Introduction : migration and the European City

Looking back over the centuries, mobility and migration have always formed an important part of human existence. Given the multiplicity of push/pull factors and shifting constellations, the groups as well as trajectories involved in the movement of people can vary dramatically. It is worth remembering, for example, that regions like Europe – perceived as a preferred destination in the twenty-first century – provided large numbers of emigrants in the past, particularly during the high medieval crusades or global expansion and colonialization between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. In numbers, however, the migration of labor was to outweigh these groups by far; roughly, 60 million Europeans crossed the Atlantic to the Americas during the long nineteenth century in search of a new place of work