ABSTRACT
In contrast to what most people think, Europe has always been a highly mobile continent, and not only since the Industrial Revolution. The idea that migration is a recent phenomenon stems from the myopic conception of what migration entails. This chapter introduces a new cross-cultural migration approach, which captures the basic expressions of human migration since 1500, showing that European societies were not largely static before the modern age. Going beyond the statist definition of migration as international moves, our CCM method makes visible all migrations that brought people – temporary and permanent – in different cultural environments, leading to various kinds of social change. The four main forms of cross-cultural migrations that characterize human mobility both in Europe and beyond are: seasonal migrations, colonization (within the continent), movements to cities and temporary moves by soldiers and sailors. These four types were the engine of tremendous demographic dynamism, including circular and return migrations, but the intensity and relative weight of the four main types changed through time and was added to by people leaving and entering Europe from the outside. Postwar institutional innovations, such as the welfare state, the international humanitarian regime (refugees) and decolonization have changed this dynamism to some extent, but have left the basic forms intact.
