated to have left Greece, accounting for approximately 7% of the total population.

Fig. 1
figure 1

(Adapted from Eurostat, Migration and migrant population statistics. Retrieved May 10 2018 from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=migr_emi1ctz&lang=en Copyright (2018) by Eurostat, emigration statistics)

Estimated annual emigration flows from Greece, 2008–2015.

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In attempting to place the current resurgence of Greek emigration in its temporal context, we see both continuation and breaks from earlier mobility patterns. While, as mentioned, outmigration has been relatively limited after the mid-1970s, it was more frequent among specific groups: emigrants of the post-war waves and their children moving between Greece and European destinations (Fakiolas and King 1996); Muslims from the minority of Thrace spending spells of employment in Turkey or Germany (Pratsinakis 2002); as well as the increased number of students going abroad, at least until the early 2000s (Karamessini 2010). Above all, there has been an increasing outflow of professionals to European destinations since the 1990s (Labrianidis 2011).

Labour market restructuring led to the deterioration of employment opportunities for those born in the 1970s and later, and to ongoing, relatively high unemployment, underemployment and employment precariousness in the 2000s (Karamessini 2010). This was not mainly due to young Greeks’ “over-education”, as conventionally assumed.Footnote 5 While the numbers of graduates have increased substantially in past decades, they are not among the highest in Europe or in the “developed” world. In fact, this growth was not matched by a corresponding increase in demand for high-skilled human capital, especially by private businesses. Indicatively, from 2008 to 2015, Greece had one of the lowest rates of employment in high-technology sectors in the EU. Moreover, Research and Development expenditure in Greece was much lower than the EU average. The comparison between Greece and other EU countries is even more unfavourable when it comes to the contribution of the private sector. Thus, the explanation for the unfavourable conditions for graduates in Greece in past decades lies not in the supply side of a supposedly excessively skilled workforce, but rather in the demand side of a labour market failing to absorb these segments of the workforce (Labrianidis 2011, 2014).

Greek firms, mostly due to their small size and other related weaknesses, have been mainly focused on the production of low-cost products and services, avoiding any attempts at upgrading, including the infusion of technology and innovation. These characteristics have hindered the utilisation of a highly educated labour force that could act as an intermediary between universities/research centres and the private sector. Combined with the fact that the Greek Research and Development system is not able to attract and retain the growing number of qualified scientists, this has led a significant share of these graduates to migrate abroad, in order to seek employment with better prospects elsewhere (Labrianidis 2011, 2014). Moreover, the extent of informal economic arrangements, as well as long-standing pathologies such as nepotism and clientelism, have affected the relative position of graduates in the Greek labour market. On the other hand, greater opportunities for employment in highly skilled positions as well as higher average salaries of graduates in specific destination countries, combined with ease and relatively low cost of movement—especially in the EU—have also attracted Greek professionals abroad. As a result, even before the outbreak of the crisis, a considerable number of highly skilled young Greeks had been emigrating for better career prospects, better chances of finding a job related to their specialisation, a satisfactory income and increased opportunities for further training.

The crisis critically intensified this trend; the outmigration of graduates skyrocketed as job opportunities shrank in the shadow of the crisis and public-sector employment was no longer an option due to cuts and restrictions in new recruitments (Labrianidis and Pratsinakis 2016). A comparative presentation of unemployment rates in Greece and the EU over the past ten years provides a graphic depiction of Greece’s particularity as regards the position of the highly skilled in the labour market and explains the sharp increase in emigration among these workers in the period of the crisis. As seen in Fig. 2, in the years directly preceding the onset of the global financial crisis and up to 2010, unemployment rates among the poorly educated (0–2 ISCED) were significantly lower in Greece than in the EU-28 on average. In fact, from 2006 to 2008 they were on a par with the unemployment rates of graduates (5–8 1SCED), indicating that education did not provide significant advantages in terms of access to the labour market in Greece—although of course to different sectors of the labour market. This changed with the crisis, which had a direct and much more acute impact on the less privileged. In Greece, as elsewhere in Europe, unemployment rates for lesser-educated people became higher than for those with higher education. However, while in most European countries the unemployment rates of highly educated people increased only marginally, if at all, in Greece they skyrocketed, to almost four times higher than the EU-28 mean, making the push-pull migration factors for Greeks with higher education particularly strong.

