Migration in the European Union policy – beneficiaries – costs – benefits
The main beneficiary of migration is its participant, however, the subject literature often reveals controversies over potential benefits and costs for the countries sending and receiving migrants. It is generally believed that benefits outweigh drawbacks.
Traditional benefits of emigration for the country sending migrants can be seen in lower unemployment and improved external financing thanks to transfers of emigrants’ wages.
Costs and potential losses of the country generating emigration entail the risk of worsened demographic structure. Benefits are visible for the receiving countries, as, for instance, emigrants implement the pro-family policy in the European Union countries by taking jobs in the childcare sector and looking after the elderly, as well as in healthcare services. An unfavourable phenomenon can be seen in the fact that Polish emigrants often accept jobs well below their qualifications (which, at the same time, brings benefits to their foreign employer).
The international experience tells us that the emigrant’s level of education is negatively related to their willingness to transfer money to the sending country. Emigration may pose a threat to the country’s development if it is large-scale and if it means that the most active, most talented and best educated people leave.
The population of working age in Europe has continually been falling, therefore economic migration from third countries will become one of the ways of filling the labour gap. According to forecasts, in several years the number of working people in Europe will have decreased by over 20 million, therefore more developed member states of the European Union may increase their demand for young and talented employees from other countries.
Education is the greatest benefit derived from emigration. People who move abroad gain the knowledge and experience that is unavailable in their countries, they also establish valuable contacts. This may translate into measurable benefits for their country. Economic migration may have both positive and negative effects on the Polish economy. These issues can be analysed from a macro- and micro-economic perspective. In macroeconomics, migration affects: the situation on the labour market, the transfer of earnings and the foreign trade. The micro scale concerns incomes of households and conducting economic activity. The emigration of qualified and well-educated people means the loss of human capital. We can list the following consequences of emigration of highly qualified people, affecting them and the country from which they emigrate:
Positive consequences: higher earnings, better living standards, financial security, accomplishment of one’s professional aspirations, personal development, raising qualifications, professional ties between countries, transfer of knowledge and
financial means, transfer of economic culture, modern society, influence on young people’s motivation to gain higher education.
- Negative consequences: employing people with high qualifications to perform jobs requiring lower qualifications, loss of specialists, hampering development, threat to some sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, loss of expenditure on education of emigrants, depreciation of human capital.
Immigration may bring various effects – positive and negative, both for the society and the economy. We can measure its influence on the economy using various macroeconomic indicators. One of these measures is GDP per capita, showing the volume of production generated, inter alia, by immigrants. The presence of immigrants increases the value of GDP as well as it increases the population of the receiving country, however, some scientists believe that this is not a good ratio, therefore they propose the GDP per capita ratio (8). The economic importance of immigration for the receiving country can also be considered in the micro- and macroeconomic perspective. In the former, it is essential to conduct the analysis of benefits or losses caused by the inflow of immigrants and their distribution among all market participants, whereas the macro-economic approach calls for an analysis of GDP and salaries of all employed persons. Whether the economic effect for the country is positive or negative depends on the combination of professional and social skills of immigrants and members of the receiving society, and also on the willingness of economic entities to change in order to allow accommodation of immigrants.
Some economists believe that the inflow of people with high education will bring more benefits to the economy, since it will probably change the distribution of income for the benefit of inhabitants, whereas the inflow of people without education will bring about the opposite effects.
A positive effect of migration will be visible when the skills of migrants and local workers remain different. In the long-term context we have a positive and a negative model of economic and social adjustment of migrants. The positive model can be observed when migrants from countries with higher earnings move to countries with lower earnings. There they engage in the process of gaining additional skills which are vital in the receiving country. This involvement at the beginning brings lower incomes, which increase in time, but the ultimate growth of income is decreasing. The negative model, on the other hand, refers to a situation when migrants come from countries with similar levels of earnings. In this model immigrants initially have higher incomes compared to workers in the receiving country, but then their ultimate incomes decrease along with the length of their stay. Some economists believe that the long-term effect of immigration consists in higher employment and economic growth (GDP). This approach, however, is criticised as it ignores side effects and feedback in the economy. GDP growth, a larger number of people with high qualifications and strong motivation, or society differentiation, may all in the long run have both positive and negative effects for the productivity level.
Should European countries be concerned with the effects of immigration inflows? In order to answer this question, we examine the potential economic consequences of immigration for European economies by distinguishing between general migration, economic migrants and refugees. Labour migration represents only a fraction of all movements to Europe, and more came through other channels, including family, humanitarian and free-movement migration. But even though most migration is not directly driven by workforce needs, immigrants are playing a significant role in the most dynamic 11
sectors of the economy. New immigrants represented 15% of entries into strongly growing occupations in Europe (OECD, 2018). These include notably health-care occupations and STEM occupations (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Also, in Europe, immigrants represented about a quarter of entries into the most strongly declining occupations (24%) including craft and related trades workers as well as machine operators and assemblers.
