Rethinking Postwar Migration through the Mediterranean, 1945–74

The Mediterranean Basin was the largest source of migration in continental, Western Europe from the late 1940s through the mid-1970s. Tens of millions of men, women, and children who were born in Italy, Algeria, Turkey, and Spain – to name but a few countries – found work and residence in France, Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Benelux countries. The Mediterranean was also a highly contested borderland, where authoritarian regimes (e.g., Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia) rubbed ties with formally democratic states that were often, at the same time, in the midst of tumultuous processes of imperial reform and decolonization. This paper asks what insights can be gained by thinking about migration through the lens of the Mediterranean, and particularly the dynamics of population politics, gender, and migration in France and the western Mediterranean.

Adopting a Mediterranean perspective, this paper argues, does not just enable comparisons between “European” migrants and those from North African and (post)colonial backgrounds, but also demonstrates the dynamic, interactive processes by which migratory practices were “negotiated” by different state and non-state actors throughout the region. Such a perspective, for example, reveals highly different patterns – and attitudes towards – women migrants’ paid employment. It reveals how often nationalistic and racialized visions for population policies were implemented through transnationally negotiated family allowance payments and family settlement schemes. It demonstrates the centrality of the colonies and the processes of decolonization, not just within the colony/metropolitan binary, but for wider European patterns of migration. Finally, it shows how an emerging corpus of “European” migratory policies – which were given a particular impetus with the signing of the Treaty of Rome – were constantly developed in light of migration from former colonies and other non-member states, as the boundaries of “Europe” and being “European” were hammered out in the Mediterranean.