Recent Blogposts

Immigration to OECD countries has shown a structurally increasing trend over the past two decades. Apart from occasional refugee influxes, these have been mainly driven by growing labor shortages for lower and higher skilled workers. In the post-covid “labour crunch”, labour shortages reached an unprecedented high across the OECD world, and so did immigration levels (for an example, see the graph below).Levels of immigration mainly follow business cycles. The main dilemma governments therefore face is that it is impossible to reconcile the growing demand for labour, and pressure by business lobbies to open more legal migration channels – and to turn a blind eye towards the widespread and largely tolerated employment and exploitation of undocumented migrants; and on the other hand to satisfy public demands for less, or more controlled, immigration. In other words: Governments can’t have their cake and eat it too.  Migration, it’s the economy!As I argue in my book How Migration Really Works, This explains the largely and growing “discursive gap” – and political hypocrisy – between tough political rhetoric and largely symbolic border crackdowns and much more lenient immigration policy practices.

We seem to be living in times of unprecedented mass migration. Images of people from Africa crammed into unseaworthy boats desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean, asylum seekers crossing the Channel into Britain, and “caravans” of migrants trying to reach the Mexico-US border all seem to confirm fears that global migration is spinning out of control. A toxic combination of poverty, inequality, violence, oppression, climate breakdown and population growth appear to be pushing growing numbers of people from Africa, Asia and Latin America to embark upon desperate journeys to reach the shores of the wealthy west. All of this results in the popular idea of a “migration crisis” that will require drastic countermeasures to prevent massive waves of people arriving in the future, apparently exceeding the absorption capacity of Western societies and economies. Despite this, however, and as I argue in my book How Migration Really Works, there is no scientific evidence to sustain the claim that global migration is accelerating. International migrants account for about 3% of the world population, and this percentage has remained remarkably stable over the past half a century. Likewise, refugee migration is much more […]

Among the many myths perpetuated about migration, one of the most common is that ‘South–North’ migration is essentially driven by poverty and underdevelopment. Consequently, it is often argued that stimulating economic development would reduce migration from developing countries to North America and Europe. However, this ignores evidence that most migration neither occurs from the poorest countries nor from the poorest segments of the population. In fact, the paradox is that development and modernization initially leads to more migration. Historical experiences show that societies go through migration transitions as part of broader development processes. In his The Hypothesis of the Mobility Transition, a seminal article published in 1971, the geographer Wilbur Zelinsky argued that all forms of internal and international mobility accelerated when countries start to transition from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial societies.            The Migration Transition This has been confirmed by various historical studies. For instance, tn their classic study of large-scale European migration to North America between 1850 and 1913, The Age of Mass Migration published in 1998, economic historians Timothy Hatton […]

In recent years, it has become popular to argue that climate change will lead to massive North-South movements of ‘climate refugees’. Concerns about climate change-induced migration have emerged in the context of debates on global warming. Without any doubt, global warming is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity, and the lack of willingness of states and the international community to address it effectively – particularly through reducing of carbon emissions – is a valid source of major public concern and global protest. However, to link this issue with the specter of mass migration is a dangerous practice based on myth rather than fact. The use of apocalyptic migration forecasts to support the case for urgent action on climate change is not only intellectually dishonest, but also puts the credibility of those using this argument – as well as the broader case for climate change action – seriously at risk. The climate migration apocalypse  Media, politicians, environmentalists and migration experts have increasingly claimed that the effects of global warming, especially on sea-levels, rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events such as hurricanes will lead to massive population displacements. Map […]

The debate over migration is plagued by a variety of inaccuracies and misunderstandings – on both the right and the left. Here is what the research really shows. Migration was the issue of the year in 2016 and it will likely remain important in 2017. The topic is, however, just as hotly debated as it is poorly understood. The so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe and the omnipresent images of overfilled boats arriving on Mediterranean shores give the impression that migration is threatening to spin out of control and that radical action is needed to curtail the uncontrollable influx of migrants. The fear of mass migration has fueled the rise of extreme nationalist parties throughout Europe and helped Donald Trump win the presidential election in the U.S. This call for tougher migration policies is juxtaposed by another, albeit somewhat weaker, opinion voiced by the business sector, human rights and religious organizations and left-liberal parties. They argue that migration tends to be beneficial for both origin and destination societies, and that we should not see refugees as a burden but as a potential resource. But in this polarized debate, the rather more sobering facts unfortunately get lost. Both the left-wing and […]