A New Narrative for Migrations

Migratory movements in time and in space Population movements are an inherent part of the history of humanity and Europe has not always been a place of immigration. Our history is founded on population movements, wars and invasions. For example, France owes its name to the Francs who came from the North and had nothing to do with “our ancestors the Gauls”. The largest migratory movements in modern times involved 50 million Europeans who escaped poverty and persecution, mainly between 1850 and the First World War. Both America and Australia are largely populated by these people, to the detriment of their native populations. In 1900, international migrations represented 5% of the world’s population, compared to 2.9% in 1990 and 3.4% today. It is therefore important to keep things in perspective. Whilst figures regarding migration are changing in absolute terms, ultimately the change is only slightly greater than that of the planet’s population over the course of the last few decades, and is almost insignificant in the context of the globalisation and transformations being generated in terms of communication and transportation in particular. However, migratory movements have changed: they have become globalised and now almost all countries throughout the world are simultaneously sending-, transitand hosting-countries. France is an excellent example of this, since its net migratory balance is practically zero.