Fears of mass migration unfounded

Date: 29/04/04

IF a raft of lurid headlines in mass circulation newspapers is to be believed, EU enlargement will be characterized by hapless hordes invading western Europe from the East, hoovering up jobs and welfare benefits at an unprecedented rate.

Such scaremongering is easy when one considers that income levels in central and eastern Europe are on average 60% lower than those in the 15 member states of the old EU. Statistics like that provide plenty of ammunition for anti-immigration parties to exploit fears that entire communities will be swamped with newcomers, resulting in a range of social problems.

Rather than exposing the scaremongering for what it is, each EU government has placed restrictions on citizens from the incoming member states in terms of work entitlements and acquiring social benefits. Understandably, this has caused much resentment among people in the Union's new countries.

An impressive body of academic literature suggests that worries about a mass influx of migrants are misplaced. On the contrary, the flow of people between the new and old member states has decreased considerably since the Soviet bloc began to fall apart in the late 1980s. A study by the University of Kent, for example, calculated that net immigration from the ten acceding countries to the then EU fell from 330,000 in 1990 to just 14,000 in 1997.

"There will be no avalanche of uncontrolled migration," says Peter von Bethlenflavy from the Brussels office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

"There will be some cases, where people, for example, with family links to western Europe will come here. But there will not be big issues, which would justify new scares."

The Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions cites four reasons why predictions of a mass exodus are wide of the mark:

• A considerable proportion of the potential migrants from the acceding states have already arrived in western Europe, leading to only a small increase in the population of the "old" member states (at the end of the 20th century, less than 900,000 inhabitants in the EU-15 hailed from central and eastern Europe);
• employment prospects for the educated youth within the new member states should improve in the next three to four decades due to demographic factors like slumps in population;
• investment and trade benefits should follow accession, giving the new member states a "positive growth differential" when compared with the old ones; and
• past experience has shown that most EU workers have not availed themselves of the opportunities offered by free movement within a common labour market.

The arguments seem to be supported by case studies (in box alongside) on four of the accession countries.

Czech Republic

Drusan Drbohlav from Charles University in Prague says that even though emigration from the current territory of the Czech Republic has been a bigger phenomenon than immigration into it for most of the past 150 years, the trend is currently changing.

At present, there are "no strong "push" factors that would propel mass migration movements of Czech citizens out of their mother country", he says, adding that the country has enjoyed an economic resurgence since 2000 and the general standard of living has improved.

On the other hand, he reckons there will be a rise in foreigners travelling to the country to work, particularly from Slovakia and Ukraine but also from parts of Asia. Employers' "never-ending strong desire for a cheap labour force" is a major contributor to this trend, he says.

He notes too that "the Czech population is rather xenophobic", though not in a consistent way. Although Czechs tend to view their Slovak neighbours, Poles and people from the former Soviet Union favourably, he detects much hostility towards Roma gypsies and immigrants from the Balkans.

Poland

The biggest of the new EU states is a country with a strong tradition of emigration. Chicago is often described as a Polish city because of the huge number of Poles there.

But a paper written by Izabela Korys from the IOM's Warsaw office says "fears that Polish economic migrants would overrun EU countries immediately after accession seem groundless".

She feels the opposite scenario is "more probable", predicting that as prices and incomes in Poland draw closer to those of the West, there will be a wave of Polish emigrants returning home, disappointed that the West did not offer them the opportunities they had hoped for.

"In the long run, the inflow of migrants is likely to grow, as happened previously in Spain and Portugal following their EU accession," she says. "However, in the meantime, an incorporation of Poland into "fortress Europe" will possibly reduce the volume of current migration, especially of Ukrainian, Belarussian and Russian citizens."

Slovakia

Modern-day mass emigration from Slovakia has "exclusively" involved members of the Roma community, according to Boris Divinsky from the IOM's Bratislava office.

Data collected by Slovak embassies in a number of western European countries indicate there are more than 19,000 Slovak Roma in those states. Belgium, the UK, Finland and the Netherlands are the main countries where these gypsies have travelled.

Although interviews with Roma have indicated that the discrimination, dire poverty and rise in attacks by skinheads they have faced are key factors behind their decisions to leave Slovakia, he observes that "the chances of the Slovak Roma to get asylum in EU member states is virtually zero".

Divinsky points to indications that Slovakia may become a target country for migrants from other states, especially after it joins the EU. Yet he says that "the prevailing majority" of migrants currently entering Slovakia from Asia or the former Soviet Union do not wish to stay in the country, but travel on to Austria, the Czech Republic or further west.

Slovenia

WHILE there was a significant outflow of migrants from Slovenia following the Second World War, it switched from being a state of emigration to one of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. This remains the situation today - despite a significant number of people leaving Slovenia due to the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Some 96% of immigrants entering Slovenia in recent years have come from other European countries, especially from fellow states of the former Yugoslavia. These have been drawn to the construction industry and to a lesser extent chemical plants and the health sector, while there has been seasonal migration to farms in the area near the border with Croatia.

According to the IOM's Simona Zavratnik Zimic, the biggest challenge will be integration of newcomers into the Slovene society. Some positive experiences can be recorded with how Bosnian refugees have been given access to education, yet their integration into the labour market has been less successful, the IOM notes.

Studies from the International Organization for Migration and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions show that citizens from the new Member States are unlikely to 'invade' old Member States. Article is part of a European Voice Special Report on EU Enlargement.