Emigration, Employment and Inequality in Post-communist Countries

Abstract

Part of the important debate on migration in the European Union is strictly connected to the increase in its size that occurred in 2004 and 2007, when 10 Formerly Planned Economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic region entered the EU. Although the Treaty on the Functioning of European Union established for its Member States’ citizens the right to move freely within EU borders, many Western countries feared massive immigration from Eastern Europe and resorted to the Treaty of Accession to impose some temporary restrictions on immigration (Kahanec and Zimmermann, 2009; Kahanec et al., 2014). Public opinion and the political debate that followed these actions led many scholars to concentrate on the effects of migration in the EU-15 receiving countries (EIC, 2009; European Commission, 2010, 2011; Boeri, 2010). In addition to measuring real inflows of migrants, some authors investigated their characteristics and education profiles, paying attention to their return to education or the degree of their satisfaction in the Western EU labour markets (Galgóczi et al., 2012; Bartram, 2013). Bettin (2012) and Huber (2012) found strong evidence of overqualification and of a corresponding underutilisation of EU-10 migrant workers’ skills in the Western EU countries. Of course these aspects are of prominent importance, and question the migration policies established to improve the efficiency of cross-border labour mobility (Galgóczi et al., 2012).