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10MIGRATION - A CHALLENGE OR ANOTHER GLOBAL
THREAT
doc. Ing. PhD. Dudova Iveta Prof. Ing. PhD. Stanek Vojtech
Department of Public Administration, Public Administration Institute at School of Economics and Management in Public Administration in Bratislava, Bratislava
Abstract. Migration in the EU is a problem however the integration grouping needs it in the long term as a result of its unfavourable demographic trends. The current migration is problematic due to the fact that many countries are still struggling to overcome the effects of the global financial crisis and Eurozone crisis. Migration results in a great number of disadvantaged and unqualified people. This group of migrants tends to settle in rather poorer regions with already notable social problems. Immigrants, on the other hand, are able to fill the marginal spaces of labour market, which locals have no interest in.
Keywords: Integration grouping, value framework, migration, emigration
In history, climate changes, long-term droughts, crop failure and water deficit were among the main causes of mass movement of people. Migration processes are ongoing worldwide also nowadays. However, the aforementioned migration factors do not typically cause the movement of people in the world. Most frequently, they are very closely interconnected with socio-economic, political and globalisation factors.
Migration is a historical and social phenomenon, significantly affecting national policies and changing demography of individual countries. It can be a source of both conflicts and development; however it is first of all the phenomenon affecting future of individual nations and thus all of mankind. Migration is a wide-ranging and heterogeneous phenomenon with a number of migration theories. It represents a movement of persons or a greater number of citizens within a geographic and social area connected with a temporary or permanent change of the place of residence. Labour migration can be daily, weekly, monthly or permanent. Internal migration and external migration are distinguished. Internal migration results from regional differences. It provides citizens with a better access to economic resources on labour market. Slovakia is characterised by increasing labour mobility, while people are willing to cross the borders of several regions. The most frequent is migration from the Eastern regions westward. Its adverse effects are notable in the lives of families or certain depopulated micro Eastern regions. External migration has a more significant impact on economy and mainly on demographic development. Over the last decade, it has been especially related to EU integration processes and free movement of workers. Certain numbers of migrants are natural and even necessary in the long term as a result of negative demographic development, ageing and dying out of population. The current migration wave results from a combination of demography and economy, which has undergone a downfall due to the recession. Additional factors are the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and failures of states.
The current huge migration wave appears to be a safety risk. That is first of all due to unmanaged logistics and estimates of own capacity upon receiving migrants by individual EU Member States. Upon distinguishing between legal and illegal migration, the issue of making illegal migration legal is becoming the key in solving further fundamental aspects such as humanitarian aid, elemental humanity and solidarity.
In 2009, 49,000 people migrated from Slovakia; in 2010, it was 130,500 people. The highest number of people - 158,100 - migrated in 2006. According to the statistics of health insurance companies, approximately 150,000 people have signed off their insurance over the last five years. The reason was leaving abroad. This fact has significantly affected our population development and resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of newborns. The number of Slovak people leaving abroad is related to the situation on our labour market as well as the level of income in Slovakia and abroad. According to the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, average salaries in EUR in selected states in 2014 were as follows: Belgium - 3,391; Denmark - 4,040; Luxembourg - 3,877; France - 2,732;
Portugal - 1,398; Spain - 1,900; Poland - 714; Czech Republic - 912; Hungary - 703; Austria - 3,221; Greece - 2,175; Slovak Republic - 858. In 2014, almost 39,000 Slovak people worked in Austria and 37,000 in the Czech Republic. However, the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic only records short-term labour migration up to a year hence the data are partially distorted. Development on internal labour market is a priority, which can be confirmed by 2013 data, when 136,000 people worked abroad, while it was only 135,500 people in 2014, which was a result of decreasing unemployment and growing employment rates. From the perspective of education, the structure of our migrants is as follows: 3.45 % of people have completed elementary education, 46.51 % have completed apprenticeship training or vocational education without the school-leaving examination, 44.21 % have completed vocational education with the school-leaving examination, and 5.82 % of migrants have completed university education. The survey of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic also presented the structure from a different perspective. 31.9 % of migrants are married, 25.7 % were unemployed and 48.8 % were employed. Work our migrants were doing required a lower level of education in 43.7 % of cases, while the opposite applies to 6.3 %. Up to 62.6 % of migrants were planning to stay abroad. 46.7 % of migrants were planning the same for at least a year. 33.7 % of people with university education were planning to stay abroad. Positive development in unemployment can currently be documented by unemployment rate, representing 11.32 % in September 2015, while expected development by the end of the year is 12.8 %.
