Mass Migration in Europe: The Legacy and the Future

Citation

Rogerson, R.J. (2000), "Mass Migration in Europe: The Legacy and the Future", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 600-605. https://doi.org/10.1108/jes.2000.27.6.600.2

At a time when population geographers and spatial demographers are increasingly adopting more “cultural approaches” seen elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences to the study of population patterns, emphasising the role of cultural settings in shaping migration, and adopting qualitative methods of analysis of individual decision making, it is heartening to find a study which focuses on large‐scale movement of people. This is not a text in which insights are provided as to why individual people move, or indeed questions about the conceptualisation of the “act of migration” itself. Throughout this book, the focus is on large scale, mass population movements, defined not merely in terms of the numbers of people involved. and on the large‐scale impacts of such migration on both sending and receiving areas. The task facing the authors of each chapter has been to seek to identify the main underlying causes of and ramifications arising from such movement. But at the core of the arguments presented is an awareness that underpinning the patterns of mass migration lie economic factors; an emphasis which may be surprising as other population studies have shown growing significance to non‐economic factors. Fielding’s initial chapter, linking mass migration to economic restructuring, sets the tone of the book, and provides a general conceptual framework in which the relationships between economic restructuring and mass migration can be understood. In this chapter, the emphasis is less on the role of migration in shaping restructuring than on the ways that new international divisions of labour, flexible working patterns and new forms of production have shaped the demands for labour and thus increased the scope for mass movements of population to have a raison d’être.

The success of this book lies, first, in its exploration of the relations between general economic and population conditions and the recognition of the locally and nationally contingent responses to these global processes. Second, its success reflects a different editorial approach to bringing together the various chapters. It is to be welcomed that the editor has not perceived his/her role to be that of providing an overview of the book – the introduction is brief and contextual only – nor to attempt to summarise the findings in the form of a conclusion – there is no conclusion. This marks a welcome departure from the approach commonly adopted by editors. The editor’s contribution here is more substantial in shaping the form of the text. While this book has been constructed from the contributions to a conference of the European Science Foundation’s programme on Regional and Urban Restructuring in Europe, the editors are to be congratulated on the successful way that the separate papers have been integrated into a flowing text. The construction of the chapters, initially drafted in advance of the conference after a workshop session, and then revised in the light of the comments at the main conference, has meant that the reader has been rewarded with a coherent set of European case studies within a tight focus. This edited collection is in contrast to too many coference proceedings, very readable.

The book is structured in three parts. The first three chapters consider the concepts, patterns and politics of the mass migration movement in Europe and provide for the non‐migration specialist a very readable and insightful commentary on many of the issues relating to the complex sets of relations between population movement economics, politics and social restructuring within the continent. In addition to Fielding’s chapter on economic restructuring, reviews are provided of the patterns of mass migration and European migration policies.

The remaining 14 chapters are divided evenly between those that focus on the legacies of past migrations within specific national settings and those which address new trends and future implications. With the exception of Paul White’s chapter on ethnic minority populations in the European city, the other chapters in the second part of the book focus on national settings. The six case studies offer refreshingly different perspectives on a range of different impacts of mass migration. For example, whilst Blotevogel, Jung and Wood’s chapter in Germany picks up the economic strands of the early chapters by considering the impact of guestworkers and Atalik and Beeley consider the shifting flows of remittances associated with migration to and from Turkey in chapter 9, a more socio‐cultural twist is evident in the French (Ogden) and Dutch (Dielem) overviews. What is most strongly indicated by these studies is the enduring impacts of mass migrations, the significance of the varied responses by both host communities and origins, not least in terms of national policy, and the rapidity of the sea‐change in the late 1980s and early 1990s of migration flows. As Cavaco, writing on the Portuguese scene notes “for Portugal, like Spain, Italy and Greece, has moved from being a country of emigration to one of immigration in a startlingly short space of time”.

The final part addresses new trends and future implications of existing patterns of mass migration. There is less of a single focus in this section, with some papers considering migration from outside of those countries discussed in the second part of the book, whilst others are more overtly concerned with specific topics. Issues and impacts arising from ethnicity and nationality questions, the growth in skilled international migration, and the selective nature of graduate emigration from Ireland provide useful case studies. However, the reader is left to draw out these wider differences and to consider how some of the local empirical evidence can be related to the wider conceptual and statistical overviews in the earlier part of the book.

Without undermining the real strengths of this book, it is unfortunate that the title Mass Migration in Europe is misleading. With the exception of Atalik and Beeley’s chapter on Turkey, the other national case studies are within western Europe and even in the chapters standing back from individual nations the focus is firmly on a “western” European perspective. King, in chapter 2, admits that “the discussion is restricted to those Western European countries which were the main targets for international migration”. This is unfortunate, for one of the strengths of the book is the recognition that the impacts of migrations are felt on the areas from which they leave, on the areas of arrival, and also where migrants return. These differences are well brought out in the case studies, but the significance of such migrations in eastern Europe is only briefly mentioned. As this region, along with Russia, represent one of the largest sources of mass migration in the 1990s, the opportunity to look towards the future patterns and processes has been inhibited by the western European focus.

At first glance this book appears to be aimed primarily at a readership of population geographers and demographers, not least as much of the language and approach reflects contemporary migration studies, and most references are of population studies. But it would be unfortunate if such characteristics restricted the readership. As a student text, the range of empirical information and interpretation is excellent, providing opportunities for extrapolation from the specific case studies to more general processes and patterns. For the economic and political scientist, this book offers a careful and thoughtful exploration of the complex set of relations between mass migration and the wider economic political societal processes shaping not only people’s lives and their future opportunities, but also how the legacy of past migrations has a contemporary significance.