ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a summary of the policies that the countries of western Europe have adopted over the last 75 years to govern the growing mobility of the population, focusing on the intertwining dimension of migration and European reconstruction. After tracing back the fundamental lines of European migration policies from the post-war reconstruction of the continent until 1990, it ends by listing some basic trends that have characterized the action of national and international institutions during the last 30 years.
