ABSTRACT
The creation of the modern states, followed by the amplified economic exchanges and developments of transportation networks after the Industrial Revolution, changed the nature and patterns of migration. The establishment of state borders was coupled with the articulation of the linkage between territories and people. The underlying processes of nation and state building transformed mass migrations into an occurrence associated mostly with conf lict and authoritarianism. Population exchanges between countries and mass exoduses of individuals from their country of origin have been common tools of ensuring national homogeneity during the two world wars and communist times. Examples of such practices include not only the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey or the 1945 Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange, but also, more recently, the mass expulsions of minorities during conf licts that followed the disintegration of the multinational socialist federations, such as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
