Typology & Geography of European Mass Migration (Text)

Typology & geography of European mass migration (text)

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This document is being made available by the Population Information

Network (POPIN) Gopher of the United Nations Population Division,

Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis,

in collaboration with the European Association for Population

Studies and the IUSSP. For further information please contact

Professor G.C. Blangiardo, Local Organizer, EAPS Conference, Milan,

University of Milan, Istituto di Statistica, V. Visconti di Modrone

21, Milan, Italy.

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EUROPEAN POPULATION CONFERENCE

CONGRES EUROPEEN DE DEMOGRAPHE

Milano, 4-8 settembre 1995

Plenary III

Where did they all come from?

Typology and geography of European mass migration

in the twentieth century

by Rainer MYnz

Münz, R. (1995): Where did they all come from? Typology and geography of European mass migration in the twentieth century. Working paper. Population Information Network (POPIN) Gopher of the United Nations Population Division, Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, in collaboration with the European Association for Population Studies and the IUSSP

1. Introduction

Spatial mobility is a crucial element characterising open

societies. Only totalitarian regimes prevent their citizens from

travelling abroad or emigrating, or force them to settle in

certain areas. Democratic societies in contrast uphold the right of

their citizens to choose their place of residence freely. This

includes the right to emigrate. During the Cold War and the

division of Europe this was a central stumbling-block not only

between East and West, but also among the socialist countries

themselves. There the governments rightly feared a mass exodus of

dissatisfied citizens, while many of the people living under

communist rule secretly hoped for such an opportunity to arise. The

western countries for their part made it a point to keep their

borders open, at least for migrants from the East1.

The perspective has changed dramatically since the fall of the

Iron Curtain. The poorer countries in Eastern Europe and south of

the Mediterranean regard the possibility of their citizens to

emigrate to Western Europe as a chance for them to find work and to

help reduce demographic pressure. The remittances of successful

migrants, both in cash and in kind, are equally welcome and can

help stabilising the sending countries. This is true for Poland and

Romania as well as for Turkey and Morocco.

Today however, western societies are frightened by the

possibility of mass immigration from Central and Eastern Europe,

the Balkans, North Africa and Central Asia. The inflow of poor or

persecuted citizens from these and other regions of the world is

seen as a threat. The fact that, at least in the past, the

countries of destination generally profited economically from the

immigrants hardly plays a role in the public debate. Instead,

migration has become one of the main topics of Western European

domestic and security policy. Scenarios of ethnic or cultural

infiltration of West European societies, a dramatic decline of law

and order, increasing competition between domestic populations and

immigrants for housing and jobs, growing demographic and unsolvable

ethnic, religious or political conflicts are discussed.

Some of these fears are justified. Others are obviously unfounded

or have much more to do with the receiving societies than with the

immigrants themselves. The geopolitical context also plays an

important role. Countries like France, Belgium and since the late

1980s also Italy and Spain tend to see demographic pressure from

North Africa and the Middle East as main problem. In Germany,

Austria and Scandinavia the main concern is about immigration from

the East. To the extent to which countries like the Czech Republic,

Hungary and Poland became destinations of immigrants from the CIS

countries and the Balkans they also started to share this concern.

In fact, the end of Europe's political division led to an

unexpected wave of mass migration. Between 1989 and 1993 more than

4 million Europeans left their home countries. Most of them went

from the eastern part of Europe to the West (Fassmann / MYnz,

1994b). Another 5 million lost their homes on the territory of the

former Yugoslavia because of war and ethnic cleansing (UN-Ece,

1995). Since 1945-1948 in Europe there has not been any migration

of comparable size.

