Preface

Leaving, staying, returning... Humanity has been confronted with this dilemma since its early stages. Today, nearly a billion people are “migrants”. Migratory practices are diverse: rural exodus, rural to rural migration, urban to urban migration; internal or international migration; but also circular, alternating, temporary or permanent mobility. In the Mediterranean region – a space in which people have always travelled, exchanged and shared –, food, trade and migratory routes have always overlapped, thus providing people with new life opportunities, and territories with the socio-economic dynamics that are crucial for their development.