International Migration in Western Europe: Macro Trends in the Past, the Present and the Future

One main topic in the (political) discussion in Western Europe is related to the increasing irnmigration flows into Western Europe. Western Europe seems to enter an irnmigration century. This paper tends to offer in its first part facts on global trends in West European international migration in the past and present time. In mapping out the patterns of European migration, first a brief description of the different types of international migration flows since the Second World War is given. Next to this the present composition of the foreign population in six selected countries of the European Community is described and it is explored wether specific patterns could be observed. Third some more country-specific information is presented. In the second section of the paper the attention is focused on possible future trends in international migration flows within, into and out of the Western European countries. The approach which is chosen for the analysis start with a short look at dominant background trends in fields affecting international migration in Western Europe. One group of discussed fields refer to the macrolevel, notably fields like population, economy, political situation, migration policies, transport, communication and environment. As a last field we focus on developments in social networks, as a field, which could be allocated on the meso level of analysis. Despite of the existence of various more or less plausible indicative global trends in the various fields we focus on some more specific scenarios for the above mentioned fields. Based on the scenarios in a second step the question on their impacts on international migration in Western Europe is answered. This analysis is mainly guided by a ceteris paribus analysis, that is: the impacts are explored mainly without taking the developments in other fields into accout. The last section ends with a summation of the most probable trends in international migration. It seems most probable that the majority of developments lead to a positive effect on international migration into Western Europe, that means an increasing irnmigration. Only trends in the field of migration policies seems to be able to lead to a decrease in irnmigration. However, these effects only have limited effects.