Greece Demographics

About 11 million people live in Greece. The extremely homogeneous population is 98% ethnically Greek and 98% Greek Orthodox , but the large number of foreigners who travel in Greece each year makes the country seem more diverse.

Greece is peppered with small but distinct ethnic and religious minorities. Currently about 500,000 to 1,000,000 Albanians make up the country’s largest minority population. Despite the Greek government and people’s general denial of racism, concerns remain about prejudice toward this expanding refugee and migrant population. In past years, reports of violence against illegal Albanian immigrants by the Greek border patrol have cropped up with increasing frequency.

The over 130,000 Slavic and Turkish Muslims in Thrace comprise the biggest religious minority group. Though the older generation of Muslims remains separate from Orthodox Greeks in language and culture, younger generations are integrated with mainstream Greek society. Gypsies, or Roma, make up another significant minority group. They have remained on the fringes of Greek society for centuries and now are concentrated in Athens and Thessaloniki. The status of the Roma population, plagued by devastating poverty, is viewed as one of the country’s largest social problems. Jewish communities have been present in Greece since the AD first century, but about 90 percent of Jews were deported to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation in WWII (p. 57), despite the efforts of the Greek Orthodox Church and many individuals to shelter them. Only about 5500 Jews live in Greece today. Other official minorities include the Vlachs and the Sarakatsanis, both of which are groups of nomadic shepherds descended from Latin speakers who settled in Greece. The region of Macedonia is home to some 60,000 Slavs, who are still unrecognized as a minority by the Greek government.