Lifelong Learning as a Factor of World-wide migration: Historical and contemporary perspectives

World-wide migration between poorer and richer countries - between more or less underdeveloped regions on side and highly industrialised on the other - is one of the megaproblems since one century. The majority of migrants come from areas without systematic adult education and can only be fully integrated in their new homes by participating in a really practical lifelong learning. An increasing number of states have obliged the migrants to participate in courses to learn language and life in the new country, - otherwise the migrants will not be accepted as citizens. In fact, the systems of lifelong learning are not yet prepared to offer enough courses for integration.
The different situations in the new home-countries of migrants should be described, also the legal regulations. We must be informed as well about the educational traditions and habits which migrants bring with them from their original homes. It must be regarded, that many migrants are coming from countries without a democratic structure and are accustomed to an authoritarian policy and education. Learning democracy should be an essential task of mental integration.
Industrial areas ( f. e. the Ruhr-District in Germany) integrated foreign workers from Poland, Italy and other countries since 1900 and offered special activities of adult education for the new inhabitants. Or : in USA millions of migrants found always institutions of lifelong learning that were specially devoted for integrating migrants. In Europe popular education ('Volksbildung') in the 19th century aimed only to strengthen the cultural and political nationality of one people (like in Denmark in the time of N.F.S. Grundtig), and also in some decades of the 20th century adult education was exclusively national education instead of multicultural and multiethnic education as it is usual and necessary today.
Up to now adult educational science has not enough investigated all this problems.