ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the European integration process has interacted with migration dynamics in Western Europe, easing population flows and possibly reshaping their nature and scope. European Community rules on free circulation began to be effective in the late 1960— ironically just as the interest to migrate from Southern to Northern Europe was declining. Foreign workers from the European Community of nine shrank from 1.8 to 1.2 million in the 1973 to 1985 time period. The European Union (EU) has two neatly distinct migration regimes: one for EU citizens and the other for TCNs. The first represents possibly the most open cross-state movement policy worldwide, to the point of turning international into internal migration. The national communities that settled abroad during the post– World War II period of industrial recovery and mass migration along the south–north axis of the continent, still largely determine the total amount of European migrants in EU member states.
