Refugees in Thessaloniki and the threat to social order

At the end of 1924, refugees were still arriving in Thessaloniki. On 28/10/1924, with an ‘extremely urgent telegram of the highest priority’, Thessaloniki’s Welfare Supervisor, A. Psaras, informed the Ministry of Hygiene about the arrival of 2,000 refugees sent by the ‘Mixed Commission of Constantinople’. He then went on to report that he had no choice but to accept them in order to save face and facilitate the departure of exchangeable Muslims. While the refugees had been transferred to the quarantine site, their luggage remained on the Turkish ship that had brought them over. Psaras requested the immediate requisition or charter of a ship to carry both the luggage and the refugees to another destination. He closed his telegram by urging the Ministry: ‘I would appreciate it if you could send me new orders as soon as possible, since any new refugee arrivals here while resettlement missions are suspended would threaten social order’.

A week later, the same official sent a telegram to the Ministries of Hygiene and Agriculture, as well as to the Refugee Settlement Commission, informing them about the arrival of a ship from Igoumenitsa carrying 2,000 refugees to settle in Macedonia. Given the impending arrival of another 1,000 refugees from Piraeus, Psaras expressed his dissatisfaction with the transport of more refugees to a city which was already hosting 25,000 refugees, staying either on the streets or in tents while waiting for their resettlement in the Macedonian mainland. The following phrase illustrates his feelings on the matter: ‘…especially from a public order perspective, we do not consider it prudent to have refugees transferred internally from other parts of Greece which are not as severely overcrowded as our city is’.

Within two weeks, this high-ranking public official twice invoked the issue of social or public order, an issue always raised whenever a place receives refugee and migrant inflows. From the United States during the first decades of the 20^th century to the refugee arrivals of 1922, and from the post-war migration waves towards Western Europe to the recent refugee flows into Europe, issues of law and order have always emerged in the public discourse surrounding such population movements. This is driven by many factors, such as the spontaneous fear towards the ‘other’, actual instances of illegal activity conducted by desperate, persecuted people, the construction of stereotypes aimed at censuring and controlling the new arrivals, and the very real fear that crowds instil in power structures.

In this particular case, the Greek bourgeoisie of the time was intensely fearful that refugees might become radicalised due to the extreme poverty they were experiencing. At the end of 1924, the process towards their political, social and economic integration had not made much headway. Politically, this would turn out to be a gradual process, as the refugees started joining mainstream bourgeois political parties, particularly the Liberals, and forming their own unions and associations which did not lean towards radicalism. In the end, it was actually the refugees’ disappointment in the Liberal party that drove many of them towards the socialist and labour movement, especially after 1930.

Precisely these elements, namely the importance of political patronage and the primary role played by refugee associations, are pointed out by Psaras in the third piece of evidence presented here. It is a long letter to the Welfare Directorate, dated 22/12/1924, in which the writer argued against the provision of welfare benefits to the refugees:

 ‘As a general rule, welfare benefits must be characterised as a useless expense, since the millions being spent bear no substantial results and, dare I say, do not help with any of the refugees’ needs, instead driving the already dispirited refugees to fatalistic laziness’.

The writer went on to assert that it would be preferable for the millions of drachmas spent on benefits to be reallocated towards housing thousands of refugee families or even towards their clothing. Psaras thoroughly described how difficult it was for the public servants who were tasked with establishing the refugees’ destitution, the certification of which was a prerequisite for the provision of welfare benefits, to even define the meaning of destitution itself: ‘Destitution is an empty and vague concept, the definition of which is therefore essentially impossible’. He then highlighted the practical difficulties arising due to the excessive workload undertaken by the employees who had to process thousands of applications by refugees. The writer finished with this statement:

 ‘When various representatives (whether in office or running for office) proclaim to the refugees, either in person or through the press, that it was through their actions that benefits were provided to all destitute refugees; when refugee associations, as a result of being overzealously in favour of the refugees, assert that even dead or rich people are destitute and disadvantaged; when the prefects, the highest-ranking officials in each region, are by necessity political figures and not purely administrators; then, I urge you to consider the difficult position of the public servant who is tasked by the ministry to implement ministerial orders no. 14172 and 12700 demanding stricter checks of the refugees’ destitution’.     

Let us put aside for a moment the reasoning and the everyday experiences this language is based on and look at it through the lens of its sheer existence and survival. This type of language is prescriptive, it is the language of power and the mere fact that it was articulated and preserved betrays the tricky biases of the archives. In just one file in one archive, we found many mentions of Psaras (only three are presented here). We would have to dig a lot deeper to find a single (signed) response by a refugee.