ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the modern age, relations between Europe and the New World have shaped the way Europeans perceive migrations. The contrast between metropole and colony became the cornerstone of an ideological and institutional complex, which ruled over human mobility for centuries. This true mobility regime was even able to influence the birth of the European Community and its way of conceiving the movements of people from, towards and within the continent. This chapter focuses on this uneven mobility system, highlighting the differentiation that emerged in Europe in the middle of the twentieth century between migrant categories.
