Migrants during the economic crisis: blessing or burden?

By Lucia Kurekova

It is no secret that in times of an economic downturn, such as the one we face today, migrant-based employment serves as a buffer in dealing with needed re-adjustments in the markets. When the working opportunities decline, migrants often decide to return home or governments implement policies the goal of which is to facilitate the return of migrant labor to home economies. A look at migration in the context of no or negative growth and severe lay-offs of cross-sectoral nature around the world invites us to re-think the nature of the possible impact of migrant employment both at sending and receiving economies. This issue is particularly topical in the frame of East-West migration in the EU. Already before the bad news of world-wide crisis fully broke through, media coverage increasingly commented on Polish – and other – migrants’ increased tendencies of return migration. Let us briefly think of whether or how the return of migrants is a blessing or a burden on the home economies of Central and Eastern Europe which are escaping the crisis no less than the rest of the advanced world.


In the countries where the out-migration was one of the factors behind the record downfalls of unemployment levels after the EU accession (such as Poland and Slovakia), the economic and social impact of returning migration is not entirely clear. It however certainly requires more policy attention than it seems to have attained so far. Preparing sets of economic crisis packages, the governments in negotiations with social partners and businesses understandably concentrate on ways of how to freeze the existing levels of employment and seem to think less of ways how to integrate the returning labor. Yet, if only half of the labor migrants who had gone to the West decide to come back, we are talking about thousands of people whose homes are in the more depressed regions of these countries where unemployment problem has never been alleviated even during the time of an economic boom. While the workers who had gone to the UK or Ireland are mostly young and single, those CEE migrants who had been working in the automotive sector in the neighboring CEE countries (Slovaks, Poles or Romanians in the Czech Republic or Hungary), tend to be middle aged males with families to support. Those, again, can be counted in thousands.

Hopes that the returning migrants will be a blessing to the economy are thus potentially false. Equally questionable are also the anticipations that they will easily integrate into home labor markets after their return as they have advanced their human capital while living and working abroad. This would have partly been the case had they returned in the period of acute labor shortages which was the most severe labor market problem merely a year ago and had we continued to live in economic prosperity and prospects of growth. At that time, the prospering automotive and electronics companies were tackling the lack of available labor force by importing workers from nearer or further abroad - Central Asia to Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, these ‘imported’ workers from non-EU countries were the first ones to feel the impact of the crisis in Central and Eastern Europe. Had then the today laid-off Slovak workers from Hungarian Audi or Czech Skoda wanted to work in the KIA factory near Zilina (for example), they would have been well paid and appreciated. Today they are and will remain redundant. The degree to which the young and well-educated migrants (see my older post) who are returning from Britain or Ireland will settle back well is equally questionable. While their skills seem to be more transferable, the type of working experience – gained in low skilled and low paid jobs - is unlikely to ease their labor market integration or give them comparative advantages in the competition for relatively scarce jobs during the time of economic crisis.

To know which form and type of job creation to support in order to handle the return migration is a difficult question. Returning migrants are a great potential, if for nothing else, then for being young and wanting to work – that is what they had been doing abroad. The avenues are hence several and would range from easing and supporting the self-employment opportunities to even establishing publicly funded knowledge-intensive centers which would provide prospects for the most skilled.

Providing capital and administratively easing avenues for establishment of own businesses is likely to create a fruitful ground for the young and relatively well-educated migrants who left for the West and gained there confidence and potentially sets of new business ideas. At the same time, the CEE countries should use the crisis as a window-of-opportunity for allowing the best of the best to find at home the infrastructure that will allow them to develop further their specific high-profile skills. There are many who have been employed in research and development segments of various industries abroad and will be at risk of loosing their positions as R&D is unlikely to be supported much during the crisis. That would mean creating assets for the time after the crisis. Whether we can – both mentally and financially - look that far head is a real challenge but perhaps it is an issue to have in mind once the most urgent crisis measures are in place.