Editorial on the special issue “Rethinking Migration in Times of Economic Crisis in Europe”

Abstract

The CPoS special issue presented here is the result of a two-day international conference entitled “Rethinking Migration in Times of Economic Crisis in Europe”, which was outlined by the coordinators of this issue and held at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in December 2010. Starting point was the question, to what extent the at that point subsiding economic crisis impacted upon the employment of migrants? Could an interrelationship between the economicand fi nancial crisis and the employment situation of migrants even be established? And were there any comparable historical precedents or perhaps regional examples for dealing with such crisis situations? In the years 2009 and 2010, international organisations such as the OECD, ILO or the World Bank noted in their reports that the economic crisis affects the most vulnerable population groups in particular, to which one can also count migrants and refugees solely because of their different legal status. In the autumn of 2010, the Migration Policy Institute stated that