These are the main reasons why the euphoria about the end of the

Cold War and the creation of a greater Europe without frontiers

faded away so quickly, at least in the West. Many West Europeans

soon felt the need for sealing off their countries2. And during the

late 1980s and early 1990s both hostility towards foreigners and

ethnocentric attitudes became more common (Wiegand, 1992;

Hofrichter / Klein, 1994; see also figg. 14-16). As a reaction

most European countries and the USA have enacted tighter border

controls, sanctions against airlines carrying would-be migrants,

new procedures and regulations restricting the right of asylum, and

a variety of other anti- immigration measures. In general, since

the late 1980s, migration has become a ®hotŻ issue both at the

foreign and the domestic policy agenda of most industrialised

nations (Teitelbaum / Weiner, 1995; Heinelt, 1994; Baldwin-Edwards

/ Schain, 1995; Velling / Woydt, 1993).

2. Types and stages of mass migration in Europe

In spite of the recent renewal of public interest in migration,

we have to keep the following in mind: Mass migration is neither a

new phenomenon, nor can we say that migration is the historical

exception. At least ever since the Industrial Revolution, spatial

mobility has been a regular phenomenon characterising European

societies. But the balance has changed. Europe as a whole, once a

continent of emigration (Bade, 1992; Hoerder, 1985), has turned

into a world region mainly consisting of countries with a positive

migration balance (Chesnais, 1995; Council of Europe, 1994; Muus,

1993). Sometimes Europe is even called a ®white fortressŻ (Ruffin,

1993; Chesnais, 1995) and a continent ®under siegeŻ (Coleman,

1994c).

Between 1815 and 1930 more than 50 million people left the old

World for North and South America, Australia and New Zealand

(Hoerder, 1985). During the same period large numbers of Polish

and Ukrainian workers migrated to the emerging centres of the coal,

iron and steel industries in France (Lorraine), Germany (the Ruhr,

Upper Silesia) and even England (the Midlands). Large numbers of

ethnic Italians moved to France, Switzerland and Western Austria,

Irishmen to Britain. The growing cities of continental Europe also

attracted large numbers of Slav immigrants from the Czech lands,

from Galicia and from the Prussian parts of Poland. Eastern

European Jews fled from the rising tide of anti-Semitism, pogroms

and economic misery in the Ukraine, Galicia and the Baltics and

established themselves as large ethno-religious minorities in the

booming metropolitan areas of the late 19th and early 20th

centuries: Berlin, Vienna, Paris and cities like Lviv, Warsaw and

Prague.

2.1. The inter-war period

After 1918 the influence of ethno- nationalistic, religious and

political push factors became even more evident as the winners of

World War I had reshaped the political map of Europe. The

establishing of new nation states also created large numbers of new

ethnic minorities. In many places they were not recognised, but

oppressed or even terrorised and forced to leave the country. Some

cases are still part of our collective memory, others can only be

recalled by descendants of the respective groups.

Tab. 1 - Types of mass migration in the

inter-war period

Main types of mass migration migration directly related to the

results of World War I and the change of borders; migration,

displacement and ethnic cleansing directly related to the creation

of new nation states; migration related to the recruitment of

foreign labour; migration of political and ethno-religious refugees

(mainly from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany).

Source: Jungfer et al., 1993; Kulischer, 1948; MYnz / Fassmann,

1994.

During the inter-war period some 6 million people were

affected by forced resettlement, ethnic cleansing or repatriation

due to a change of borders. Among them were ethnic Greeks

displaced from Istanbul and western Turkey and resettled in

Greece; ethnic Truces and other Muslims from the Balkans who were

forced to leave Romania, Bulgaria and Greece for Turkey; ethnic

Hungarians who left Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Ethnic

Poles had to leave their homelands that had just become part of

the Soviet Union (Kulischer, 1948; MYnz / Fassmann, 1994). Ethnic

Germans and Jews holding German or Austrian citizenship emigrated

from the Baltic states, Poland and from other newly established

Central and East European countries to Germany and Austria.

