Is there room, and how much, for immigrants in the European social model?

Résumé du document

Immigration is deeply rooted in the European history. In the post-war era, several West European governments, especially in large devastated countries, resorted to immigration to cope with important needs for labor force in the event of the post-war efforts to reconstruct the economy. Immigrants, mostly from Northern Africa and the Middle East, therefore owe their origins to the European social model. It can be said that immigration doubtlessly played a crucial role in the aftermath of the war. The existence of a common social model for European countries will not be discussed here. Rather this concept shall refer to the Welfare State as an organizational model of production and work relationships, as well as to the typical social and political arrangement in Europe after 1945. If immigration is a constituent of this model, why is its role in Europe being questioned today? While trying to have a European perspective of the problem, the term immigrants will refer here to non-EU citizens. It should also be distinguished between legal and illegal immigration, which are related to different economic and political problems.

Extraits

[...] The ECOFIN Council is alarmed about the budgetary impact on public expenditures, especially regarding the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact restricting public deficits. Indeed, the demographic burden will significantly increase expenses related to ageing population from in the UK to 13% of GDP in Greece[2]. Ageing population will also result in a decrease of the number of households and therefore of consumption[3], as well as in shortages of labour in some activity sectors. As a consequence, the Commission assesses that ageing could cause potential annual growth in GNP in Europe to fall from today to in 2040[4]. [...]

[...] In order to keep the process going, the Commission issued in 2004 a Green Paper on An EU approach to managing economic migration This paper aims the establishment of common rules on: admission procedures for paid employment and self-employment, ii) preference for the domestic labour market, iii) application for work and residence permits iv) rights and integration policies. So far, no legislative instrument has been agreed in this respect. In fact, the action initiated by the Commission is criticized for not taking into account national differences regarding demography, immigration and labour markets. For instance, the reference to a European labour market does not reflect reality[14]. Paradoxically, this lack of harmonization in the national legislation on access of immigrants to labour markets is also identified as a problem falling back on the common asylum system. [...]

[...] However, there are various situations among the EU countries. The level of immigrant population is inherited from the past and therefore can be very different from a country to another: immigrant population stock ranks from about in Ireland, Finland and Portugal, or in Spain and Italy up to about in Greece and Germany or in Austria. However, figures are likely to converge, since the countries who currently host the least foreigners are also the ones that are most open to migratory flows today. [...]

[...] The aim of such a measure is clearly to prevent migrants from reaching European costs by retaining them in countries where the full respect of human rights is far from being assured. The second set of criticism is related more directly to the concept of selective immigration, ie the delivery of visas for skilled workers from third countries. First, the coexistence of high unemployment rates and high levels of immigration is “politically explosive”, likely to bring more voters to far-right parties, because don't understand why shortages of labour could not be met with adjustments of the domestic labour. [...]

[...] Indeed, a prospective study by the United Nations shows that economic migrants can “replace” only to a certain extent lacking manpower on European labour markets. While the level of immigration needed to prevent a decline of population (by 2050) is close to that experienced in the 1990's, it would have to be 15 times greater for the current dependency ratio to be sustained[16]. Next to disagreement between member-states governments, there is a range of political issues that should be reflect on when advocating the instrumentalization of immigration as an economic factor The difficult search for an efficient integration model The integration of immigrants into European societies has become a real political problem in the last years. [...]