NARODY A MIGRACJE. ESEJ Z SOCJOLOGII HISTORYCZNEJ

All European societies have massively intermixed in the course of history. Migrations and wars were not unusual. The stability of the ethnic composition of specific groups is thus a myth. Nationalistic ideologies which present their countries as nation-states most often do not take into consideration the numerous “admixtures” which have come into existence due to migration. Similarly, the idea of cultural “purity” has no sense. Also the idea of an eternal national territory is senseless more often than not. There are nations with the predominance of emigration processes and there are nations with the predominance of immigration processes. There are also nations in diaspora and nations which are entirely composed of immigrants who recently arrived in a given place. The phenomenon of migration has great influence on the characteristics of the nation which it concerns, on its culture, and national consciousness. The perspective on migration processes was at times one of the fundamental elements of a nation’s self-identification.