How Colonial History Drives Modern Western Immigration Trends

Abstract

This paper explores the structural continuity between historical European extraction and contemporary global migration patterns (Frankena, 2021; Thym & Bornemann, 2021). Through a postcolonial and macrohistorical approach, it argues that the institutional wealth, advanced infrastructure, and high standards of living across the Global North are deeply rooted in centuries of systematic resource and labour drainage from Global South (Maddison, 2007; Tomlinson, 2022). By analysing specific historical frameworks-including France’s century-long sovereignty over North and West Africa, Portugal’s prolonged colonial presence in Angola and Mozambique, British economic policies in India, and the corporate mercantilism of the Spanish and Dutch empires-this study traces how metropolitan development depended on the strategic de-development of colonized peripheries (Pigeaud & Sylla, 2021; Spierenburg & Gewald, 2023; Tomlinson, 2022). Consequently, modern immigration toward the United States and Europe does not represent an isolated socioeconomic crisis, but rather a structural return of population moving along historical paths of wealth transfer (Thym & Bornemann, 2021). Upon arrival, however, these populations encounter fortified external borders and nativist racial dynamics (Thym & Bornemann, 2021). This paper concludes that contemporary immigrant rhetoric and restrictive border policies act as systemic tools to decouple the historical benefits of colonial capital accumulation from the present realities of global mobility (Frankena, 2021; Thym & Bornemann, 2021).

Keywords: Migration; Postcolonialism, Capitalism; Geopolitics; Extraction; Borders

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/16-3-04

Publication date: October 28^th 2026