Migration in Europe

European countries have on the whole been reluctant to recognize their status as immigration countries. Unlike the traditional settler countries of North America and Australasia, they have displayed a profound ambivalence about accepting large-scale immigration. This restrictive agenda often runs counter to economic considerations, as well as to normative and legal commitments to immigrants and refugees. The national policy dilemmas also need to be understood in the context of complex regional dynamics. To begin with, European Union co-operation has led to the elimination of restrictions on mobility between member states, as well as to a new agenda for a common immigration and asylum policy. This hostility appears counter-intuitive, given the extent to which European countries have benefited from immigration in the past decades. Migration has become a central issue in political debates in Europe. This can be partly attributed to the significant changes in the scale and composition of migration flows since the early 1990s.