Most European states experienced large-scale migration in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, be it as sending or receiving societies. Roughly ten million people migrated from southern Europe to the industrialised economies of western Europe between the 1945 and the early 1970s, much of this movement occurring in the period after 1960, with the exception of Italy where the migrant flow developed in the late 1940s. Migration from Greece, Portugal and Spain to West Germany, the Netherlands, France and other countries reached its peak in the 1960s. As was the case with Irish migration to Britain, virtually all this population movement was within Europe rather than transatlantic in direction. A network of bilateral labour agreements between sending and receiving states regulated and controlled this migrant flow. In sharp contrast with Irish migrants who travelled to Britain, southern European migrants were ‘guestworkers’, subject to residence restrictions and liable to be sent home at some future date.

Therefore, the Irish Republic was not unique in having a substantial proportion of its population living in another country. What was relatively unusual was that, in an era when restricting entry was the overriding characteristic of state policy on immigration throughout Europe, Irish migrants could enter Britain freely, work without a permit and stay for an unspecified length of time. The unrestricted access to the British labour market, which reflected both the demand for labour and the ‘special’ privileges which Irish citizens enjoyed, ensured that migration from the Irish Republic not only continued at its previous rate, but also substantially increased in volume in the late 1950s.