Home » European emigrations in the 19th century / Immigrations in the 20th century » Integration, interaction, dialogue between cultures: migrations in Europe 19th-20th
May
16

The theme is particularly vivid and heard by all people in Europe, because migration which is currently investing our continent, have radically changed the demographic composition and ethnicity of almost all countries, with important issues of integration, interaction, dialogue between cultures. The phenomenon is not new: in all periods of history, human communities have moved from their territories in search of more favorable conditions of life, but between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these movements have taken on particularly intense quantitative dimensions and very very complex and sometimes contradictory qualitative forms. Certain areas of Europe, in fact, after having been countries of emigration during the first half of the nineteenth century, will soon become a destination for waves of immigration from other states where the process of industrialization had not yet started and therefore less job opportunities offered . It is the case, for example, in Germany of the rural populations, particularly those over the Elbe, which particularly affected the agricultural cycles of famine of the ’30s / ’40s, leave in great numbers their villages and make the long journey to the American mirage. The same change from birthplace to the host country was also recorded in France, where the industrialization process is slower to take off than Britain or Belgium, where an economy still persists so strongly linked to primary resources. From the second half of the nineteenth century, these countries will draw, however, a large amount of labor more or less specialized, first by the countries of southern Europe and later also from other continents.

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