European Immigration

A Sourcebook

Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruby Gropas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317139560
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Emigración e inmigración

Fully updated and containing chapters on the new EU member states and the attempt to form a common EU migration policy, this new edition of European Immigration: A Sourcebook provides a comprehensive overview of the trends and developments in migration in all EU countries. With chapters following a common structure to facilitate direct international comparisons, it not only examines the internal affairs of each member state, but also explores both migratory trends within the EU itself and the implications for European immigration of wider global events, including the Arab Spring and the world financial crisis.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruby Gropas and Dita Vogel

This chapter discusses the sociopolitical context of contemporary European migration. More specifically, we look at the impact that the end of the Cold War has had on migration in Europe, notably in terms of East to West population flows that involve not only the current EU25 member states but also countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We also discuss the emergence and diversification of migration forms including undocumented and shuttle migration, populations displaced for political reasons that are not, however, eligible for refugee status, as well as gendered migration. Through this, we aim at raising awareness of the universal usage of the terms ‘immigrant’ and ‘immigration’ that frequently suggests comparability where it does not, in fact, exist. Thus we point out major differences in the understanding of those terms in official statistics and current debates, while also discussing the divergence that may exist between official statistics and definitions of immigrant categories and the social reality on the ground. Last, we discuss the emergence of a common EU migration policy, and the challenges that lie ahead for European countries as regards the sustainable management of international migration.

General overview of migration patterns in Europe since the Second World War

The period immediately after the Second World War in Europe was characterized by large south-to-north flows originating from the northern Mediterranean countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). Western and Northern European countries such as Belgium, Britain, France, Germany and Sweden received migration from the south of Europe and the Mediterranean, but also experienced incoming flows from African, Caribbean and Asian countries. The post-war years were a period of reconstruction and industrial growth in a Europe that was short of labour after the disastrous Second World War. Thus, foreign workers came to meet domestic labour market needs and were often seen as temporary sojourners. The flows originating from outside Europe had largely to do with the colonial legacy of the receiving countries, especially Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Immigrants from former colonies were able to take advantage of an open policy towards labour migration and special rights (including in some cases full citizenship rights). These migrations were inscribed in the Fordist system of industrial production, and were often channelled through active recruitment policies of companies in the receiving societies and bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries. While many of these immigrant workers indeed returned to their country of origin after some years, a considerable fraction eventually settled in the receiving societies and brought their families over, thereby raising important social and political challenges for integration that EU Member States continue to face today.

The migration dynamics in Europe changed in the early 1970s after the oil price shocks. Economic growth had been slowing down in Western Europe, structural change in labour markets was evident, and unemployment was growing, especially in the older industrial economies of Britain and Belgium. As the European Communities pursued policies of economic integration, migration between Southern and Northern Europe gradually declined. By the time that Greece, Portugal and Spain joined the EEC, there were few migrants from these countries travelling for work to the northern Member States. At the same time, a certain level of industrial development accompanied by a wide expansion of the services sector in Southern Europe created employment opportunities, thereby restricting the ‘push’ factors to emigration. On the ‘pull’ side, Western and Northern European countries had put a stop to labour migration from the early 1970s onwards, aiming at ‘zero immigration’. This equally reduced the flows from Asian and African countries to continental Europe and to Britain. Restrictive immigration policies were characteristic of many countries, including Britain and France, as a prerequisite for the successful integration of those already admitted. In other cases, such as Belgium, Denmark or Germany, admissions were restricted in line with domestic labour market needs, while integration remained a non-issue until the 1980s.

Population movements in Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) were severely restricted during the post-war period and until 1989. Labour migration took place at a very limited scale and always through central planning and control. There was some exchange of workers between countries of the Warsaw Pact as well as small scale incoming migration (for labour or study purposes) from Communist countries in other continents (for example, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or Cuba) to CEEC countries (for example East Germany or Poland). As regards outgoing migration from the CEEC to Western Europe or North America, for instance, this never stopped completely in spite of the heavy control measures implemented by communist states. Those who left CEEC for political reasons quickly found refuge in Western Europe. However, their numbers amount to several thousands over the entire period and cannot be compared in terms of magnitude with the large flows from Southern to Northern Europe or from countries in the developing world to Western and Northern Europe.

Since the 1980s, the situation has been changing yet again. The integration of the world economy through world trade and service agreements (GATT and GATS), the globalization of capital and labour and the rapid development of transport and communication networks have contributed to new types of population movements. At the same time, the geopolitical restructuring of Europe after 1989 has opened new opportunities for temporary or long-term migration within Europe as well as from third countries to CEEC and not just to Western Europe. The migration patterns of the last couple of decades are characterized by their fragmented nature: they include new forms of flexible labour, insecure legal status (often undocumented), variable duration, new gender roles and multiple destinations, all of which we explore in the sections below.

