The Unsettling of Europe

June 10, 2019
Far from a disruptor of equilibrium, mass migration has been a constant, constructive, but bitterly controversial aspect of postwar Europe, according to this sweeping historical study. University of Manchester economic historian Gatrell (The Making of the Modern Refugee) surveys 75 years of population upheavals, including the forced expulsions of millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe following WWII; the return of colonists from the British, French, and Portuguese empires in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s; the movements of people from eastern and southern Europe into western and northern Europe after the fall of communism and the expansion of the European Union; and the contemporary appeals for acceptance of refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Gatrell probes the conflicted politics of migration: governments and businesses eagerly recruit migrant workers, he writes, only to cold-shoulder them during economic downturns, and native-born citizens sometimes welcome but often attack migrants because of cultural and racial xenophobia stoked by right-wing nationalist parties. Gatrell’s detailed but lucid and accessible treatment balances close analysis of shifting policies with vivid, sympathetic sketches of migrants negotiating perilous border crossings and struggling to fit in. The result is a persuasive challenge to conventional wisdom that shows migration in Europe is nothing new.