International migrations in the northern countries of the Mediterranean: continuity and changes, before and after the crisis

The world economic crisis since 2008 has constituted an important turning point in international migration trends. According to M. Baldwin-Edwards, Northern Mediterranean countries have accumulated more experience and techniques for the management of migration. In the second half of the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, the countries of southern Europe, which in the past had traditionally been areas of emigration, became the main European pole of attraction for international migratory flows. The intense and lengthy economic slump, generated by the US financial crisis, also appeared as a watershed for international migrations, marking the passage between two successive historical phases. The impact of economic crisis on labour market performances of immigrants in the four countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece) deserves more attention than it was possible to reserve to the issue in a work devoted to the analysis of the evolution of migratory flows.