Should I stay, or should I go? – The emigrating immigrants

Abstract

Like many other EU-countries, specifically those with a similar universal welfare state system, Denmark is interested in developing and utilising all existing labour potentials within its economy. However, in doing so, the country is challenged by growing globalisation, outsourcing as well as pressure on the country’s competitiveness coupled with demographic deficiency, aging and still growing demands on the universal welfare state. Immigrants, specifically those with a national origin in non-EU countries, are particularly interested within such a context. Besides their presence and attitudes being continuously debated and contested politically, immigrants represent both a burden as well as an investment cost for the universal welfare state. Like in many other EU-countries, they represent a challenge to the highly appreciated ‘national social cohesion’. Denmark is therefore, interested in keeping those immigrants who contribute to the development of the universal welfare state, while reducing the burden of the others. Thus, the controversial question arises: whom among the immigrants from non-western countries will chose to stay in their new country and who will emigrate again? The following is an empirical clarification of this issue, the state of the art and the attitudes and future trends, based on two sets of comprehensive quantitative data collection.