Effects of labour migration on economic development during economic downturn and recovery

Abstract

International labour migration is mainly promoted by economic interests. This paper focuses on the period before and after the economic crisis and puts together important facts regarding motivation to labour migration and provides explanations of its causes and impacts on the macroeconomic level. The economic explanation why is migration so severely restricted is that migration policies are essentially distributive tools, aiming at reducing negative effects of migration on wages and unemployment among natives and moreover, we may stress out the gradualist tendencies of migration and such migration restrictions can mitigate supply-side shocks that may negatively affect incomes or jobs of some specific groups. A partial objective of the practical part of the paper is to evaluate relationships between the rate of migration and selected economic indicators using adequate quantitative methods. While the correlation between the crude rate of net migration and the GDP per capita is very low, the existence of correlation between the crude rate of net migration and the unemployment rate is evident in the most of analysed countries. Statistical insignificance of correlation indices in some countries can be then attributed to structural problems of those economies.