Fig. 2
figure 2

(Adapted from Eurostat, Unemployment statistics. Retrieved April 2 2017 from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=une_educ_a&lang=en Copyright (2018) by Eurostat, Unemployment statistics)

Unemployment levels in Greece and the EU by educational attainment.

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Thus, the brain drain phenomenon in Greece should be understood as a continuation of an earlier ongoing and intensifying trend, as well as a part, albeit a very significant one, of the new crisis-driven emigration (Labrianidis and Pratsinakis 2017). According to the HO survey, two out of three of the emigrants who left Greece during the years of the crisis are university graduates and one fourth of the total outflow in the same period represents people with postgraduate degrees, graduates of medical school, or graduates of five-year long engineering school(s). The data of the HO survey show that the educational composition of the crisis-driven emigration sharply contrasts with that of the emigration up to the mid-1970s, which almost uniformly comprised people of lower education,Footnote 6 but is in line to the emigration in the 2000s.

Concerning the data on unemployment, however, a clear distinction emerges between the pre-crisis emigrants and those who left after 2010, who are far more pushed by the unfavourable conditions in the Greek labour market. The unemployed formed a small minority among pre-crisis emigrants while, according to both the HO, half of the emigrants who left after 2010 were unemployed at the time of emigration. However, even though lack of a job seems to be a major reason driving people out of the country, our data clearly show that it is not the only determining reason, since half of the emigrants were employed in Greece at the time of emigration. It will be shown in the next section that, for a sizeable share of the higher educated emigrants, it was not absolute exclusion from the labour market per se that drove their decision to migrate, but the insecurity for their future in Greece and the quest for a better socioeconomic and political environment abroad. The HO survey also points to the diversity of new migrants’ destinations; yet, as other studies (e.g. Triandafyllidou and Gropas 2014) show, the majority head to the EU, with Germany and the UK in particular attracting by far the largest share of the outflows, concentrating together more than half of the post-2010 emigration. From 2010 to 2016, about 190,000 Greek citizens appear to have entered Germany and approximately 65,000 moved to the UK for work. In the same period, more than 16,000 Greeks entered the Netherlands, which appears to be the third most popular European destination of the crisis-driven Greek emigration.Footnote 7

The magnitude of the outflow has attracted considerable media attention and has triggered a public debate on brain drain, including lamenting the loss of Greece’s young educated “bloodstream” (Pratsinakis et al. 2017). Yet the discussion is often characterised by two misconceptions. First, the emigration of the highly skilled is presented as a new phenomenon resulting from the crisis, while its underlying structural causes are not addressed (Labrianidis and Pratsinakis 2017). Second, the crisis-driven emigration is presented as exclusively pertaining to the young and the educated, while the emigration of older people, those with fewer qualifications, immigrants or people from minority groups, is often neglected.Footnote 8 True, the crisis has amplified push factors that already existed in Greece for the highly skilled, intensifying their emigration patterns. But it has also impacted the mobility aspirations and practices of people of other educational levels and socio-economic backgrounds.

Even though they form a minority among recent emigrants, the crisis also pushes people of lower educational and income backgrounds out of the country, while drastic salary cuts and rising unemployment in the past years are also driving significant numbers of people to take the route of emigration at a late phase in their life-course. According to findings from the HO survey, people from “low to very low” income households now constitute 28% of the post-2010 emigration outflow, while before the crisis, this group was the least prone to emigrate. Lastly, a significant number of post-2010 emigrants left Greece after they had reached the age of forty; the mean age of people who emigrated after 2010 is 30.5 years old, two years older than those who left during the 2000s (28.3) and six years older than people who migrated during the 1990s (24.3). Given other survey findings on emigration intentions (Chiotis 2010; Newpost 2014), we may assume that the decision to emigrate for older people, as well as for those coming from lower educational backgrounds and lower income families, may be framed more as a matter of need. However, this seems to be becoming a rather generalised condition in the current emigration wave, concerning a significant segment of the highly educated emigrants too. In the next section, I explore this issue in more detail by focusing on families and drawing on the EUMIGRE survey data and interview material in the Netherlands and Greater London. Particular attention is paid to migration motivations.

