Migrações: Tendências na UE

Interview with Georges Lemaitre, OECD international migration expert, on recent migration trends in the European Union.

Georges, what impact has the crisis had on migration in Europe so far?

With the downturn it is the free-movement migration which has gone down the most: these are workers who can come and go as they please, as they have the right to live and work in other EU countries, and it may be advantageous for those who lose their jobs to take their savings and return home, where the cost of living is lower. And these workers had often been going into jobs that were in shortage because of a booming economy. These are the jobs that have been hit the hardest by the economic crisis.

Workers from the rest of the world tend to be hired into jobs that are “structurally” in shortage, that is, for which the domestic educational system and population are not turning out enough candidates. They also tend to stay in the country if they lose their jobs, because it is more difficult for them to get back in (they have to have a job offer, etc.). Indeed, government incentives to encourage returns to the home country have not met with much success. For example, out of the 137 000 unemployed immigrants eligible for the Spanish return programme in June of 2009, only 10,000 people (and 3,600 family members) had applied by the end of January 2010.

What numbers are we talking about in Europe?

France has seen only a drop of 5% in regulated labour migration in the first three quarters of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. Spain already saw a drop in immigration of about 25% from 2007 to 2008, almost all of which was concentrated among immigrants from Europe. The drop in regulated migration from the rest of the world was a little over 6%.

The United Kingdom has seen a drop of about 25% from 2007 to 2008 in free movement labour migration and it appears that there will be a further drop of 40% in 2009. Again the same story with respect to regulated labour migration, a drop of about 5% from 2007 to 2008 and of about 17% from 2008 to 2009, smaller than for free movement migration.

Ireland has seen a drop of about one third in allocations of personal public service numbers from 2007 to 2008. You can pretty much use this as a proxy for the drop in movements of workers, because you need to have such a number in order to work and/or collect benefits. Most of the drop is showing up in workers from the new member states of the European Union.

Can you give me an overview of recent migration trends in the region?

Over the past few years, there have been considerable movements of workers from the new member countries of the EU (Poland, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania), where wages are lower, to the other countries of the Union. These have generally been into lesser skilled jobs, essentially because the workers even when qualified have not often had the necessary language proficiency to move directly into higher skilled jobs. The jobs have been in areas like construction, food processing, hotels and restaurants. Migration from outside the European Union has generally been highly skilled because this is the form of migration which governments allow and it is generally employer-driven. These workers have to have a job before they arrive, often in technical, financial or scientific areas.