Migration in post-1989 Europe

The implosion of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in 1989 has made the new context more volatile and dynamic. The closed borders between Eastern and Western European countries were suddenly opened and many CEE citizens, faced with the dismantling of the production system and welfare state in their countries of origin, started seeking better life chances and work opportunities in Western and Southern Europe. Similar to citizens from countries in the developing world, people from CEE were integrated into specific niches of domestic labour markets in the European Union. Moreover, the opening of the borders has led to diverse forms of population mobility that involve Eastern, Central and Western/Southern European countries in complex patterns (Wallace and Stola, 2001; Favell and Hansen, 2002).

These changes have subverted, if not openly at least tacitly, the proclaimed policy of zero migration in most European countries. Large numbers of migrants have arrived, worked and stayed – in various guises. They have entered either clandestinely or as asylum-seekers; but most commonly they have simply come via the pathways of globalization itself – with tourist or student visas which they then overstayed or abused, and at times even as business people (Jordan and Düvell, 2003). Both the more ‘flexible’, pro-globalization regimes of the UK and Ireland, and the more social protectionist regimes such as those in Germany and the Netherlands introduced new options for temporary legal migration, and built control facilities. These efforts contributed to shaping the country-specific forms of migration and the living conditions of migrants, with rather debatable effects on migration levels.

The line between economic migrants and persons moving for reasons ranging from political instability or oppression to ethnic strife in their countries of origin is increasingly blurred. Thus, people fleeing from political persecution sometimes opt for economic migration channels, both legal and undocumented, while some economically motivated migrants who leave their country in reaction to unemployment or poverty present their applications as asylum seekers (Wallace, 2002).

The governments of Southern Europe have been quite unprepared for the influx of migrants, and indeed when those migrants arrive in these states they usually come into societies that perceive themselves as largely monocultural and monoreligious. Important and unexpected challenges in Southern Europe have thus been raised. Southern European societies have slowly reacted to the presence of immigrants, firstly through repeated regularization programmes of undocumented workers and, secondly, with a view to integrating them both economically and culturally. Incidents of social unrest, highly visible cases of racism and ethnic prejudice have triggered a public debate on the cultural and political rights of immigrants. The former set of rights has been largely recognized even if institutionalized only to a limited extent, while the latter set still looms far behind, almost a taboo topic for Southern European societies.

The beginning of the new century has been characterized by further developments, either endogenous to the EU or exogenous and having to do with developments in the international arena.

Notably, both the European Commission and a number of the EU Member states announced a major shift in policy regarding the recruitment of skilled and unskilled workers from outside the Union. This came at a time when unemployment among EU citizens was still high – some 15.7 million (or 9.2 per cent of the labour force) in 2001 (Eurostat, 2001) – and social policies have focused on retraining and inclusion. This shift reflects growing concerns about bottlenecks and shortages, and the overall flexibility of the European social model (see Jordan and Düvell, 2003). Although the emphasis has been different among the various Member States, there is no doubt that an important change has been taking place regarding recruitment from outside the EU. For example, both Italy and Greece had unemployment rates of around 11 per cent in 1999, whereas Spain’s unemployment rate exceeded 15 per cent in the same year. Nevertheless, Italy has admitted over 2.5 million, Spain about 2.5 million and Greece nearly 1.5 million immigrant workers in the last 15 to 20 years. This workforce is predominantly employed in agriculture, tourism, private care, catering and construction. In Italy, it also extends to small and medium-sized productive enterprises. Although initially admitted mainly through illegal channels, these workers have since been regularized through successive ‘amnesty’ programmes.

The second change followed the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the USA on 11 September 2001. As a direct result, security concerns closely related to migration became an urgent priority. The concern, or the perception, that irregular migration was becoming uncontrollable was already being voiced by politicians and the media; but the policy implications of the events of 9/11 complicated the migration debate further by bringing in additional dimensions. Simplified and even simplistic discourse signalled that migration, and even globalization itself, concealed a potential for terror attack and thus constituted a threat to security. As far as it is possible to ascertain, given the current information at hand, the perpetrators of these attacks were legal migrants and indeed their profiles – computer experts, technicians, diligent students – may be considered stereotypical of the skilled types of immigrant that the USA and the EU Member States are seeking (even competing) to attract. Further terrorist bombings in Madrid in March 2003 and in London in July 2005 have, however, indirectly confirmed the idea that migrants may constitute a ‘threat’ to western societies’ well-being and cohesion, also leading to the interchangeable use of the words Muslims and immigrants as nearly synonymous. Needless to say, such a categorization ignores the rich variety of migrant groups and migration situations across the 25 European Member States.

New features of migration

While the chapters in this book mainly present the variety of migration experiences in EU countries, here we point to some specific features of contemporary migration flows – mainly those of the last 15 years – that tend to be referred to as new (King, 2002). While there is hardly any form of migration that has no historical precedent with some similar features (Bade, 2002), when we speak of new features of contemporary migration, we refer to the relevance, dominance and specific combinations of migration patterns that are largely shaped by economic conditions in a globalized world. Let us sketch some of these conditions that are related to labour supply and demand needs and that form a number of core workforce categories.

