This conference aims to discuss and compare national boundaries, policies and experiences with regard to family and migration in twentieth century Western Europe. Three perspectives will receive particular attention at the conference. First, national boundaries and related policies of receiving as well as sending societies with regard to family and migration and their implications for migrants or their relatives who stayed behind; Second, the relationship between the family situations (of mothers, fathers, single women or men, children, elders and so on) and the stereotyping of migrants of 'foreign'. or rather their invisibility. Third, the perspective of migrants and their relatives themselves. How did they construct family and how did they deal with family policies and family cultures in receiving societies as well as in their societies of origin? How were family situations and transnationalism related? ...