ABSTRACT
The unity of the Mediterranean has been debated as a frame of thought and of research by several observers. The geographer Yves Lacoste defines it as the civilization of the olive tree and distinguishes three different spaces: Maghreb/Europe, Balkans and the Near East, which also corresponds to various forms of migration (immigration of work and of family reunification, disentanglement of ethnic and religious belongings, refugees). The historian Fernand Braudel in his famous book on Mediterranean in the period of Philippe II described the region as a place of crossed civilizations and ways of life led by transborder networks, due to the intensity of its shared story of conflicts and dialogues, to its demographic dynamism and to the interdependency of its economies. But he also added that with the discovery of the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese, the Mediterranean began to decline because it ceased at the end of the fifteenth century to be turned towards itself, looking at new horizons. The comparison could be extended to now, but in a reverse approach, where the globalization of migration focuses on the Mediterranean as a concentration of almost all migration situations in the world: refugees, illegals, unaccompanied minors, processes of containment and of mobility, integration dynamics and security approaches, transnationalism and diasporas, religious identities and pluralism, which are the theme of this book.
