The Greek language ultimately dominated the peninsula and Greece's mosaic of small city-states became culturally similar.

They settled in isolated valleys of the Peloponnese and Thessaly, establishing segregated communities that were referred by the Byzantines as Sclaveni.

Many Greeks either fled to other European nations or to geographically isolated areas (i.e. mountains and heavily forested territories) to escape foreign rule.

During the next decades, the population of Greece continued to increase, except during a large part of 1940s due to World War II and subsequent events.

At this time Greece had started to appear a positive migration rate, due to the return of Greek Civil War refugees and international immigration.

Many Greeks emigrated abroad, while more recently the population decrease has been largely stabilized due to foreign immigration.

[5][6][7] / = change since previous census The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman.

Principal illegal immigrants include Albanians, Pakistanis, Kurds, Afghans, Iraqis and Somalis.

The officials define it as a group of Greek Muslims numbering 98,000 people, consisting of Turks (50%), Pomaks (35%) and Romani (15%).

[32][33][34] There is no official information for the size of the ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities because asking the population questions pertaining to the topic have been abolished since 1951.

2The 1928 census figure (81,984) of the Slavic speakers does not reflect their actual strength due to either an official policy or reluctance of the concerned, and perhaps represents a number of speakers, who are lacking Greek national consciousness, while contemporary Greek reports estimate at least 200,000 Bulgarian-speaking inhabitants in the country.

Its authority to this day extends only to the areas included in the independent Greek state before the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913.

University education, including books, is also free, contingent upon the student's ability to meet stiff entrance requirements.

Admission in a university is determined by state-administered exams, the candidate's grade-point average from high school, and his/her priority choices of major.

The Greek Government decides through an evaluation procedure whether to recognize degrees from specific foreign universities as qualification for public sector hiring.

The number of Greek students studying at European institutions is increasing along with EU support for educational exchange.