Towards a diversity of migratory types and contexts in Southern Europe

This introductory paper sets the background for the special issue of the journal on Southern Europe by offering an overview and selective theorisation of recent trends of immigration into the region. The paper is in three parts. The first sketches the historical evolution of migration from and to the region: emigration overseas, emigration to Europe, return migration, and immigration. The major causes of the migration "turnaround" from mass emigration to large-scale immigration are detailed, but also, in the second part of the paper, the great diversity of types and forms of migration recently and currently affecting the region. In part three of the article recent immigration is conceptualised in terms of two explanatory frameworks, linked in turn to the informal economy and the weak welfare state; whilst in the conclusion the significance of the Southern European region is stressed in terms both of the global map of migration and of new typologies of mobility.