Abstract
This edited volume looks at how Southern Europe and South America were linked through human mobility and development strategies after World War II. As the Western World pushed for the global spread of the “migration–development nexus,” the book uncovers how this was adopted in the southern periphery. The analysis centres on the interplay between international and national policies and how they shaped the outcomes in the different case studies.
The book consists of two parts. The first part analyses how countries of origin in Southern Europe (Spain and Greece) and countries of destination in South America (Argentina and Brazil) implemented migration and development policies. The articles discuss the geopolitical, legal, and institutional framework in which these policies were embedded. Sending countries mainly lowered barriers to emigration, concluded bilateral agreements, and relied on international institutions. Sometimes, reluctantly so as illustrated by Fernandéz Vicente's analysis of Franco's regime. Conversely, Tourgeli shows how the Greek authorities came to espouse international migration planning and used external help to adapt its administration, legislation, and institutions accordingly.
The top-down perspective shows that receiving countries more explicitly took institutional steps by setting up agencies at home and abroad to channel mobility based on the migration–development nexus. Damilakou exemplifies how the Perón-government outlined its immigration policies accordingly and created various institutions to steer the process from the countries of origin, upon arrival and afterwards to promote internal migration. Yet the clear intentions to enforce the policies into practice did not guarantee their effectiveness. Damilakou points out that the agency of new institutions on migration often remained insignificant, for various reasons but especially because of the competition from Western core countries offering better conditions. The findings for Brazil are similar. Papadopoulos adds an important layer to the analysis by pointing out that federal policies often were frustrated by diverging interests of state and local authorities.
The second part of the book looks at how migration flows developed beyond the spheres of policies. By offering a bottom-up analysis using micro-perspectives Ortuño Martínez immediately highlights that the migration process materialised independently of government policies. The trajectories of individual migrants show that people did not match the desired skillset, and did not end up in the targeted labour positions or geographical areas. Relatives, friends, and non-governmental associations continued to dominate the process and they used the government schemes to reactivate and stimulate existing chains. Padilla and França's macro-overview of the Portuguese case corroborates that chain migrations overpowered government interventions. Damilakou and Papadopoulos come to the same conclusions by zooming in on the attempts of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) to relocate Greeks to Argentina and Brazil. Schemes to direct farmers and skilled workers to specific jobs and locations encountered great difficulties. When they eventually did find candidates, it proved very difficult to avoid such people from exploring opportunities elsewhere. Other recruits had difficulties adapting and asked for repatriation or to move on to other countries. ICEM booked small successes but mostly with their family reunification schemes, stressing once again the importance of chain migration. Already during the nineteenth century a wide variety of agricultural (and sometimes industrial) colonisation projects, often state-funded, had tried to direct migration in a similar fashion in the hope to set up chain migration patterns. That most of these also failed for the same reasons serves to highlight the long history of frustrated government attempts to steer migration.
Bernard and Cosovshi add an interesting geopolitical perspective by looking at how Yugoslavia, balancing in-between Eastern and Western blocs, used the migration–development nexus as a tool to position itself. Masonidis gives a statistical overview of migration flows from Southern Europe to South America and links these movements to the macroeconomic evolutions of the countries involved, focusing on gross domestic product, employment, and remittances. The article offers a comprehensive comparative analysis of the case studies discussed in the volume. By isolating the flows supported by ICEM where possible, Masonidis shows how they compare to the overall migration flows. Finally, and of specific interest to transport historians, Limnios-Sekeris looks at how transport companies competed for the market of assisted migrants. It reveals that authorities of sending and receiving countries tried to direct these passengers as much as possible to their national transport companies. Several countries even made this a requirement as part of entering into agreements with ICEM to send or receive migrants. It highlights that using migration to the benefit of the merchant marine was a well-established practice. This indeed goes back to the nineteenth century when shipping lines were even fully integrated into the migration enforcement system and the selection process, yet the article does not reveal if that was still the case. However, as illustrated with Brazilian Panair, Limnios-Sekeris shows that this strategy extended to airlines and that migrant passengers still served to spur the introduction of new technologies under certain national flags.
As each chapter can be read on its own, there are some inherent repetitions, yet they serve to highlight key moments and actors such as the founding of ICEM. The varied case studies of sending countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Yugoslavia) illustrate how migration and development policies compare in their conception, implementation, and outcome. Unfortunately, Italy is not included as a case, but it is often referred to as a country of reference in the contributions. On the receiving end, the scope is limited to Argentina and Brazil which dominated migration flows into South America and are also overrepresented in migration studies. In further studies, comparisons of how migration and development policies were adopted by landlocked countries or those facing the Pacific will complete the picture and better discern the Atlantic dimension of the fascinating results presented here. How did countries fare that received few European migrants such as Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, or Ecuador, and do did their policies compare with other countries that managed to attract a share such as Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela?
There are some missed opportunities, not least how the findings connect to the seminal work of Timothy Hatton and Jeffrey Williamson in which policy performance of south–south migrations is addressed. Moreover, the book could have served as an invitation to make more explicit connections with north-north and north–south movements. 1 The same is true for David Fitzgerald and David Cook-Martín's analysis of how racist ideologies influenced migration policies and spread across the Americas. Their discussion of how these ideas circulated transnationally and led to various national policy outcomes could have served to connect the presented case studies more explicitly. 2 This serves to highlight the long-standing issue that migration scholarship on the South Atlantic has developed in parallel with the North Atlantic and vice versa with very little dialogue. While this edited volume fails to break with this pattern, it does offer a very valuable addition that broadens our knowledge on South-Atlantic migrations and offers an ideal platform to further explore connections with the North-Atlantic and beyond.
