The ongoing debate on immigrants and refugees in Europe and its neighbours is complicated and emotionally charged. Today immigration to Western Europe is greater than immigration to the USA.

These 11x28’ programmes produced by 11 different countries introduce us to immigrants from various origins.

The programmes are based on personal stories that reveal why these wayfarers said farewell to family and friends back home to make their lives in another country, and how they perceive their integration. People on the move tells the post-WW II immigration history of each participating nation through the individual stories of its actors, such as:

Kutlu, the “head” of the Rap band “Microphone mafia”, whose father was one of the Turkish workers who came to Germany in the ‘60’s; Abdul , who is doing a science degree and Ibrahim who works as an interpreter and family guidance counselor to help his fellow Somalis recently installed in Denmark, who not only have to learn a new language but have to learn how to understand completely unfamiliar customs and brand new life values; the bitter experience of Franco and Xavier from Argentina, to which a huge number of poor Italians emigrated after WW II. In the last decades many tried to return to Italy, “their old home”, as political or economical refugees, but faced with the indifference of the Italians they decide to go back to Argentina; Piero, the Italian hairdresser in German-speaking Switzerland, finally feeling fully integrated when chosen to participate in the Eurovision contest.

Other episodes portrait the little known post-war returnee Finns from Karelia; Moluccans in the Netherlands, still angry and disappointed at the treatment they received; successful young Moroccan women in Belgium; Vietnamese boat people, rather invisibly settled in Norway; Iraqis and Kurds in Sweden; Poles uprooted after the post WWII Yalta agreement; and finally, educated Brazilians, who settle - often temporarily - in Portugal.