Migration and Institutional Inertia: Restructuring the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration, 1958–1961

Abstract

When the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (icem), today the International Organization for Migration (iom), was born in 1951, its main objective was to alleviate demographic pressure in post-war Europe by relocating workers and their families to overseas countries lacking in workforce. But after the European continent’s rapid recovery in the decade that followed, icem did not disappear. Instead, it tried to adapt to the changes and focussed on new objectives in order to maintain its role as a necessary organsation. This article focuses on the crisis icem experienced circa 1960. Based on the analysis of sources from the organisation, government documents and press from that period, I attempt to explain to what extent the restructuring undertaken from 1958 to 1961 signified a real attempt to adapt to the new social reality, and to what extent it was due to the force of inertia and the aim to carry on.