The return of high levels of emigration has become one of the most debated and sensitive social topics in Ireland in recent years. But Irish emigration continues to be discussed in the singular rather than the plural. This paper compares Irish emigration to other Eurozone states that also encountered serious economic difficulties following the onset of the global financial crisis to highlight international trends and specify national differences. All of the 'PIIGS' experienced increased emigration after the crisis. Yet Irish citizens left in much greater numbers per capita than their Eurozone counterparts, with only Portugal bearing any similarities. This was because Irish emigrants possessed valuable transnational human, cultural and social capital that enabled them to access liberal labour markets outside the Eurozone. They possessed skills desired by attractive destination states; they spoke the same language and shared similar cultural traits as their hosts; and they were able to call upon recently renewed Irish networks to further facilitate their move abroad.

This article details the central roleoften overlooked in the literatureplayed by committed individuals and interested parties in establishing the refugee definition contained in the 1951 Refugee Convention. It conveys the struggle that took place between the two camps of national representatives who finalized the convention, termed the 'universalists' and 'Europeanists' by one contemporary diplomat because of their contrasting geographical and conceptual preferences. Although various regional and international developments have complemented and broadened Article 1 significantly over the last 60 years, none of them have actually replaced it. Recent discussions over the need to adapt a more 'political' or 'humanitarian' refugee definition do not represent a new phenomenon; they merely resemble a modern continuation of the contrasting views put forward by a variety of personalities involved in the formation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

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Social and political scientists are involved in an extensive but inconclusive debate about the role of international nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in European migration governance. The European Union (EU) and NGOs work under the assumption that NGOs are crucial to migration governance and yet the role of NGOs is not clear. The EU has invested time and money in its attempts to involve NGOs more actively in migration governance, but it does so without much knowledge of how ngos in the past have influenced migration governance, and thus with no idea if the current investments are worthwhile. In this article, which is the introduction to the special issue on this subject, we take a closer look at the NGOs involved in West European migration in the period from the 1860s until the present day in order to understand the changing role of NGOs in migration governance in Europe. Providing moral, logistical and expert authority in a purportedly impartial way, NGOs have added a dimension to migration governance that states cannot replicate. As a result, the number of NGOs has gradually increased and at times their influence has become significant. However, in providing a chronology of the involvement of NGOs in migration governance, we show that their influence on migration governance policies and practices has not been linear. During some windows of opportunity (e.g. in the immediate years following the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War), NGOs became more prominent and effective, while at other times (e.g. the 1930s), their importance waned. The presence and capacity of NGOs to contribute to migration governance depended on whether states, and increasingly after 1945, intergovernmental organisations such as the UN, needed them to further their own interests or to fulfil a role that they could not play.