5 Emigration of Families and Couples During the Years of Crisis

5.1 Migrant Couples

Almost two thirds of the respondents of the EUMIGRE survey are in a relationship. Of those respondents, 39% are married and the rest are in civil partnerships or live together with their partner without having legally formalised their relationship. Mixed couples account for 26% of the total sample and they equally concern relationships with nationals of the two destination countries (British and Dutch) or with nationals of third countries. Interestingly, the data show that there was a substantial decrease of mixed relationships, which accounted for 61% of the pre-crisisFootnote 9 migrant couples. This decrease is partly the outcome of the availability of potential Greek partners in the Netherlands and London, as the Greek communities in those two regions almost doubled in size in the past few years. It is also the outcome of the fact that (1) many more Greeks emigrate together with their partners during the crisis period and (2) many more do so to rejoin their Greek partners who have left Greece.

In the years preceding the crisis, approximately one out of six migrants left Greece to join their partner abroad. The partner was in most cases a non-Greek national and sustaining the relationship was the main motivation for the migration act.Footnote 10 Romantic relationships with non-Greeks continue to underlie migration decisions in the years of the crisis, yet their relative significance has withered. In this period, mixed relationships are primarily an outcome of migration and much less a motivation for it.

Here it should be noted that it was not only the critical aggravation of socioeconomic conditions in the country that shaped the increase of emigration during the years of the crisis. The crisis has altered everyday discourse on emigration in the country and loosened up social constraints towards long-distance mobility. In public debates in crisis-driven Greece, emigration has emerged as a sensible strategy to pursue, to better one’s life, and mainstream media paints a rather positive image of emigration as an (easy) way out of a wrecked economy and a corrupt and inefficient state.Footnote 11 Equally significant changes have happened in terms of how kin and friends react to decisions of friends and relatives to leave. According to the EUMIGRE survey, for the majority of the post-2010 migrants, their social circle was supportive of their decision to emigrate (61%). It was only a small minority (10%) of respondents whose social circle was negative towards their decision to migrate and out of this minority, more than two out of three changed their view over time in favour of the respondents’ decision.

Emigration has thus become an option to be considered and many of my informants told me that the presence of friends and/or partners abroad had critically facilitated migration decisions. Thus, following a partner or a romantic affair abroad is much more easily done during the years of the crisis and is often also seen as an opportunity to experience life abroad, and not solely as a step of commitment towards that relationship. Such was the case of Elias who migrated to the Netherlands to stay together with his Dutch then-girlfriend whom he had met in Greece only a few weeks earlier. He was already contemplating the possibility of leaving Greece since his business in Greece was also facing trouble. Following his Dutch girlfriend in the Netherlands seemed to him a good opportunity. Their relationship did not last long but Elias stayed over in the Netherlands and was quite satisfied with his decision to emigrate.

Many more people emigrate together with their Greek partners or with the complete family. According to the data of the EUMIGRE survey, one third of the emigrants who left Greece during the years of the crisis did so together with their partners or with their family. They still form a minority, yet there is a significant increase (75%) in their relative share when compared to the pre-crisis years. The emigration of couples and families thus appears to be an interesting phenomenon of migration during the crisis that merits special attention.

Nikos and Maria were a couple since their university years in Thessaloniki. They finished their studies in a period when the crisis started to deepen in Greece. Maria, who got a degree in engineering, eventually managed to find a job in her hometown and moved out of Thessaloniki. Nikos, who had studied agriculture, preferred to stay in Thessaloniki but was also eventually forced to move to his hometown due to lack of employment in Thessaloniki. In his hometown there were limited opportunities in his field but he could live together with his parents in order to reduce his daily expenses. It appeared very difficult for them to lead an independent life together in Greece. When a friend of Maria informed her about a potential job opportunity in London, they both thought very positively of the potential of moving abroad. Maria went for the interview, got the job offer and a few days later they moved together to London. There Nikos managed to find a temporary job in the service economy and was contemplating furthering his studies.

Many couples like Nikos and Maria emigrated to lead an independent life together abroad. They envisaged and planned staying outside Greece until the situation with the country’s economy would get better. Most of them preferred to return to Greece in the longer run and expected that they would start their family life in Greece. At the same time, however, there was a considerable number of families that left Greece in the same period for reasons relating to the wellbeing of their children. Most of them expected and planned to live abroad much longer. In the remainder of this section I focus on those family migrants.

