'Exodus from Europe - US population policies and the globalisation of the Cold War' Seminar

In 1951, on US initiative, the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) was founded in Brussels, which, over the following years, expedited more than one million Europeans from the continent. What role did population policies play in the US vision for a new European post-war order? What were the political approaches to and implications of this mass emigration in the context of the emerging Cold War? In my paper, I will explore these questions with reference to, firstly, a long standing US concern about Europe’s alleged overpopulation, seen to have contributed to the outbreak of both world wars, and, secondly, focus on how the proposed solutions were increasingly influenced by the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is in this context that the US pushed for establishing ICEM as a global clearinghouse for the redistribution of labour promising overseas countries access to migrant Europeans in exchange for support for the Western cause thus globalising the Cold War.