Migration in Southern Europe since 1945: the entanglement of many mobilities

"Space" - in which the phenomenon of migration takes place - is not the only category to be rethought and relocated in migration studies. Another key issue is "time", or rather a periodisation. For a long time, the academic debate on Europeans Mediterranean countries has been dominated by a claim that has been more or less taken as given, namely, the historical succession of emigra- tion and immigration. Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal are supposed to have followed, according to this evidence, a cyclical model of migration that was around up until the 1970s, the emigration beyond national borders being seen as a predominant movement following by a massive foreign immigration which is said to have supplanted the centrality of expatriation. The article proposes a new point of view about this question, incorporating emigration, immigration and internal migration in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal in a convergent perspective.