Due to globalisation, economic recession and long-term instability of the states of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc., immigration has reached such dimensions that all internal as well as external forces of the EU need to be mobilised. Some strong EU economies have introduced a new multicultural cohabitation model (A. Merkel). However, the present times convince us that this model is failing and we can clearly state that the hopes of immigrants have collided with the political and social reality, on the borderline of which we have perforce found ourselves, too.
The current migration wave includes both labour migration and compensatory migration. Labour migration has the greatest share in the EU. Workforce goes where salaries are higher. Capital seeks maximum profit and is focused on population with lower salaries. Compensatory migration is related to the ageing of population and has two objectives: 1. to slow down, respectively stem depopulation; 2. to slow down, respectively stop changes in the age structure of population. In 2011, 22,000 foreign workers were registered in Slovakia. At the end of 2012, there were 72,925 registered foreign residents, out of whom 76.7 % were from the EU countries. Most of them were from the Czech Republic - 14,744; Hungary - 9,920; Poland - 7,005; Germany - 4,415; Austria - 2,308; and Romania - 5,962. Citizens of other countries represented 23.3 %, or 17,016 persons. The greatest numbers of them were from Ukraine - 3,915; Russia - 1,835; Vietnam - 1,544; China - 875; USA -861; Serbia - 71; Korea - 598; and Croatia - 465. As far as gender is concerned, men prevail, representing 59.8 % of immigrants.
2.3 million residence permits were granted within the EU to people from non-EU countries in 2013. Most permits were granted to Ukrainians, Indians, Americans and the Chinese. Work, education and family reasons were given as the reasons for migration. The number of asylum seekers in the EU between 1998 and 2015 is summarised in the following table.
Table 1
Year 1998 2001 2005 2009 2012 2014 First half of 2015
Number 313,645 424,180 234,675 266,395 336,015 624,710 417,430
Source: Elaborated based on EU SILK 2015
The International Organisation for Migration announced that 464,876 migrants had entered Europe via the Mediterranean Sea in the second half of 2015. A need to consider how to deal with the refugee crisis from the global perspective has arisen. The European Commission has requested the EU countries to agree on refugee reallocation. Europe is not ready for the current migration wave. What is happening now is a process that is going to be long, and there is no common EU policy. The UN declares that there are 60 million refugees worldwide. Our goal is to preserve unity within the EU. Each state has to take responsibility in order to achieve decisions - common European solutions.
The Arab world is represented by 350 million people, out of whom two thirds are young people up to 25 years of age. More than 4 million people out of 22 million have emigrated from Syria over the last years. Today, 1.6 - 2 million of them are in Turkey, hundreds of thousands have ended up in the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Two thirds of the overall number of refugees live in extreme poverty and are dependent on food aid. For instance Turkey has provided USD 6 billion for refugees. 667,000 migrants have applied for asylum in Germany in the first half of 2015, and this number is estimated to grow to 800,000 - 1,000,000 by the end of the year. 3.6 million new migrants have arrived in Great Britain over the last four years. Immigrants from non-EU countries have been provided EUR 150 billion by Great Britain over the last ten years. In January 2015, 10,000 Chechens applied for asylum in Hungary, and there were 1,500 refugees applying for asylum in Germany daily in February. Angela Merkel points to failing multiculturalism and a need to limit so called social tourism to Germany. Germany paid EUR 2.4 billion as social benefits in 2014. The UN is warning against an incapability of providing necessary food for 6 million refugees and against mass reallocation. We have to distinguish economic migration from the current situation in Syria and Iraq with already 250,000 victims of the war.
