Abstract
Migration has always closely interacted with the prevailing social and economic realities in countries of origin and destination. The movements invariably entail both benefits and costs, and these are often differentially shared between and within countries. Generally, however, in times of prosperity or economic reconstruction, destination countries welcome migrants. Migration allows destination countries to meet the rising labour demand, restrain wage-push inflation, boost consumption and place the economy on an upward swing. And with some rare, and largely ineffective, exceptions as experienced in the past, labour-abundant sending countries respond positively to such demand in order to lessen their burden of unemployment and earn much-needed foreign exchange in the form of remittances. Driven by the supply-push of labour, they tend to become more proactive in times of economic distress and high unemployment, but less so when times are bad in destination countries, and try to reabsorb the returnees.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In an interview given to the Financial Times on 1 February 2009, Mr. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, used a much lower figure of 12 million. “Downturn Causes 20 M Job Losses,” Financial Times, 3 February 2009.
US Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008, Current Population Reports P60–236, September 2009, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. Although the accuracy of the census, which suffers from certain flaws, is open to debate the data present a good measure of the long-term trends.
Andrew Sum and Ishwar Khatiwada, “Labor Underutilization Problems of U.S. Workers across Household Income Groups at the End of the Great Recession: A Truly Great Depression among the Nation’s Low-income Workers amidst Full Employment among the Most Affluent,” Center for Labor Studies, Boston, February 2010.
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises,” NBER Working paper no. 13882, March 2008.
Michael Spence. The Next Convergence (Excerpt), 2011 http://www.thenext-convergence.cm/component/content/article/218
John Gapper, “America’s Turbulent Jobs Fight,” Financial Times, 29 July 2011.
US Labor Department, Monthly Employment Situation Report, September 2009.
Bank of England, Quarterly Bulletin, 50(1), March 2010.
ILO, “Protecting People, Promoting jobs: ILO Report to G-20 Leaders Summit,” Pittsburg, September 2009.
OECD “Moving Beyond the Job Crisis,” Employment Outlook, 2010, Paris.
See, for example, Davis, Steve, John Haltiwanger and Scott Schuh, Job Creation and Destruction, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Cambridge, 1996.
Hoynes, Hilary, The Employment Earnings and Income of Less Skilled Workers over the Business Cycle, NBER Working Paper 7188, June 1999.
OECD, “The Crisis and Its Impact on Migrant Employment and Movements: Drawing Lessons for the Recovery Phase,” DELSA/ELSA/WP2 (2010)3, 1 June 2010.
Copyright information
© 2013 Bimal Ghosh
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ghosh, B. (2013). Migration and Economic and Social Realities. In: The Global Economic Crisis and the Future of Migration: Issues and Prospects. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291301_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291301_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33823-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29130-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)