In a subsequent step, we researched historically significant migration events, noting that some of these events overlapped or intersected, and that a few had Europe-wide repercussions. Conversely, regional differences emerge from country to country, which will also become apparent in the selection of interviewees. In the context of our search for eyewitnesses, we limited the scope of our research to the (early) 1950s, though it is worth noting that Greece, Ireland, and Switzerland historically evolved from countries of emigration to countries of immigration.

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Emigration and (post-)war period 

For historical context, we will begin in Ireland with a description of emigration before we can speak of Ireland as a country of immigration. From 1845 to 1849, Ireland had already experienced a devastating crisis known as the “Great Famine,” which led to a massive wave of emigration and the spread of Irish communities abroad. About two million people were forced to leave Ireland and settle mainly in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.

Further waves of emigration occurred in the 1950s and 1980s. The main reason for this large-scale emigration was the lack of jobs, particularly in rural areas, where small farms were no longer able to support entire families. Emigration became so widespread that it was viewed as a normal part of life, especially for young people seeking better opportunities abroad.

Until the mid-19th century, also Switzerland was primarily a country of emigration. Poverty, famine, and a lack of industry drove many Swiss people abroad. Between 1798 and 1914, around half a million Swiss left the country. Toward the end of the 19th century, however, the situation changed as industrialization and the construction of railways attracted foreign workers. Following the liberal revolutions and in the wake of railway construction, politically persecuted individuals (e.g., Hungarians after 1848) and skilled workers also came to Switzerland. In total, an estimated 100,000 to 105,000 foreigners immigrated to Switzerland between 1850 and 1880. Many of them were seasonal or annual workers employed, for example, in railroad construction, the textile industry, or mechanical engineering.

World War II uprooted and dislocated an unprecedented number of people—around 55 million in Europe alone. When the war ended, there were approximately 11 million displaced persons (DPs) in Europe. They included about six million civilian volunteer and forced laborers, two million prisoners of war, and 700,000 surviving concentration camp prisoners. Additionally, thousands of anticommunists and former Nazi collaborators from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia fled the Red Army as it reconquered Eastern Europe. By 1951, the majority of these displaced persons, often referred to as “the last million,” had immigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and other parts of the world. Their refusal to return home, however, caused international debate concerning the status of refugees. It also had an impact on the development of international refugee protection and led to the first comprehensive definition of a refugee.

The special case of Greece

Historically speaking, Greece was also a country shaped by emigration. In the 1950s and 1960s, a significant portion of the Greek population emigrated, primarily for economic reasons.

Migrants generally chose Western countries, particularly Germany, which was open to foreign workers during its post-World War II reconstruction. The Greek government viewed migration as an opportunity for economic growth. During this period, migration to countries overseas and in Western Europe was a mass phenomenon.

Following the fall of the military junta in 1974, Greece experienced its first significant wave of immigration, which began with the return of emigrants. Many who had emigrated for economic reasons returned around 1971, often prompted by factors such as the oil crisis. Political refugees began returning after 1974, a process that was further facilitated after 1981. 

In the early 1980s, a relatively systematic presence of people of non-Greek origin was first recorded, beginning with Pakistani and Filipino communities, followed by smaller communities from other Asian (Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese) and African countries (including Ghanaians, Nigerians, Ethiopians, and Congolese). Some African migrants initially immigrated to study as part of formal exchange programs. Some Asian communities began to establish small businesses. Migrants typically occupied low-skilled, low-paying jobs and worked primarily in agriculture, construction, and domestic service—that is, in sectors in which the local population had limited interest. These population groups were initially small relative to the total population. At that time, the naturalization of Omogeneis (members of the same ethnic group) and Pallinostountes (returnees), particularly from regions such as the Black Sea and Northern Epirus, was widespread due to historical ties to Greek culture; however, many of them had no knowledge of the Greek language, which made their integration difficult. 

The period from the late 1980s to the early 1990s was marked by Greece’s transformation from a country of emigration to an unprepared country of immigration. This development was triggered by the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR. The first major waves came primarily from the neighboring Balkan states and the former Soviet republics, particularly Albania, and began around 1991. 

The 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring of 1968

During this period, Austria, as other European countries, experienced two major waves of refugees resulting from political unrest in the former communist countries. In 1956, following the suppression of the political uprising in Hungary, over 180,000 refugees from that country arrived in Austria. While the vast majority of these people were quickly resettled in other Western countries, approximately 20,000 were granted asylum and remained in Austria.

Following the “Prague Spring” of 1968, approximately 162,000 people from what was then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia) came to Austria, most of whom later traveled on to other Western countries; for the vast majority of Czechoslovak refugees, Austria served merely as a stopover. Many return after some time or emigrate to other Western countries. Only a few thousand refugees remain in Austria for longer. Many refugees emigrate via Austria to other Western countries or return to Czechoslovakia. About 2,000 to 3,000 Czechs and Slovaks settled in Austria.

In Switzerland, the Hungarian uprising also led to the arrival of some 27,000 Hungarians. In 1959–60, Tibetan refugees arrived (following the Chinese occupation of Tibet), and in 1968, refugees from Czechoslovakia arrived after the suppression of the Prague Spring.

Recruitment Agreements

Recruitment Agreement with Italy  

Switzerland recovered quickly after 1945. Starting in 1947–48, there was a labor shortage, particularly in railway construction and the resurgent industrial sector. In 1948, as one of the first countries, Switzerland signed a recruitment agreement with Italy—this marked the beginning of a large-scale migration of temporary workers. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Italians migrated to Switzerland in large numbers (by 1961, over one million Italians were already living in the country). The largest wave of immigration took place between 1951 and 1970 (a total of approximately 2.68 million annual and permanent residence permits, plus an additional 3 million seasonal residence permits). In later years Switzerland attracted workers also from other countries, most notably the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Portugal. It was not until the 1960s that it was recognized that guest workers were needed on a permanent basis, and family reunification as well as the issuance of long-term residence permits (C permits) were made easier. Foreigners were now increasingly viewed as an “indispensable part” of the economy.

