Magazine / Society / Migration / Debate | 23/11/2007

Labour Migration from East to West

Millions of people from Eastern Europe have made their way to Western Europe hoping to find better working conditions. What effects has this migration had for the countries of Eastern Europe, and what have been the economic consequences and the impact on everyday life in Western Europe?

Is Europe currently experiencing a kind of mass migration? This was the question posed by the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 20 July 2006. "Will certain regions, like eastern Poland or southern Italy, become completely depopulated?" he asked.

Not only seasonal workers, but more and more highly trained employees
gravitate towards Western Europe.
Photo: AP

The process of European unification is increasingly resulting in internal migration. While many Portuguese work in Spain, this year has seen a steady influx of Romanians and Bulgarians to Spain and Italy, and since 2004 Britain and Ireland have become popular destinations for Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian workers. The internal migration trend is clearly from poor countries to richer ones and from East to West. According to Eurostat, the number of Romanians and Bulgarians alone who are working in other European countries topped the million mark this year. Klaus Brill concluded in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 25 October 2006: "These figures prove that migration within Europe is an unstoppable historical process driven by the disparities between East and West."

Western Europe benefits from immigration

Despite all warnings to the contrary, the economies of Western Europe have so far benefited from the influx of foreign workers. Writing in the British newspaper The Independent on 30 August 2006 the British businessman Roland Rudd pointed out that most research shows migration has advantages: "One study suggests that a 1 per cent population increase through migration triggers a 1.5 per cent increase in GDP." Particularly sectors like catering, health, agriculture and retail use East European immigrants to meet their labour requirements.

An increasing number of West European countries have followed Britain, Ireland and Sweden's lead in opening their labour markets to immigrants: these include Finland, Portugal and Spain. Writing in the newspaper Knack on 16 June 2006 the Belgian political scientist Rik Coolsaet advised people to take a more relaxed view: "Immigrants and natives do not compete for the same jobs (translate: they do not steal 'our' jobs). Naturally, immigration is not without a few hitches. ... [But] today's situation is not worse than that which existed in the past. On the contrary. A century ago, one-tenth of the world's population migrated, versus less than three percent today."

Work – but under what conditions?

But alongside the economic advantages migration has its downsides too. These include local wage levels in the West being undermined by cheap labour from the East and turning back the clock on social achievements. As Paul Laverty found while researching a film about Polish workers in Britain, East European labourers are often exploited. On 24 September 2007 he wrote in The Guardian: "Listening to all these experiences, it was as if all the Factory Acts and health and safety regulations had suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke, along with 150 years of trade union gains."

In addition West Europeans often fail to appreciate that East European countries experience enormous problems when their workforce migrates. For it is no longer just strawberry pickers, asparagus harvesters, builders and the famous Polish plumbers who are coming to Western Europe but also highly qualified people like doctors, architects and engineers. Writing in the Romanian newspaper Gandul on 1 February 2007 Liana Subtirelu expressed concern that this trend would not change in the foreseeable future: "Now companies that specialise in recruiting professionals have been set up here in Romania. The first of these companies came from Great Britain in search of dentists. Companies from France followed. The Ministry of Health seems helpless in the face of these developments."

Labour shortages in Eastern Europe

In many of the East European countries affected by migration there are now labour shortages that could well become much worse in 2011 when all the countries of the EU will be forced to open their labour markets. Back on 23 December 2005 Zoltan Pokorni, the Hungarian minister of education at the time, warned of the consequences this would have: "The state will no longer have the administrative means to prevent the emigration of our best workers: no visas and no borders in the traditional sense of the word." In some cases migrating labourers are even regarded as betraying their country, Monika Bonckute commented on 26 September 2007 in the Lithuanian newspaper Lietuvos.

The Baltic countries have now taken countermeasures and are themselves recruiting labour from abroad. However, the wages they are able to offer are not high enough to attract people from the old EU states, so that foreigner labourers tend to come from even poorer EU countries or from the states of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine or even from the Far East. On 12 September 2006 Aivars Ozolins asked in the Latvian newspaper Diena what countries like Latvia actually had to offer immigrants: "Latvia need not fear a massive influx of Bulgarian mechanics and construction workers. On the contrary, there's little hope that our increasing shortage of manpower will be alleviated by immigration from other EU countries."

Campaigns to persuade workers who have migrated to return home have so far had little success, the Estonian newspaper Postimees observed on 11 October 2007: "The labour shortages are having such a strong impact that political leaders are finally ... appealing to the hundreds of thousands of people who have left the country in search of work abroad." Rather than sending out appeals, the article went on, the government should focus on creating more humane living and working conditions within the country.

Boosting the economy at home

Nevertheless, the states of Eastern Europe have been able report some positive effects of emigration too. Unemployment has fallen significantly and wages are rising, making people more inclined to look for work at home. But ultimately the problem will only be solved once Eastern Europe loses its cheap labour advantage over Western Europe and instead raises productivity via technological advancements.

The Estonian newspaper Postimees was already calling on 21 August 2006 for the problems to be solved not through migration but by paying the existing workforce higher wages: "The success of Estonian companies is based not on new business ideas, but on cheap labour. And now we're being told that (owing to worker migration) there's not enough manpower to continue developing Estonia's business sector. If people only have the choice between doing unskilled work for low wages here or doing the same work for more money elsewhere, you can't blame them for taking the second option."

Are Western and Eastern Europe moving closer together?

Migration is obviously an intercultural issue as well. Polish workers in Britain, for example, have begun to organise their own trade unions, and British shops now offer Polish goods. As Magdalena Miecznicka wrote on 19 July 2007 in Dziennik: "The Poles who live abroad are not a nation of savers who keep every cent they earn under their mattresses to send back to Poland. That Borders is selling Polish books in Birmingham, Dublin and London's Oxford Street is a sign that Polish immigrants have adapted and can afford to buy more than just tinned meat. Their mentality has changed." The Polish sociologists Miroslaw und Piotr Chalubinski agreed with this positive assessment. On 1 August 2006 they wrote in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: "For many people, leaving Poland provides a chance to escape an environment that has a negative, sometimes even pathological effect on their development and to give their lives a positive direction... ."

In the view of Witold Gadomski the old EU states like Germany and France also have something to learn from their East European neighbours. On 5 May 2007 he wrote in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: "True integration of the EU will only happen when a great movement of European people begins – much greater than today's economic migration from Central Europe."

Berthold Forssman

Dr. Berthold Forssman studied Scandinavian, Slavic and Indo-Germanic languages and literature and now works as a freelance journalist, translator, language teacher and author in ...
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Further articles on the subject » EU Policy, » Social Policy / Employment, » Migration, » Demographics, » Labour market / Services, » Europe
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