This volume investigates the challenges confronted by the European Union (EU) as an international actor deeply influenced by migration. This has been a key phenomenon in recent years and holds great political, economic and social importance for the future of the whole European continent. The book focuses on specific aspects related to East-West migration, such as the importance of migration for economic development and the multi-faceted impact of migration on sending countries, as well as recipient countries. It also includes an overview of the myriad of reasons which stand for the fundamental decision whether to emigrate or not. The collection offers a novel Eastern European perspective on contemporary migration, a hotly debated topic inside the European Union, which is far from being fully recognised and understood, and it also provides valuable, complex and comprehensive insight into the issue of South Eastern migration to Western Europe.

Dit boek beschrijft de toename van migratie uit Oost-europese landen in de periode van 2004-2007, na toetreding tot de EU. Het bevat nieuwe empirische 'casestudies' van migratiepatronen, zowel gebaseerd op veldwerk als op de analyse van bestaande statistieken.

The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought widespread fear of a 'tidal wave' of immigrants from the East into Western Europe. This book focuses on Russian migration into Western Europe following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Based on extensive interviews, this fascinating and unique ethnographic account of the 'new migration' challenges the underlying assumptions of traditional migration studies and post-modern theories.

This paper analyses the impact of large and persistent emigration from Eastern European countries over the past 25 years on these countries’ growth and income convergence to advanced Europe. While emigration has likely benefited migrants themselves, the receiving countries and the EU as a whole, its impact on sending countries’ economies has been largely negative. The analysis suggests that labor outflows, particularly of skilled workers, lowered productivity growth, pushed up wages, and slowed growth and income convergence. At the same time, while remittance inflows supported financial deepening, consumption and investment in some countries, they also reduced incentives to work and led to exchange rate appreciations, eroding competiveness. The departure of the young also added to the fiscal pressures of already aging populations in Eastern Europe. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for sending countries to mitigate the negative impact of emigration on their economies, and the EU-wide initiatives that could support these efforts.

Patterns of Migration in Central Europe brings together new material on migration in the region: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the last ten years, these countries have changed from being countries of emigration to countries of immigration. As the next candidates for membership to the European Union, migration has become a particularly important topic for these countries. This book is designed as a key text for those interested in the development of the region and in European migration more generally.

This open access book looks at the migration of Southern European EU citizens (from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece) who move to Northern European Member States (Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom) in response to the global economic crisis. Its objective is twofold. First, it identifies the scale and nature of this new Southern European emigration and examines these migrants’ socio-economic integration in Northern European destination countries. This is achieved through an analysis of the most recent data on flows and profiles of this new labour force using sending-country and receiving-country databases. Second, it looks at the politics and policies of immigration, both from the perspective of the sending- and receiving-countries. Analysing the policies and debates about these new flows in the home and host countries’ this book shows how contentious the issue of intra-EU mobility has recently become in the context of the crisis when the right for EU citizens to move within the EU had previously not been questioned for decades. Overall, the strength of this edited volume is that it compiles in a systematic way quantitative and qualitative analysis of these renewed Southern European migration flows and draws the lessons from this changing climate on EU migration.