Recruitment Agreements of the 1960s and 1970s

Following the example of Germany and Switzerland in the 1950s, Austria began concluding bilateral agreements with countries in Southern and Southeastern Europe in the 1960s. These agreements were intended to recruit so-called guest workers. The agreements with Turkey (1964) and Yugoslavia (1966) were quickly followed by the establishment of recruitment offices in these countries, which over time led to a considerable number of these workers and their families settling in Austria. In 1969, the number of foreign workers from Turkey and Yugoslavia stood at 76,500. By 1973, this number had nearly tripled to 227,000, of whom 178,000 were from Yugoslavia and 27,000 from Turkey.

The oil crisis and the ensuing recession in 1973 led to a drastic decline in demand for guest workers, a phenomenon that repeated itself following the second oil crisis in 1981. In response to the recession in the early 1970s, recruitment was suspended, access to the labor market for foreigners was restricted, and a new law—the Foreign Workers Act—was passed in 1975. As a result, the number of foreign workers (and residents) fell so sharply that by 1985, the employment of Yugoslav and Turkish citizens in Austria was only half as high as in 1973. As the economy recovered, many former migrants from Yugoslavia returned. While active recruitment of workers was discontinued, other forms of migration—family reunification, spontaneous labor migration, and, in the late 1980s, flight and asylum—gained prominence. However, labor migration, which began in the 1960s, had a lasting impact on the resident population in Austria as well as on subsequent migration flows. In 2001, 62.8 percent of the total foreign resident population came from the two recruitment regions, the former Yugoslavia and Turkey..Migration flows and asylum seekers (2010s – present)

Labor migration from post-Soviet / Eastern European countries

In Italy, labor migration from Eastern Europe (primarily from Romania and Ukraine) began to develop in the late 1990s and, in particular, during the 2000s. A large proportion of them found work in the informal sector—in domestic care, construction, and retail—in Naples and the surrounding urban areas. Over time, many of these migrants settled permanently and have since formed well-established communities.

War in Yugoslavia in the 1990s

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but interconnected ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and uprisings that took place from 1991 to 2001 in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia). The conflicts led to the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991. The country disintegrated into six independent states corresponding to the six entities that had previously made up Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia (now North Macedonia).

In total, around 100,000 war refugees from the former Yugoslavia found refuge in Austria in the early 1990s. The largest group consisted of 85,000 asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Approximately two-thirds of them settled permanently in Austria.

Switzerland also took in many refugees from the Yugoslav Wars. Between 1991 and 1999, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the disintegrating Yugoslavia (Bosnian War, Kosovo), many of whom sought protection in Switzerland. At the same time, Switzerland remained a popular destination for migrant workers from previously recruited countries (former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Portugal). In the late 1990s, Switzerland and the EU benefited from their growing rapprochement: the new agreements on the free movement of persons and Schengen-Dublin entered into force in 2002. In social policy, an asylum law was passed for the first time in 1981; in the following years, asylum law was tightened on several occasions (including through mass fast-track procedures starting in 2016).

The 1980s and 1990s were marked by diverse refugee flows. 1980s: Asylum applications from crisis regions (e.g., Sri Lanka, Iran, Turkey) increased; between 1985 and 2002, a total of around 417,000 asylum applications were registered.

EU Enlargement and bilateral agreements

A turning point in Ireland was the opening of the Irish labor market to new EU member states (such as Poland and Lithuania), which led to a peak of over 150,000 immigrants in 2007. According to census data, the number of EU nationals living in Ireland rose from about 10,000 in 2002 to 120,000 in 2006. Data on immigration flows suggest that this number may have risen to 200,000, or 4.5% of the population, by 2008.

Bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU have led to massive migration. In 2002, Switzerland achieved full freedom of movement with the EU-15 states1, in 2006 with the eastern EU states, in 2009 with Romania and Bulgaria, and in 2017 with Croatia. This primarily encouraged immigration from EU/EFTA countries—75% of all foreigners in Switzerland today come from EU/EFTA countries (mainly Italy 15%, Germany 14%, Portugal 11%). The total number of foreigners reached a record high: By the end of 2023, approximately 2.37 million foreigners were living in Switzerland (about 24% of the population). The once-dominant Italian group (316,000) has since been surpassed: The largest groups today are people from the former Yugoslavia (≈350,000) as well as from Turkey and Portugal.

Agricultural workers from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (2000s–2010s)

Migrants from Morocco, Tunisia, and several Sub-Saharan African countries increasingly provided seasonal and permanent labor for the agricultural sector in Italy, particularly in the Campania region (provinces such as Caserta and Salerno). This pattern is linked to the demand for agricultural and food products in Italy and the seasonal harvest cycles and exposes many workers to irregular hiring practices and exploitation (the so-called “caporalato”).  

Migration flows and asylum seekers (2010s – present) 

Since the 2010s, people fleeing conflict and instability (in the Horn of Africa, West Africa, and the Middle East) have arrived in southern Italy and Greece via the Central Mediterranean route. Campania established reception centers and shelters within the national reception network (SAI / SIPROIMI and other structures) to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees. Legal and political changes at the national level shaped the way reception worked on the ground.

Recent Migration Trends

2015 was a year in which the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe—primarily from the Middle East—increased significantly, leading to a substantial rise in asylum applications compared to previous and subsequent years. The highest number of applications came from people from Syria, but there were also a considerable number from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Eritrea, and “the Balkans.”