5.2 Migration of Families

One fifth of the total survey sample, or 192 respondents, have children. Of those respondents, the majority had migrated together with the whole family (N = 109) and 31% of them formed their family after migration to the Netherlands or Greater London. Only 3% of them live separately from their children. Hence, according to the data of EUMIGRE survey, it seems that family migration planning from Greece at times of crisis does not often include strategies of risk sharing as stipulated by NELM, with some members of the household staying in the place of origin and others migrating to European destinations. This is further corroborated by the flow of remittances which in accordance to the HO survey is found to be relatively low. Less than 10% of the migrants in the Netherlands and Greater London send money to Greece systematically and 26% on an occasional basis.Footnote 12

Turning to the migration motivations of family migrants, one observes substantial change over time.Footnote 13 As seen in Table 1, for the people who left Greece before 2010, the main migration motivation cited was the expectation of finding a job with better remuneration and/or potentials for career advancement. Emigrating to live with their partner was also mentioned as an important reason underlying migration decisions. For the post-2010 migrants, even though expectations for better remuneration and/or potentials for career advancement were also cited as an important migration motivation, the single most commonly cited motivation was “the future of my children”. 60% of the respondents who left after 2010 mentioned the wellbeing of their children as significant motivation for leaving the country, while only 14% of those who left before 2010 did so. The pre/post crisis differentiation is even sharper if we restrict our attention to those migrants who left together with their family in the year of the crisis, 73% of whom selected “the future of my children” as the critical reason to leave Greece.

Table 1 Migration motivations of migrants with children
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Interestingly, 71% of the family migrants in the Netherlands and London who left after 2010 do not plan to return to Greece or aim to do so only when they go on pension. Among the respondents without children, only 39% have such long-term settlement plans, while the majority prefers to return to Greece in the medium term or prefers to leave their options open. Overall, it is evident that during the years of the crisis, there is an emerging group of migrant families that take the step of migration while planning a long-term settlement abroad, to a large extent informed by considerations about the wellbeing of their children.Footnote 14

Looking at the data more closely, one can discern two subcategories of family migrants in terms of their socioeconomic background: one third of the migrants have lower educational backgrounds and come from middle to low-class families and two thirds of them are people with high educational attainments and often come from more well-off families. Significant differences are observed in terms of the employment trajectories of the people of those two categories. 70% of the people of the former category were unemployed in Greece before migration, while only 25% of the people of the latter category were unemployed. Migrants belonging to the former category also find it much more difficult to access employment in the destination countries with 26% of them being unemployed. Of those who have found work, only 44% earn more than 2200 €, in contrast to 81% of the highly educated category. Finally, there are differences in the types of jobs that they are doing. Those of the lower education category are working in the service economy or doing manual jobs. Most of them used to work as clients in the private sector in Greece or were self-employed. Those with higher education work in (the destination country in) professional and associate professional occupations, in fields of employment similar to those they were working in Greece and often in fields that match their studies.

Despite their differences, however, one issue on which the two categories converge concerns the centrality of considerations about their children in underlying migration decisions. 81% of the lower educated group and 69% of the highly educated group have cited “the future of my children”, as a critical motivation for emigrating. 54% of the lower educated group also mentioned the “impact of the crisis in my personal life” as an important reason to take the route of emigration, 38% the expectation for better remuneration and potential for career advancement and 31% simply being able to make ends meet (survival). Among the higher educated group, 51% cited the expectation for better remuneration and potential for career advancement as a migration motivation and only 7% of them cited being able to make ends meet as a reason for migrating.

So, based on the above-cited comparison, one may discern two categories of families leaving Greece. One category comprises people with lower education and middle to low class background driven by an urgent need to restore the socioeconomic life of the family. A central aim of their migration project is to find stable employment to provide their children the material needs that will allow them to progress in life. The other group of family migrants concerns people with higher education who were in a much more secure socioeconomic position in Greece and whose migration is, at least partly, informed by considerations about professional advancement. Similar to the family migrants with lower education, however, they think that leaving Greece is preferable for the wellbeing of their children and consider destination countries to provide a better socioeconomic environment for their children to live in.

