‘Old’ immigration countries in Europe: The concept and empirical examples

In the course of their immigration experience, transitioning receiving countries go through a specific demographic development and policy learning process that is called a migration cycle. It appears that this migration cycle is to some extent similar to that which old immigration countries experienced in the past. Migration processes of the past will never be repeated in exactly the same way, but if the stages of the migration cycle are generalised, the similarities become apparent. This chapter applies this conceptual model to the past and recent migration history of the ‘old’ immigration countries in Europe. The authors critically evaluate the