The United States is often regarded as the definitive “immigrant nation”. After more than two hundred years of significant inflows, immigration to the US is characterized by its diversity. Each year large numbers of people from different socio-economic, educational and ethnic backgrounds are drawn to the country.
The United Kingdom became a country of immigration after the Second World War, following large-scale immigration from its former colonies. Labour shortages generated by Britain’s relative postwar affluence were filled by colonial workers who took advantage of privileged immigration channels created by the country’s citizenship laws. Until the mid-1960s, migration was a market-driven phenomenon sanctioned by an imperial citizenship regime. Migration patterns were largely stable from the early 1970s until the 1990s, with migration disproportionately made up of family reunification.
With the exception of the influx of the Turkish Muslim populations of the Ottoman Empire who were left out of its newly established borders in 1923, Turkey has largely been considered a country of emigration throughout much of the 20th century. Emigration that began in the early 20th century with the outflow of non-Muslim populations from Anatolia as a part of the nation-building process, continued in the 1960s and 1970s in the form of labor migration by Turkish nationals, mainly to Western Europe and especially to Germany.
Sweden, the biggest country in Scandinavia with a population of just over nine million people, is today a multicultural society. In recent years the influx of asylum-seekers and refugees, family members of migrants already resident in the country, as well as foreign students has reached record levels. In addition, European Union (EU) citizens, Norwegians and Icelanders are free to settle in Sweden and look for work. Only recently the government also made immigration easier for workers from non-EU states.
Traditionally an emigration country, Spain has been transformed within the space of a few decades to become one of the most important immigration countries in Europe. Since the middle of the 1980s Spain’s foreign population has risen nineteen-fold to 4.52 million. Legislation has been modified many times in order to keep pace with this ever-changing situation. From the beginning, the focus has been on controlling the flow of immigrants and combating illegal migration, which represents a central problem for Spain.
Policy Framework and Objectives
In Europe and elsewhere, there is a widespread image of Africa as a continent in crisis, whose population seeks en masse to find a route to Europe. The example of Senegal, however, illustrates that African migration is far more complex a phenomenon. To begin with, migration to and from Senegal has, until recently, primarily been in connection with other African states. Historically, Senegal was not a country of origin, but rather the destination of migrants.
The Russian Federation (Russia) is the largest state in the world in terms of territory, occupying more than 11% of the land surface of the Earth, and is located in Eurasia. Russia shares borders with 16 countries; it has land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, North Korea and maritime borders with Japan and the USA. Russia is a federal state consisting of 832 “subjects of federation” (like states in the USA or Laender in Germany).
During the past one hundred years Romania was predominantly a country of emigration, with a rather impressive record regarding the number of persons involved, the outcomes and the varieties of migratory arrangements. It is noticeable that in the 20th century a considerable part of the migratory flows was directly or indirectly connected with ethnic minorities, a type of migration largely characteristic for other countries of Central and Southeastern Europe. These minorities were not simply refugees: they moved to states to which they had historical ties (e.g.
The history of migration in Poland is characterised largely by emigration. Until the end of the 20th century, emigration took place both in large waves and in continual yearly movements.