Migrants entering the EU weaken the economies and budgets of individual countries. However, security, political and subsequently economic risks are also appearing. Uncontrolled migration can affect the still fragile economic development in the EU. Migrants entering the EU should not threaten the budgets and deficits of individual countries in the long term.
The proposal related to migrant reallocation among individual EU Member States is based on the concept of achieving a certain balance among the Member States. Situation on labour market and population structure in individual states need to be considered upon the reallocation. The solution of the refugee crisis needs to be perceived in the context of insufficient solidarity among the countries. The EU represents a set of values based on solidarity. Migration-related expenses represent considerable economic and social costs, while 23 million unemployed people live in the EU, half of whom are long-term unemployed. New debts of the EU countries related to funding migrants are not permitted, approved budgets are tight and cutting is necessary. Slovakia has less state budget resources as well as enough poverty-threatened people. The most efficient means in fighting unemployment is economic recovery. The European Commission supports it by EUR 315 billion investment plan.
The views of economists on whether migrants are or are not beneficial for the European countries from the economic perspective differ. The current state, when countries are gradually overcoming the effects of the financial and economic recession, imposes a careful approach to receiving immigrants. Moreover, migrants include a great number of disadvantaged and little qualified people. The Pravda newspaper as of the 19th September 2015 informed that 15 % of asylum seekers in Bavaria are illiterate. Migrants contribute to economic growth in the long term. The number of working-age population in Europe is expected to decrease by 7.5 million people only by 2020 based on OECD and EC data. Will they be able to fill the marginal spaces of labour market, which locals have no interest in, or provide qualified workers in declining or rapidly growing economic sectors? The concept of solving the current immigration waves will especially need to be further expanded by Schengen border protection, identification of refugees on the Union periphery, registration hotspots establishment, and access to the Union only granted to war-threatened and qualified workforce. Notwithstanding the current failing of migration policy, a project focused on the issue of migration from a broader perspective (SEEMIG), especially on the documentation and movement of people, was implemented using the EU resources. It was completed in 2014. Slovak INFOSTAT participated in this project, which was mainly targeted at the following: 1. analysis of long-term trends in demography, migration and human capital and their impact on economics and labour market; 2. establishment of databases with the data on reproduction, labour market, migration and economic situation for a longer period, which will be used upon analysing and forecasting in the areas of demography, migration and human capital; 3. creation of scenarios of likely future population development, especially with regard to migration, which would enable to draft effective national, regional and local strategies; 4. development of strategies and recommendations aimed at improving registration in the areas of migration and movement of persons. Since 2014, Slovakia has had the Integration Policy document, following the concept of Integrating Foreigners in the Slovak Republic from 2009.
Conclusion. The refugee crisis has revealed weaknesses in the EU migration policy, which currently include humanity, common value framework, inwardly as well as outwardly manifested
solidarity and practical issues related to whether the Union is able to face the crisis from the practical perspective or mutual accusations of the countries will prevail. Refugee reallocation within the EU is an emergency solution. Crisis management requires political improvisation. Reallocation has been adopted, however we do not know what happens if secondary migration occurs, i.e. that reallocated migrants will migrate to Germany or Scandinavian countries after some time. If this issue is solved the reallocation instrument would be part of a more realistic and more solidarity-based European asylum policy. The current conclusions in relation to solving the immigration wave are: supervision of compliance with common rules, development of further reform, help to countries facing an enormous influx of refugees, more help to Syrian refugees, establishment of the criteria of distinguishing between refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, accelerated return of those without the right to protection, implementation of the reallocation mechanism if necessary.
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