This collection of essays highlights how given Alpine territories in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland are currently facing challenges imposed by migration, the barriers and limitations they are encountering, and the extent to which migration triggers policy and territorial innovations that can generate beneficial impacts for both migrants and local inhabitants. Contributors here include practitioners and social workers who have experimented with innovative reception and integration pathways, as well as researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including geographers, sociologists, political scientists, social anthropologists, economists, and legal experts. The book draws on empirical and theoretical investigations, research actions implemented within the framework of large EU projects, and exploratory case studies and storylines of welcoming reception initiatives. It will appeal to practitioners, social scientists, and policy makers interested in both understanding the determinants that affect migrant exclusion and inclusion in Alpine territories and developing reception and integration initiatives of advantage to both sides when hosting asylum seekers in mountain areas.

This open access short reader looks into the dynamics which have reshaped rural development and human landscapes in European agriculture and the role of immigrant people. Within this framework it analyses contemporary rural migrations and the emergence of immigrants in relation to the incorporation of agrarian systems into global markets, the European agricultural governance (CAP), and the struggle of local territories as differentiated practices in constant stress between innovation and resilience. It specifically explores the case of immigrant shepherds to describe the reconfiguration of agriculture systems and rural landscapes in Europe following intense immigration and the related provision of skilled labour at a relatively low cost. Being written in a very accessible way, this reader is an interesting read to students, researchers, academics, policy makers, and practitioners.

As unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied African minors requested asylum in Europe in 2015, Annika Lems witnessed a peculiar dynamic: despite inclusionary language in official policy and broader society, these children faced a deluge of exclusionary practices in the classroom and beyond. Frontiers of Belonging traces the educational paths of refugee youth arriving in Switzerland amid the shifting sociopolitical terrain of the refugee crisis and the underlying hierarchies of deservingness. Lems reveals how these minors sought protection and support, especially in educational settings, but were instead treated as threats to the economic and cultural integrity of Switzerland. Each chapter highlights a specific child's story—Jamila, Meron, Samuel, and more—as they found themselves left out, while on paper being allowed "in." The result is a highly ambiguous social reality for young refugees, resulting in stressful, existential balancing acts. A captivating ethnography, Frontiers of Belonging allows readers into the Swiss classrooms where unspoken distinctions between self and other, guest and host, refugee and resident, were formed, policed, and challenged.

This book explores how migrants and refugees can revitalise peripheral regions and communities economically. The extent to which migrants stimulate the economic activities of these regions through labour market participation, entrepreneurship, innovation and consumption is examined theoretically and empirically for the EU as a whole, as well as through empirical case studies that highlight the impact of migration at macro, company, and individual levels. A particular focus is given to the economic consequences of Third Country Nationals to places beyond the cities, i.e. the peripheral and remote regions of Europe. This book aims to provide insight into the role of migrations in low productive and labour-intensive regions. The authors provide innovative policy recommendations to stimulate the positive economic consequences of immigration to places beyond the cities. It will be of interest to students, researchers, and policymakers working within labour economics and migration and integration policies.

Mountain regions are subject to a unique set of economic pressures: they act as collective enterprises which have to valorize rare resources, such as spectacular landscapes. While primarily rural in nature, they often border large cities, and the development of industries such as hydroelectric power and the rapid development of tourism can bring about sweeping socio-economic change and vast demographic alterations. The Spatial and Economic Transformation of Mountain Regions describes the socio-economic changes and spatial impacts of the last four decades, with the transformation of mountain areas held up as an example. Much of the real-world context draws on the Alps, spanning as they do the significant economies of France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Chapters address academic discourse on regional development in these mountain areas and suggest alternative approaches to the liberal-productivist societal model. This book will be essential reading for professionals, institutions, and NGOs searching for counter-models to the existing marketing approaches for peripheral areas. It will also be of interest to students of regional development, economic geography, environmental studies, and industrial economics.

What was the relationship between the Alps and the Resistance during the Italian Social Republic? This book explores the function of the Alps as a center of battles, violence, and opposition to fascism, as well as the cradle of political debate destined to forge modern Italian and European democracy.

An acclaimed historian examines postwar migration's fundamental role in shaping modern Europe Migration is perhaps the most pressing issue of our time, and it has completely decentered European politics in recent years. But as we consider the current refugee crisis, acclaimed historian Peter Gatrell reminds us that the history of Europe has always been one of people on the move. The end of World War II left Europe in a state of confusion with many Europeans virtually stateless. Later, as former colonial states gained national independence, colonists and their supporters migrated to often-unwelcoming metropoles. The collapse of communism in 1989 marked another fundamental turning point. Gatrell places migration at the center of post-war European history, and the aspirations of migrants themselves at the center of the story of migration. This is an urgent history that will reshape our understanding of modern Europe.