Tab. 2 - Types of mass migration since World

War II

Main types of mass migration migration, displacement and

ethnic cleansing directly related to the end of World War II and

its consequences; migration related to the decolonisation of

Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean; post-colonial

migration from the former colonies to Western Europe; migration

related to the recruitment of foreign labour, and subsequent

migration of family members; migration of business elites and

wealthy elderly Europeans; migration of victims of war, political

refugees and asylum-seekers.

Source: Ilo / Iom / Unhcr, 1994; Fassmann /

MYnz, 1994a,b; van de Kaa, 1993; Salt, 1989.

During the inter-war period the largest single wave of

emigration was caused by the Soviet revolution. Between 1917 and

1922 some 1.5 million Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians left

the country (Kulischer, 1948). Nazi Germany was the other regime

causing mass migration for political reasons. Some 450,000

Jews and other political refugees managed to emigrate from

Germany, Austria, and Bohemia-Moravia occupied by Nazi Germany

in 1938-1939 (Bade, 1992). Others were sent to concentration camps

and murdered in the holocaust.

In Europe the inter-war period was also marked by a considerable

amount of labour migration and return migration. Between 1918 and

the mid-1930s some 1.2 million labour migrants and family

dependants moved within Europe. During this period Poland became

the main country of origin and France the main destination of

migrant workers (Jungfer et al., 1993; MYnz / Fassmann, 1994). In

the early 1940s, Nazi-Germany became the main destination for

forced and voluntary foreign labour. In 1944, the size of this

foreign labour force reached 8 million (Dohse, 1981).

2.2. Mass migration since 1945

In the second half of the 20th century, in Europe at least

several types of mass migration had a major impact (see tab. 2).

2.2.1. Post-war migration, displacement and ethnic cleansing as a

result of World War II, Yalta, and Potsdam

During the collapse of the Nazi regime and in the second half

of the 1940s some 12 million ethnic Germans (estimate for

1945-50) either fled or were expelled from the eastern parts of

the former ®Third ReichŻ and territories formerly occupied by the

German Wehrmacht (Poland, the Baltics, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia,

Serbia, Ukraine) or ruled during World War II by allied fascist

and authoritarian regimes (Slovakia, Croatia, and Hungary). Another

2 million lost their lives as a result of this ethnic cleansing

(Benz, 1985; Reichling, 1985).

In some countries, like Poland and Czechoslovakia, the

expulsion of ethnic Germans and former German citizens was

accepted or even encouraged by the Allies. In other places this

expulsion was arranged by local authorities or resulted from

collective measures against German minorities, who were

generally suspected to be Nazi collaborators (e.g. German-speaking

citizens of Yugoslavia and Hungary). Between 1945 and 1949 almost

8 million of these German refugees and expellees came to the

western part of Germany, then occupied by the western Allies, and

some 3.6 million to the eastern part of Germany, controlled by the

Soviet Army (Lemberg / Edding, 1959). Smaller numbers made their

way to Austria (530,000; Stanek, 1985).

During the same period, most of the 10.5 million displaced

persons, Pow's, forced labour and survivors of the concentration

camps living in Germany and Austria in 1945 returned to their

countries of origin (Bade, 192). Especially Pows and displaced

persons from the Soviet Union were forced to return against their

will. In late 1946 only the Western Allies stopped forced

repatriation to what then became the communist part of Europe.

After the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany

(FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, West

Germany also had to deal with mass migration from East Germany.

Some 3.8 million Germans crossed the line which gradually became

the border between the two German states and gradually part of the

Iron Curtain. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961

closed a last loop hole and largely reduced this flow (Ulrich,

1990; Rudolph, 1994).

Ethnic Germans were not the only group affected by expulsion,

allied arrangements and the new national boundaries drawn in Yalta

and Potsdam. 1.5 million ethnic Poles had to leave their homes in

former eastern Poland, i.e. areas that are now part of Lithuania,

Belorussia and the Ukraine. They were resettled in areas, cities

and houses just ®purgedŻ of their former German inhabitants.

