What's New about New Destinations

Due to a mishmash of pull and push factors, patterns of migration to Western Europe have changed significantly over the last fifteen years. This paper asks, what’s new about these new destinations? More specifically, what (if anything) is new their approach to political incorporation? The paper will focus on Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain – the four formerly high-flying economies that earned the unfortunate moniker ‘PIGS’ during the euro crisis.

Understanding the dynamics of immigration in new destinations is theoretically and empirically important. Theoretically, new destinations do not fit neatly into well-established typologies of immigrant-receiving states. And although immigrants in new destinations lack the well-established allies and institutions that facilitate the process in ‘old destinations’, it is also unclear if their recent status as emigration states matters – institutionally or socially – for shaping both citizen and government responses to immigration. Finally, it is unclear the extent to which their status as relatively late-developing states, and/or late democratizing states within Europe also matters for incorporation. By exploring and explaining patterns of political incorporation in these new destinations through controlled case studies, this study may identify important lessons for future destinations as the distinction between sending and receiving zones shifts increasingly eastward and southward from Western Europe.