Introduction

Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have in common two long episodes of strong emigration – during the first period of globalisation and after World War II – and they now share comparable types of foreign immigration. During the first period of globalisation, in the second half of the nineteenth century and before World War I, these countries made an important contribution to intra-European migration and to settlement migration in North America and South America. After World War II, they were among the main suppliers of the growing economies of Western and Northern Europe. Currently, they are experiencing a significant inflow of foreigners. In a relatively short time span, Southern Europe underwent its migration transition, becoming one of the most important areas of attraction on the continent (Bonifazi 2008). According to the available statistics, the number of foreign immigrants in this area can be estimated as ranging from between 950,000 and 1.3 million in 1991 to between 8 million and 10 million in the period 2006-2007. This is a seven- to eight-fold increase in just fifteen years.

Despite some dissimilarities that stem from the different histories of these countries, their diverse social and economic characteristics and their specific cultural and colonial links to other geographical areas, many reasons for the growth of foreign immigration were similar across all four of them. It is worth mentioning several notable economic trends in recent decades: the improvement in living standards and educational levels of the native youth, both of which increased labour expectations; the persistence of significant informal economies and of segmentation processes in the labour markets; the effects of low fertility rates on labour supply; and the overall limitations of Mediterranean welfare systems, which are largely unable to provide for their populations’ evolving needs, including those attributable to the ageing process. Furthermore, the political and economic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) intensified the push forces into this area. While the gradual incorporation of most of those countries into the European Union migration system resulted in a relaxing of visa policies, labour migration from that area had been de facto tolerated even before the EU enlargement. This increased availability of foreign workers matched the growing needs of Southern European labour markets.