Is a second Volkwanderung possible?

1945?

A Völkerwanderung is not possible once structures of government are too stable. You can't have groups of people just moving in and setting up shop once you have that level of control. But until then, such movements happened, which is e.g. why Berlin is now a German-speaking city (not Wendish) while Volgograd is majority-Russian (not Bulgar). If you actually get the authority of the state behind a shift of ethno-geographic boundaries, it would technically still be doable today, though the last time it was done on a grand scale kinda soured everybody on the idea.
 
Peter Heather says that large scale people movements stopped when masonry spread and so people who build strong, permanent (and expensive!) places were unwilling to abandon them and rather stood and fought for them or just spread instead of moving.

So domino (or billard) movement where one group moved into other group's place, displacing it and so this group in turn moved and displaced another and so on didn't happen anymore.
 

katchen

Banned
I would say probably about the time of the Black Death if the Mongols had conquered all of Europe. Remember that the plague came in waves right up until 1500. If there had been large scale immigration from Central Asia at the same time, yes, people might have shifted around.

More importantly, most of the effects of volkvanderung can be attributed to conquest. The losers learn the language of the winners within a generation or two. Look at how quickly the children of people who settle in the US learn English. If there is large scale migration, the lingua franca itself shifts. Finns learn Swedish or Russian. ATL depending on who wins the battle of Novgorod.
 
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