Population trends and migratory pressure in the European Economic Area and the Euro-Middle East-Africa Region

The globalization process in international migrations has shown the complex relationships among different areas, peoples, economies, societies and cultures; as a result, an analysis of future migration scenarios foresees important migration changes both in countries of departure and of arrival. Consequently, this essay analyses future migration scenarios beyond individual countries or areas. With this approach, much attention has been focused on the wide area around the Mediterranean Basin. The Authors have noted that this area includes a group of potential old and new immigration host countries, which are part of the larger European Economic Area (the European Union, Norway and Switzerland), and, at the same time, it embraces a larger area, encompassing countries in the European, Middle East and African Region, with a strong migration outflow (Eastern Europe, Western Asia, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa). Looking at UN projections for individual countries from 1980 to 2020, the article has noted the dramatic process of population decline and the aging of the workforce (aged 20-39) in some European countries (with a much faster index in Italy) in the coming years. On the contrary, the countries of Central Africa and of the Sub-Saharan region have shown an opposite trend both in absolute and relative change. The growing number of mostly young workers in African countries, will produce a demographic imbalance between the countries on the north and south side of the Mediterranean Basin. In the not-too-distant future, the most immediate "north" offered to the populations of black Africa could be its Mediterranean coast. The Authors argue that, even though the current pressure on the Maghreb countries is still slight or absent, in the coming years the human flow toward this area will increase considerably, causing a direct impact on European Mediterranean countries.