The story of Apostolos and Tina, who left Greece in 2013, is rather illustrative of the migration decision making of the first category of families. Apostolos and Tina emigrated at a time when Tina was pregnant with their first son. It was also a time when their business, a restaurant in the Greek island where they lived, was severely affected by the Greek recession. In Apostolos’ words:

In August 2012, my wife told me that she was pregnant. We were really happy because of that, but at the same time we were sad too. Because, by the end of 2012, we could barely cover the main expenses. I had to choose which expenses to cover, I could not pay off everything… I am still paying off some of those expenses […] Hospitals in the island didn’t function properly and most of the doctors were inexperienced. […] Consequently, we had to close down the restaurant and go to another island for a month and the costs for that would be around 5.000 euros. A lot of money… maybe our parents could have helped us. But our future seemed bleak. […] It is not that we had a huge financial problem. However, I thought that in the future things could be even more difficult. I had a little money that I could either invest in Greece or someplace else. I thought that investing in Greece gave no benefit. I would simply lose it. I thus decided to invest them abroad.

According to Apostolos, Tina was also favourable towards leaving Greece. They had visited his brother who had earlier migrated with his family to Vienna and both thought that outside Greece they would have the ability to build their family life under better conditions. Apostolos and Tina decided against going to Vienna because Tina did not speak German and instead opted for the UK since they both spoke English. Apostolos first moved to London which he found too expensive and not a convenient city for a family life, and then he move to Brighton where he was soon joined by Tina. At the time of the interview, they were considering moving further out in the countryside to be able to afford a larger apartment but also to find a space where Apostolos could start his own business in retail after four and a half years working as a waiter in a Greek restaurant. Despite their struggles to make it, Apostolos told me that they were very satisfied. They treated the South East of England as their new home and planned to raise their child there.

Androniki’s migration is more resonant with the second category of families leaving Greece. Androniki is an artist who left Greece together with her three-year-old daughter, following her husband who got an offer for a well-paid job in a senior position at a bank in Amsterdam. I first spoke to her a short while after they had settled in the city. She was excited about their move and their new life abroad. In a follow-up conversation, Androniki appeared to be less enthusiastic about the migration experience at the personal level. She was rather disappointed about her career prospects and was feeling rather lonely having to spend much time alone at home. Her daughter’s adaptation to the new sociocultural environment also appeared to be a bit more challenging compared to what she had expected. However, she was convinced that growing up in the Netherlands would be good for her in the longer run. Contrary to Androniki, Natasa, who had taken the lead in the migration of her family, was much more positive. She took the postdoctoral offer in Amsterdam as an opportunity to relocate together with her husband and their four-year-old son, in order to explore the option of settling and building their life there.

6 Conclusion

The data on the new crisis-driven Greek emigration presented in this chapter call into question Engbersen’s and Snel’s (2013) proposal that we may treat individualisation as a defining characteristic of intra-EU mobility; a proposal that is in agreement with earlier work on migration within Europe (see Favell 2008). Indeed, and contrary to what is proposed by the NELM, migration does not seem to be taking place as an outcome of collective decision-making by extended families or as part of a family plan that involves some members of one household staying in the place of origin and others migrating to European destinations. The EUMIGRE survey shows that the share of Greek migrants in the Netherlands and Greater London who are leaving behind members of the nuclear family in Greece is very low. In addition, the HO study shows that the flow of remittances is also low, a finding further corroborated by the EUMIGRE survey data.

However, and in contrast to the individualisation thesis, the data presented also indicate that many migrants leave Greece driven by a wish for a more secure, predictable and stable live for oneself and one’s family, often entailing a longer-term settlement abroad. To be sure, motivations to live abroad for reasons of self-fulfilment and self-exploration, as well as for reasons related to personal freedom, are still relevant especially among certain young single migrants who embrace a lifestyle of mobility. Yet, in line with Bygnes and Erdal’s (2017) findings on Polish and Spanish migrants in Norway Pratsinakis et al. (2019), the crisis seems to signal a trend of transition to longer-term settlement for Greek migrants, whereby ongoing mobility is less important and a wish for more grounded lives more prominent. And, as this chapter has shown, that appears to be particularly the case for couples who emigrate to lead an independent life abroad, as well as for couples with children who emigrate collectively to restore the socioeconomic life of the family and for considerations that pertain to the future of their children.