As European demographic vitality waned in the 1990s, a surge of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Bloc headed for western Europe. Some migrants entered the European Union legally, with proper documentation, but increasing numbers were smuggled in past beefed-up border patrols. Large-scale immigration, both documented and undocumented, emerged as a critical and controversial issue.

Historically a source rather than a destination of immigrants, western Europe saw rising numbers of immigration in postcolonial population movements beginning in the 1950s, augmented by the influx of manual laborers in its boom years from about 1960 until about 1973 (see “Patterns of Postwar Migration” in Chapter 28). A new and different surge of migration into western Europe began in the 1990s. The collapse of communism in the East Bloc and savage civil wars in Yugoslavia drove hundreds of thousands of refugees westward. Equally brutal conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Rwanda — to name only four countries — brought thousands more from Central Asia and Africa. Undocumented immigration into the European Union also exploded, rising from an estimated 50,000 people in 1993 to perhaps 500,000 a decade later, far exceeding the estimated 300,000 unauthorized foreigners entering the United States each year. In 1998 most European Union states abolished all border controls, meaning that undocumented entrance into one country allowed for unimpeded travel almost anywhere — Ireland and the United Kingdom opted out of this agreement.

Though many migrants in the early twenty-first century applied for political asylum and refugee status, most were eventually rejected and classified as illegal job seekers. Even with all the economic problems of western Europe, economic opportunity undoubtedly was a major attraction for immigrants. Germans, for example, earned on average three and a half times more than neighboring Poles, who in turn earned much more than people farther east and in North Africa.

Undocumented immigration was aided by powerful criminal gangs that smuggled people for profit. These gangs contributed to the large number of young female illegal immigrants from eastern Europe, especially Russia and Ukraine. Often lured by criminals promising jobs as maids or waitresses, and sometimes simply kidnapped and sold for a few thousand dollars, these women were smuggled into the most prosperous parts of Europe and forced into prostitution.