“I want to be something,” says Gulab Rahimi, who left his native Afghanistan when he was 12. “I don’t want to be like other people.” This spring he graduated from high school, a rare milestone for a young refugee.

Rahimi left his parents and seven older siblings to travel alone to Iran and eventually settled in Greece to pursue an education and live under what he calls “clear democracy.” Now 21, he lives in an apartment in Thessaloniki that’s strewn with textbooks in Farsi and Greek; an inspirational quote in English about the power of having a dream beams from a bright red poster on the wall.

For years, Rahimi has been spending 19 hours a day working in restaurant kitchens, attending