ABSTRACT
The challenge that issues of migration pose to modern territorial states, which have attempted to construct particular and different forms of citizenship and nationalism within their geographical borders, is one of the most pressing and difficult problems facing governments and their people across the globe. The growth of international economic inequalities, increasing ethnic conflict and the growth of free trade areas are all factors that have contributed to the acceleration, globalisation and feminisation of migration. For these reasons Castles and Miller (1993) have predicted that the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century will be the ‘age of migration’. This chapter is concerned with the migrants who have come to constitute permanently resident ethnic minorities and those who are likely to migrate in the 1990s. The focus will be on politics and policies in Britain, and this will be placed firmly in the European context.
