Multiculturalism in Europe and North America

Abstract

The problem of multiculturalism in Europe and North America has to be understood within a wider world context involving the changes which have gone on since 1945 and since 1989 in the relations between the so-called first, second and third worlds. After 1945 the process of uneven economic development led to large-scale migration within and to the countries of the first world, including Western Europe, The United States and the economically advanced settler-dominated territories of the former European empires, such as Canada and Australia. This migration process was halted in Europe after the early 1970s except for family completion as far as workers were concerned; Japan came to join the first world countries as a centre of economic growth; and, as capital went in search of labour rather than bringing labour to it, new intermediate areas of economic growth came into existence, most obviously in oil-rich countries of the Middle East, and in the Pacific rim. The so-called second world consisting of the Communist countries remained outside this migration system except for small numbers of political refugees, until after 1989, when the breakdown of Communism produced economic and political collapse, forcing many of the citizens of these countries to flee from political disorder or to grasp the better economic opportunities which opened up to them in Western Europe and North America.