Migrants in Europe: a debate on the move

Raimondo Cagiano de Azevedo, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

The most difficult journey in the progression of international migration is that of its protagonists: those women and men who migrate, workers, family members, refugees: all people who seek asylum for disparate reasons. But the debates, studies and research regarding international migration have also experienced their own progression as marked as the related norms and policies. Along with this movement of people, a heightened cultural and social sensitivity towards international migration was developing; there were also repeated attempts at new political, institutional and regulatory arrangements. This was followed by a shift from the policies of rotation of immigrants to those of integration; from approaches that were nearly exclusively economic to more structural programs; from policies of blockage, closure and regulation to ones which were more current with respect to understanding and international cooperation as well as decentralized, transnational cooperation. This long, difficult, complex and incomplete process was ultimately accompanied by institutional events, such as large national and international conferences on emigration, immigration and the population.