Introduction

DONNA R. GABACCIA


DURING SUMMER 2000, Romans, Londoners, and Berliners hopped on Paris-bound trains that scarcely paused at national borders. They studied, took jobs and shifted their residences to far-off corners of the continent without ever once considering themselves migrants; in the European Community, they were simply Europeans on the move. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the recently elected President of Mexico, Vicente Fox raised quite a stir among his neighbors to the North when he called for freer migration across boundaries. Although Canadian National Railroad had for years been purchasing aging rail lines in the U.S. to create a new trans-continental transportation system, it wanted to promote freight, not human movement.