Many Countries in the Western hemisphere have been confronted with increased immigration of international labour migrants, economic refugees, and asylum seekers - many of which entered the country or are residing irregularly - for decades, but at the latest from the beginning of the 1990s. In countries of the Global South on the other hand, the discussion of spatial mobility had until the end of the 20th century almost exclusively focussed on rural-to-urban migration and the consequences of dynamic urbanisation. Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, socio-demographic change and economic transformations induced by globalisation have not been confined to the advanced economies of Europe and North America
