Labour mobility and migration within the EU following the 2004 Central and East European enlargement

Abstract

Purpose -The paper seeks to investigate the effects of the 2004 Central and East European EU Enlargement on labour mobility. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on an analysis of recently available empirical evidence from the UK Labour Registration Scheme and EU comparative data based on administrative data and labour force surveys. Findings -Only Ireland, Austria and Germany had significant migration from CEE migration and none of these exceeded 2 per cent of the labour force. The imposition of a transitional arrangement had little effect on migration flows. CEE workers were predominantly young, had above average education and yet did not fill UK skills gaps, but filled labour shortages for low paid, unskilled work. Originality/value -This paper assesses the empirical evidence on labour mobility from Central and Eastern Europe, which is used to assess the current highly contentious debate.

European economic integration and migration in Romania

“…The entry of CEE countries has received negative attention because of their economic situation. The very fast increase of the EU population from 104 million to 500 million has raised many concerns as well (Dobson, 2009;Juncos & Borrag an, 2013). Emigration to the old EU Member States increased in each new wave of accession (in 2004, with the accession of eight countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia), in 2007 (by the accession of Romania of Bulgaria) and 2013 (by integrating Croatia into the EU).…”

Explorando los contornos de una teoría de movilidad interna en la UE: un enfoque basado en la oportunidad de la ciudadanía europea y la necesidad de una «cultura europea de la movilidad»

“…Within current mobility studies (Cresswell, 2006;Urry, 2007), there is already a large literature addressing international migration and mobility in Europe from a multiplicity of perspectives (Jensen and Richardson, 2004;Benhabib and Resnik, 2009;Jensen, 2013), and an emerging literature addressing EU in-mobility from several disciplines (mainly from economics, demography, sociology, and politics); but there is perhaps less analysing it in the context of the current economic and financial crisis and the last processes of EU enlargement. See, among the most recent: Ackers and Gill (2009), Dobson (2009), Fassmann et al(2009, Balan and Uzlau (2010), Black et al (2010), Collet (2012), Bertoli et al, (2013), Currie (2013), van Mol (2013, van Mol and Timmerman (2013), Vargas-Silva (2013), and especially Blitz (2014) and Favell (2014).…”

New Europe, new low-cost air services

“…Around two-thirds of all the approved applications to WRS were Polish. These figures may, however, be an under-or an over-estimate of the real figures (Dobson, 2009 Underestimate because it does not include those who did not have the right to migrate freely or illegal migrants; overestimate because it includes multiple registrations and does not take into account returns to the countries of origin or migrations to third countries. It does, however, give an idea of migration from East Central Europe (and from Poland in particular) to the UK.…”

“…These migrations were certainly facilitated by British legislation, but also by the presence of a significant Polish diaspora there from the years after World War II, which served as a sort of conveyor belt for new migrants. Dobson (2009) stresses the fact that Polish churches and social clubs in Great Britain served as labour exchanges and advice centres. In Ireland, the number of residents from the EU-10 increased from under 25 000 in 2002 to more than 120 000 in 2006, out of a total population of 4 million (Barrett et al, 2008).…”