Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the M A in Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the International Hellenic University. It is a study of the migrant crisis management in Greece between 2015 - 2018, with a special focus on Syrian refugees and asylum seekers. The dissertation deals with migratory flows and analyzes terms such as asylum seekers and economic migrants. It delves into the case of Syrian asylum seekers by referring to the roots of the Syrian crisis and the chronology of the displacement of the Syrian people, including background to the Syrian crisis. It describes briefly their current living conditions in refugee centers in Turkey and Jordan and makes special mention of the EU - Turkey Agreement and its impact on asylum seekers in Greece. The thesis goes on to present the Greek case of managing the migrant crisis, including reception and hosting conditions, as well as, the changing legislative framework related to refugee asylum granting. The study concludes by presenting original qualitative empirical research data collected through interviews conducted with police officers in an attempt to map migrant crisis management in a host center for third - country nationals in Chios, as a case study. The main results of the survey are that migrants and asylum seekers are housed in the reception center under poor living conditions, and this is mainly due to the large volume of human inputs. The asylum requests, since most them are from asylum seekers, cannot be dealt with in a short period of time to decongest the situation. Non - governmental organizations on their part offer the most at the level of mainly medical and psychological support. The incidents in which the law is broken, and the controversies are on a daily basis.