Migrant malaise

As the economic malaise deepens and shows no clear signs of abating anytime soon, many countries around the world are turning up the pressure on migrants in an effort to ease the strain on the local labor market. Japan, a nation with few migrant laborers to begin with, introduced a program that offers Latin American guest workers of Japanese ancestry cash incentives if they leave the country.

In Europe, Spain and the Czech Republic are also trying to persuade workers from outside the European Union to go back home by paying them money to do so. While Japan's program bars workers who participate from returning to the country, Spain's program allows migrants to come back after three years under the condition that they have a specific work contract.

It's a natural impulse that countries are looking at curbing the number of migrant workers in times of economic turmoil, says Dietrich Thraenhardt, a leading migration expert who is currently a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington. He clearly favors the Spanish incentive model for migrants. "I think it makes sense as long as migrants are free to chose. Some migrants may want to return home and if you take for instance the funding from Spain back to Romania you can live better there. But other migrants will want to stay and as long as they can chose I think it's a good policy," he says.

But as Jemini Pandya, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva points out, the response to the Spanish initiative hasn't been dramatic. Most migrants think twice before they leave the country to which they came - often enduring considerable hardships on the way. They know that once they go back to their home country, it will be hard to return again.

Difficult data

To ascertain in concrete terms how migrants are affected by the economic crisis is not easy. Many countries simply don't have the tools to accurately document the flows of migrant workers and their financial situation in real-time, says Pandya. Often it can take years until reliable data is gathered.

One of the best documented, current and most vivid examples showing how migrants are affected directly by the economic meltdown comes out of Mexico. According to the country's central bank, the amount of money sent home by Mexicans working abroad dropped by 19 percent in April of this year compared to the same month the previous year. It was the steepest decline of so called remittances on record.

For Mexico, which ranks third among countries receiving the highest remittances, the loss in revenue from abroad is significant. The money sent home from Mexicans working predominently in the United States amounted to roughly 25 billion dollars last year. It is the country's second largest source of income after oil exports.

Some experts deduct a historic reversal of the global migration trend from those numbers as well as from figures suggesting a drop in migration to the US and other countries and an increase in migrants leaving the US and other migration destinations. However, the IOM is more cautious. Spokeswoman Jemini Pandya argues that just because remittances are falling, it doesn't necessarily mean that migrants have left the country, instead many may be simply sending less money home and trying to weather the crisis. What's more, says Pandya, many people who are going back are planning to do so only for up to six months.

Trend continues

According to the IOM there is no reversal of the global migration pattern. Instead, argues Pandya, each country and region must be analysed individually. In many cases, the economic crisis isn't the sole reason why migrants go back home.

"For example Polish migrant workers to the UK and Ireland have been returning to Poland in large numbers, even actually before the financial crisis started, because the British economy had been deteriorating and the Polish economy was stronger at the time and so they had already started to go back," she says. The same is true for Brasilians leaving Europe and for workers in the Gulf states returning to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, adds Pandya.

Even with the economic crisis, the IOM doesn't expect the total number of global migrants to drop and estimates that there will be between 210 and 214 million migrants by the end of next year.

Dietrich Thraenhardt also doesn't predict a reversal of the long term trend toward migration, but notes that people might be inclined to be less mobile during the economic crisis. "When the economy gets better again the migration will resume, because the structural imbalances between the poor southern world and the rich northern world with its problematic demography are still there and so the rich world needs labor from the poor world."

And when that happens, countries like Britain, Australia or Malaysia, which have now scaled back the number of skilled and unskilled workers they let in, will have to ease their restrictions again. Because ultimately the fundamental labor shortages in these and many other countries cannot be filled by domestic workers - even during an economic crisis, says Jemini Pandya: "Migration never stops."

Author: Michael Knigge

Editor: Rob Mudge