Over the last decades, an increasing number of countries have experienced a prolonged transition in the nature of the migration to which they are subject: countries that were historically lands of emigration are becoming lands of immigration. European states have alternated between policies favouring the restriction and promotion of migration, depending their own perceived economic and geopolitical needs. Until the French Revolution, Europe had considered immigration a resource and not a scourge, and European imperialism has probably sown the seeds of distrust and racism that continue to pervade the world today. The chapter aims to analyse the transition from colonialism to the migration policies in the 1950s, using international migration as an interpretative key. In particular, adopting a European perspective, the chapter focus on the continuity, discontinuity, and evolution of these policies on a global scale.