Socio-economic costs and benefits of migration for Central and Eastern Europe

Scholarly, educational and policy literature tends to view the impact of migration in cost-benefit terms; literature on CEE is no exception. With regard to individual countries, for example, Thaut (2009, 191), analys-ing post-2004 migration from Lithuania, concludes:

The free movement of workers has helped to relieve pressure on the domestic labour market, drive down unemployment, place upward pressure on wages, and increase the remittances rate to Lithuania.

However, . . . recent emigration has introduced labour market short-ages, placed greater demographic pressure on the country, and increased the likelihood of brain drain.

Mereuta (2013, 131,133), writing about Romania, provides a similar, eco-nomically focused list, but also points to some psychological and social consequences, with a hint of regional differentiation:

In spite of this initial beneficial effect on the national labour market (which is still characterised by a low level of job availability), the sheer volume of labour emigration gave rise to several negative effects: labour shortages, skill gaps, distorted wage demand; depop-ulated areas, deepening of regional discrepancies; social prob-lems with dependants (especially children) left behind; inflationary

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pressure (due to remittances) [and] lower levels of economic activ-ity in the remaining population. Money sent back by Romanian migrant workers represented, in a way, a second form of “welfare”

deeply affecting recipients’ willingness to work. [More positively]:

The last decade of migration in Romania triggered major social change. Traditionally immobile populations (mostly rural) suddenly benefited from the opportunities offered by labour migration with direct positive effects on the living standards of those back home (spouses, children, parents) as well as on individual adaptability.

These extracts nicely illustrate many of the points made in textbooks about the impact on sending countries globally (e.g. Castles and Miller 2009).⁸ The same puzzles occur everywhere. When and why is the over-all impact on labour markets and local wages negative or positive? Do remittances stimulate local and individual household economies and lead to more income equality between regions and households? Do they create a more skilled and entrepreneurial population, or the reverse?

Exactly what is the impact on families – who make their own cost-benefit calculations as to whether the benefits of migration compensate for the suffering caused by absence?

Recent overviews of the region include Bélorgey et al. (2012), OECD (2013) and Kahanec and Zimmermann (2016b), all of which compare the economic impact of migration across a range of post-communist countries.

(See chapter 5 of this volume for some cross-country comparisons.) Remit-tances are particularly important outside the EU: in 2016, in non-EU member states of south-east Europe, remittances contributed a proportion of GDP ranging from 8.5 per cent in Serbia to 21.7 per cent in Moldova (Knomad 2017, 23), but they are much lower in Central Europe (e.g.

about 2.5 per cent of Polish GDP in 2007, the year of the most migration (Kaczmarczyk, Anacka and Fihel 2016, 145)). Zaiceva (2014) cites studies suggesting that migration is fuelling increased wages and reduced unemployment in a number of countries. Pryymachenko, Fregert and Andersson (2013, 2696) calculated that for the CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004, unemployment decreased during the period 2000–7 on average by at least 3.4 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in migration. However, Kaczmarczyk, in chapter 5 of this volume, inves-tigates this connection in more detail, showing that one should not assume that migration-related ‘unemployment export’ is the main reason for fall-ing unemployment figures, at least in Poland.

Scholars of CEE migration before and after 2004 have found evi-dence that migration enhances knowledge, skills and well-being (‘human

capital’) (see, e.g. Radu 2003; Straubhaar and Wolburg 1999). Baláž and Williams (2004) and Williams and Baláž (2005) showed the importance of tacit and transferable skills in their analysis of skilled return migrants to Slovakia. Returnees highlighted language and communication skills and emphasised how migration had changed their perspectives, self- awareness and self-confidence.

However, the social impact of migration – except insofar as individual migrants improve their human capital – is frequently seen as problematic.

Brain drain is identified, as is ‘brain squandering’ (Bartha, Fedyuk and Zentai 2015), when migrants work in simple manual jobs not commen-surate with their education (see also Kahanec and Zimmermann 2016a, 421). Extensive migration can also threaten the sustainability of sending country welfare systems (see, e.g. Hazans 2016b, 340, on the Baltic countries).

There is a tendency in some of the literature to simplify social effects.

Phrases such as ‘abandoned children’ (for those with one parent working abroad), ‘families left behind’ and ‘care drain’ are also stigmatising towards families concerned, and can create a mental fog that inhibits careful anal-ysis of the social impact. The costs and benefits of (e)migration are also political, and this contributes to the tendency to oversimplify issues.

Mădroane (2016, 234) demonstrates how Romanian newspapers with dif-ferent political viewpoints adopt difdif-ferent interpretations of the costs and benefits of international migration. A more nuanced approach is advocated by scholars with a closer knowledge of actual families and local communities, for example Piperno, writing about Romania (2012) or Markova on Albania (2010b). In local communities, sacrifices made by migrating parents for the sakes of their families are often regarded as laud-able, while the same behaviour is condemned as selfish in superficial journalistic analysis and nationalist political discourse.

One might question how far it makes sense to consider CEE as a single region for purposes of typical cost-benefit comparison, given the very different scale of migration from, for example, Slovenia, compared with Lithuania or Albania, and its varied nature. For example, more children are separated from their parents by migration in countries with more clas-sic labour migration, such as Romania and Moldova, than by migration in countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Estonia, where a higher proportion of migrants are young and single. The varied levels of economic development also impede comparative analysis. Tallinn can hardly be compared with an Albanian village. Assuming that enlarge-ment and social cohesion policy aimed at creating regional convergence across the EU is ongoing, it can however be helpful for predicting future

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trajectories to compare countries that are more behind with those more advanced in that process, as indeed to compare regions and locations at different stages of development within larger and regionally differentiated EU member states like Poland and Romania. Migration effects are often more visible in countries, regions and individual locations where other sources of income and investment (notably EU structural funds) are less available. However, this suggests that the true impact of migration can only be understood when the influence of migration is seen in conjunc-tion with the influence of other factors. It is only partly helpful to weigh up migration influences against one another, as in a typical cost-benefit analysis.