Migratory Movements in the Modern World

The emergence of powerful European states in the fifteenth century ushered in a new era in the history of human migration. The discovery of “new worlds” for these states, the union of all the oceans in a single transport network and the intense struggle between the powers of that time to acquire commercial hegemony, had the effect of incorporating the world population into a single immigration system. This process has been spreading regularly, geographically and quantitatively, to the present day. Its history can be divided into three periods. This essay deals with the current situation of migration, without determining whether it is an episode of the third era or the beginning of a new era in which the problem of international population movements will constitute one of the main points of friction. between rich and poor.