Migration in Southern Europe since 1945: The Entanglement of many Mobilities

“Space” – in which the phenomenon of migration takes place – is not the only category to be rethought and relocated in migration studies. Another key issue is “time”, or rather a periodisation. For a long time, the academic debate on Europeans Mediterranean countries has been dominated by a claim that has been more or less taken as given, namely, the historical succession of emigration and immigration. Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal are supposed to have followed, according to this evidence, a cyclical model of migration that was around up until the 1970s, the emigration beyond national borders being seen as a predominant movement following by a massive foreign immigration which is said to have supplanted the centrality of expatriation. The article proposes a new point of view about this question, incorporating emigration, immigration and internal migration in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal in a convergent perspective.