New Trends in Intra-European Union Mobilities

Book excerpt: Mobilities within the European Union (EU) have changed significantly since the classical intra-regional migrations of the 1950s–1970s. After a period of reduced, less visible flows in the 21st century mobilities increased again, first linked to EU expansion towards the East, and from 2008, with renewed South-North flows following the impact of the Great Recession on Southern European countries. It is in this context that the current volume explores how these recent migrations reflect new and more complex patterns of mobility, increasingly uncertain and unstable, involving both natives and naturalised migrants. It also seeks to unpack the multiple connections between these new migration systems and other systems affecting social protection, gender and citizenship, and how these intersect with other factors such as class, age, race and ethnicity. The different chapters of the book examine this covering a wide variety of cases, including intra-EU flows from Portugal and Spain, recent Spanish and Latin American migrants in London, Paris and Brussels, and Romanian migration to the UK and France, thus adding to its richness. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Gender Studies, Public Policy, and Politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.