Introduction

In the course of their immigration experience, transitioning receiving countries go through a specific demographic development and policy learning process that is called a migration cycle. It appears that this migration cycle is to some extent similar to that which old immigration countries experienced in the past. Migration processes of the past will never be repeated in exactly the same way, but if the stages of the migration cycle are generalised, the similarities become apparent. This chapter applies this conceptual model to the past and recent migration history of the ‘old’ immigration countries in Europe. The authors critically evaluate the grouping of the old immigration countries, prod for specific as well as general driving forces and look for a general model to be applied to the shift that countries undergo from emigration to immigration. For this purpose, the most important ‘old’ immigration countries are included in the considerations – namely Germany, France, Great Britain and Austria. Also elaborated is the case of Spain as an illustration of a ‘new’ immigration country in order to show how the concept can also be applied (for more detailed information on Spain, see chapters 5 and 7 in this volume).

Notions and concepts

The notion of ‘old immigration countries’

The notion of an ‘immigration country’ plays an important role in public debate and signals a change in perception, but there is no commonly accepted definition. There are at least two approaches to operationalise this concept. The first one defines an immigration country as a declared selfperception. The political elite and the general public agree that immigration is part of the nation-building process. Society is built upon migration – that is the general idea. Whether the real number of immigrants is high or low does not play a significant role; what is important is general self-perception. The so-called classical immigration countries (the United States, Canada, Australia) adhere to this definition. The other approach is more statistically based. Immigration countries are defined by a considerable and systematic surplus of immigration over emigration over time, and thus by positive net migration. It is assumed that positive net migration is not a singular event and is more or less a steady, stable situation.