Friday, March 14, 2014
Sales Conference (Omni Shoreham)
In the post-war decades, substantial emigration took place from rural areas of western peripheral Europe to urban areas of core European countries. Following the onset of the recent economic crisis and increasing austerity in peripheral Western Eurozone countries, emigration from Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain has re-emerged. Is this something new or just a return to past ways? Unlike in earlier decades, many of those leaving today are actually immigrants returning to their home countries. Furthermore, these same countries have become much more industrialised in the interim and their workforces much more skilled. Nonetheless, some similarities remain. Despite the youth of Spain and Greece feeling the effects of the crisis most starkly, the Irish and Portuguese have emigrated in much greater numbers per capita, as happened in earlier decades. But much of this outflow is to very different locations from before, with notable Portuguese emigration to Angola and Brazil and Irish emigration to Australia and Canada. This presentation will draw upon such notions as ‘social resilience’, ‘transnational skills’ and the importance of migration traditions to explain the similarities and differences between current and past migratory trends.