In the post-war era, the world was divided into a highly industrialized ‘first’ world with a growing services sector and a welfare state built up under the influence of organized labour. The ‘second’ world of communist states was characterized by state-driven industrialization and state-supplied services, complemented by a flexible barter economy that mitigated the harsh effects of failures in state planning. The so called ‘third’ world was characterized by a high dependence on the primary sector. This allowed for enormous wealth in the case of some oil-exporting countries and for disastrous poverty in the case of agrarian countries that tried to balance production for self-sufficiency with that for the world market, often failing in both. In some countries, some sectors and regions developed quickly to match the standards of the ‘first’ world, while others stagnated, leading to considerable tensions within the country.

High labour costs in ‘first’ world countries have promoted an unprecedented technological development that has spilled over to almost all other regions and countries of the world. Computers have become smaller, cheaper and more powerful, satellites are able to distribute TV programmes to the remotest regions of the world, public and private transport has multiplied with faster and relatively cheaper cars, trains and planes, as well as better airports and streets. These developments lead to ever closer connections of all those regions of the world with access to a reliable electricity supply and it has influenced the type of workforce required. In effect, production in these sectors is highly specialized, requiring a small elite of highly educated, highly organized and creative developers, engineers and managers (Type A), and a highly disciplined, well-educated production work force (Type B). This workforce is mainly situated in Western Europe, North America and Japan, but it is coming under increasing pressure from industrializing and democratizing regions, mainly in Asia and Eastern Europe. European and North American countries are increasingly seeking to attract highly skilled immigrants in an effort to stabilize locations and maintain work opportunities for their skilled labour force.

At a time when the movement of financial capital is largely liberalized, the wealth of a region depends largely on its capacity to supply a competitive combination of highly skilled Type A professionals with skilled and highly disciplined Type B workers in a stable, worldwide connected environment. These may form the core workforce of the internationally tradable services of global cities (Sassen, 1991), but also of prospering industrial regions in the old industrialized economies or newly industrializing states.

Such highly productive technology sectors are able to generate taxes for state services and welfare benefits. The state sector, with its spending on education, welfare and infrastructure is a necessary input for high-tech production insofar as it maintains a highly educated workforce, a stable political environment and a modern infrastructure. But it is also a cost factor for that production, as public employees, investments and welfare services have to be financed by taxes. Thus, the wage level in public employment and publicly organized employment is a crucial factor for the competitiveness of the high-tech sector. Employment with the state requires a certain degree of language capacities and country-specific knowledge and offers secure employment opportunities for native citizens of high- and low-skilled educational backgrounds (Type C and D respectively), but it is also often explicitly or implicitly reserved for citizens. This is most obvious in Luxembourg, where most citizens work for public authorities, but it is also present in all EU countries.

In addition, the sector providing services and other goods that are not internationally tradable is also an input and a cost factor for the high-tech sector. While some non-tradable goods and services also require high skills (Type E, for example, doctors, construction engineers), a considerable part of these activities can be performed with hardly any educational qualifications. Cleaning, gardening, looking after small children, caring for the physical needs of elderly and disabled persons, kitchen work in restaurants, delivering simple goods, hairdressing, simple renovating and construction work, can be done well by immigrants without qualifications and language capacity, but with the motivation to cope with low wages and endure unfavourable working conditions (Type F). The demand for Type F employment differs between states, and is most prominent in states where we find low levels of public services for children and the elderly and where highly qualified breadwinner couples have to resort to the private market to obtain labourers for these services (Sciortino, 2004). In this context, Type F workers are able to fill this need because of the low cost of their employment; that is, it is a cost item that can be relatively easily covered by the more qualified workforce.

At the same time, it is pertinent to note that the flexible and cheap labour provided by immigrants mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, has been contributing to growth in an increasingly deregulated economic environment of global cities. Recent studies (Reyneri et al., 1999) have shown that undocumented immigrant labour has had a positive economic impact, at least in the short term, on Southern European countries (Greece and Italy, in particular). Indeed, immigrants are likely to take Type F jobs for which the local unemployed do not compete. If they want to spend part of their earnings in their country of origin and consider their stay temporary, they find it easier to be content with lower wage levels than locals and endure more restricted housing arrangements. While native unemployed persons – among them many sons and daughters of post-war immigrants – would experience a declining standard of living by taking up a low-wage job in a prospering high-rent region, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Austria
• 3 Belgium
• 4 Cyprus
• 5 Czech Republic
• 6 Denmark
• 7 Estonia
• 8 Finland
• 9 France
• 10 Germany
• 11 Greece
• 12 Hungary
• 13 Ireland
• 14 Italy
• 15 Latvia
• 16 Lithuania
• 17 Luxembourg
• 18 Malta
• 19 The Netherlands
• 20 Poland
• 21 Portugal
• 22 Slovakia
• 23 Slovenia
• 24 Spain
• 25 Sweden
• 26 United Kingdom
• 27 Concluding Remarks
• Index