Almost 600.000 ethnic Ukrainians, Belorussians and Lithuanians

had to leave Poland and Czechoslovakia and were resettled in

territories that had become part of Soviet Union in 1945 (Kersten,

1968; Urban, 1993). Under similar auspices more than 100,000

Czechs and Slovaks were resettled in the former Sudetenland and

in Southern Moravia, also purged of their former German-speaking

population (Stola, 1992).

At the same time (1945-50) more than 100,000 ethnic Italians

were forced to leave Istria and Dalmatia. Some 300,000 members of

the Hungarian minorities in Southern Slovakia, Transylvania

(Romania) and the Voyvodina (Serbia) were transferred to Hungary

or ®exchangedŻ by order of their respective governments (Kosinski,

1982; Dsvenyi / Vukovich, 1994). This list of enforced ethnic

cleansing in central and south-eastern Europe could easily be

prolonged.

2.2.2. Migration and de-colonisation

The second type of post-war mass migration was and still is

related to the colonial history of the major West European nations.

During the process of de-colonisation ®whiteŻ colonists and

settlers, troops and civil servants moved back to their home

countries in large numbers. In some cases this process created a

steady flow of return migrants, in other cases the former colonial

powers were confronted with big waves of immigrants. E.g., in

1962-3, as a result of the źvian peace treaty with the FLN, more

than 1 million people left Algeria for mainland France. Return

migration from other former French colonies was of comparable size

(Tribalat et al., 1991). Since the early 1950s, sizeable numbers

of people migrated from Indonesia to the Netherlands. In the

1970s, immigration from Surinam and the Dutch Antilles followed

(Entzinger / Stijnen, 1991). In the mid 1970s Portugal was also

confronted with a sudden surge of returnees and immigrants from its

former African colonies. Since the 1950, several hundreds of

thousands of people remigrated from overseas territories back to

Belgium, Italy, and Britain. In the late 1990s, a last flow of this

type will take place when Hong Kong (1997) and Macao (1999) will

become part of China.

2.2.3. Post-colonial migration

The third type of post-war mass migration is closely linked to

the second one. Following the remigrating colonial masters,

®nativeŻ migrants from South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the

Caribbean moved first to Britain, France and the Benelux

countries, later also to Italy, Portugal and Spain. The

deterioration of living conditions in several Third World

countries, ethnic and political conflicts in the newly founded

states of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, but also the growing

demand for cheap labour in Europe led to considerable migratory

flows. (Coleman / Salt, 1992; Entzinger / Stijnen, 1990; Tribalat

et al., 1991).

The colonial legacy - a common language shared by the citizens

of former colonies and the former colonial power, cultural

orientation towards London, Paris or Lisbon, established traffic

channels - made it easier for people from Pakistan, India, Bangla

Desh, and from the anglophone countries of the Caribbean to come

to Britain, for Arabs from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and for black

people from West Africa to come to France, for Surinamis and

Indonesian Molukkers to come to the Netherlands. At an early

stage this kind of migration was amplified by several European

countries granting citizenship to the residents of their

former overseas territories or facilitating their

immigration by granting them special legal status as quasi-

nationals or privileged aliens (Cohen, 1994; Coleman, 1994a;

Entzinger, 1994).

This type of migration has transformed the metropolitan areas

of western Europe into multicultural ®nutshellsŻ. It has led to the

establishment of ethnic networks and so- called ®visible'

minorities. Since the 1970s, these networks and minorities have

created chain migration, explaining continuous streams of

immigration (Zlotnik, 1992). This type of migration persists

despite high rates of unemployment and anti- immigration policies

in most West European countries (Coleman, 1994b).

But the minorities from Third World countries do not only

remind us of Europe's colonial past. Their presence has also re-

imported racist and ethnic tensions and led in many places to the

re-emergence of populist right-wing movements, ethno-centric

rhetoric in everyday life, and to new forms of xenophobia, inter-