Cross-Border Labour Mobility: Do East-West and East-East Labour Flows Differ?

Abstract

The paper focuses on the examining cross-border labour mobility between the neighbouring countries looking also for the answer to the question whether cross-border labour mobility can pursue win-win expectations of the increasing international labour mobility after the EU eastward enlargement. The aim of the paper is to outline differences in the socio-demographic and job characteristics of the people who participate in East-East and East-West cross-border labour mobility. The empirical part of the paper relies on the CV Centre database analysing cross-border labour mobility of Estonian people who have worked in a neighbour country – Finland and Sweden (East-West mobility) and Latvia or Russia (East-East mobility) relying on the CV Centre database. The results of the study show that ethnicity and education are important determinants in explaining differences between the East-West and East-East labour flows. Possible consequences of cross-border labour mobility are twofold. Cross-border labour mobility can support economic development of both source and target country but at the same time also can generate some threats of brain waste, particularly in the case of East-West labour flows.