Complex and dynamic integration processes in Europe : intra EU mobility and international migration in times of recession

Abstract

During the last 20 years migration in Europe has become more dynamic and complex, creating a different socio-economic and political context within which ever changing migrant integration challenges have to be addressed. In contrast to previous periods, and especially the recession years of the mid-1970s and early 1980s, European governments have turned again more favourable towards labour migration in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Labour migration and intra-European Union (EU) mobility was seen as one of the driving forces of economic growth in the process of the consolidation of the European Common Market.