Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1945 “Europe choked with refugees” as the Nazi empire unraveled itself. Tens of millions of people made their way home in every direction out of central Europe. Forced laborers left the German cities where they had found themselves working for the Nazi war regime. From further east over ten million people tramped towards a devastated rump Germany traversed with shells of buildings searching for accommodation among the ruins. Local long-standing border conflicts resolved themselves through an exchange of populations.Following the end of the refugee crisis in the late 1940s, labor recruitment began to develop. While Britain and France could call on their colonial populations, other industrialized western European states turned to workers available in the south of the continent, a process which would last into the middle of the 1970s. In the eastern half of the continent migration remained much more limited as the command economies of the industrializing Soviet bloc used their own internal surplus labor supplies.Although western European states had all stopped direct recruiting by the mid-1970s, migration has, nevertheless, continued to develop due to a range of processes. These have included family reunification, whereby mainly male migrants brought over their wives and children. The end of the Cold War led to a refugee crisis reminiscent (but not on the same scale as) the one ... log in or subscribe to read full text