Inequality and migration: what different European patterns of migration tell us

Abstract

Migration flows are often thought of as stemming from a reserve army of labour from developing countries, putting downward pressure on wages of low‐qualified workers in developed countries. This paper analyses the major determinants of migration flows among European countries and stresses their diversity through a combination of labour market factors in receiving countries and network effects attached to countries of origin. The first part of the paper describes the changes in the dynamics of European migration flows. The second part estimates a reduced form of model of the relative determinants of migration flows, distinguishing between labour market and network effects. The results of these estimations lead to a distinction among various ‘regimes of labour migration’ among European countries. These are briefly compared with the pattern of migration observed in the US.

Keywords:

• migration
• Europe

JEL Classifications:

• F22
• F24

Notes

1. The European Union Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) is a quarterly sample survey covering the population in private households in the EU, EFTA (except Liechtenstein) and Candidate Countries. It provides annual and quarterly results on labour force participation of people aged 15 and over as well as persons outside the labour force. The EU LFS sample size amounts to approximately 1.5 million individuals each quarter. The quarterly sampling rates vary between 0.2% and 3.3% in each country. Using these data on the 15 old member states, we consider the 10 new member states of Central and Eastern European Countries as non‐member states in terms of migration because they have not joined the Schengen free circulation EU agreement.

2. Fordist migration is linked to post‐war reconstruction and anti‐colonial and independence movements in the colonies in the 1950s. In the post‐1945 Fordist era, different European nation‐states established recruitment policies (King 2002). On the French Fordist model of immigration, see also Noiriel (20002).

3. In this example, Germany can be qualified as the target country whereas Portugal is the transit country.

4. The LFS survey only permits us to construct and to measure these two categories of repeated migration and therefore underestimates the extent of the phenomenon.

5. See Mouhoud and Oudinet (2007)

6. But the coefficients, even if they are high, are not significant enough.

7. Defined as the share of migrants that keep the same activity sector before and after migrating

8. Database on irregular migration (HWWI, project Clandestino, European Commission).