History shows that during economic crises migrants suffer. Like their predecessors in the 1930s and the 1970s, many migrants are now returning home.
 | For Better or For WorseChinese migrant workers pose for a wedding photo at a demolished site in Chongqing on Migrant Workers' Day. Tens of millions of Chinese migrants are returning to the countryside as the economy slows (Photo: Reuters) |
The biggest migration in human history has gone into reverse. More than 10 million Chinese migrant laborers have returned to the countryside from the cities as factories close and jobs disappear. For sheer scale, there is no better symbol of the global economic downturn.
“We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression,” U.S. President Barack Obama told Americans just after his inauguration, comparing the current crisis with the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Then, America shut its doors to immigrants and many foreign workers returned home. Similarly, when recession loomed in the 1970s, European countries halted guest worker programs.
The current crisis will cost 20 million jobs worldwide, says the International Labour Organisation (ILO), forcing migrants home and discouraging would-be migrants. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) worries that xenophobia will rise as “job competition increases between nationals and migrants”.
There are signs of a reverse in the rapid migration flows of recent decades that have seen around 200 million people settle outside their homelands, some 3 percent of the global population.
The foreign-born population in America has stopped growing, says the Migration Policy Institute. In Europe, countries that attracted large migrant flows such as Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Spain are shedding jobs and many migrants, particularly those from Eastern Europe, are going home. Around half of the one million East Europeans who came to Britain since 2004, have already left, reports the Institute for Public Policy Research.
 | Picture Gallery (click on the picture to start)Discover a dozen of the world’s cross-border and internal migration hotspots (Photo: Reuters) |
Spain, which is grappling with 12 percent unemployment, is encouraging migrants to leave. The Spanish government is offering migrants the unemployment benefits to which they are entitled, in two lump sums, if they give up residence permits and work visas and promise to stay away for three years.
Few have taken up the Spanish government’s offer, suggesting that not all migrants are keen to leave. Social security, health and education benefits may be better in developed countries. Moreover, economies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and other emigrant regions are also slowing, reducing the incentives for migrants to return home.
When migrants get squeezed the knock-on effects in their native countries are huge because cash remittances sent home by migrants—about 283 billion dollars in 2008—help alleviate poverty and bring investment to poor countries. In some countries they account for bigger flows of capital than aid or foreign investment: remittances from Philippines nationals provide about a tenth of total domestic output.
The value of these remittances will fall by at least six percent in 2009 as the recession takes hold, estimates the head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Supachai Panitchpakdi. That could result in more people falling back into poverty.
Not all countries are trying to get rid of their migrants. Japan, acutely aware of the shortage of young people in its aging population, is reversing decades of anti-immigrant bias. The country now provides Japanese language courses and training programs for foreign workers who have lost manufacturing jobs in the recession.
Politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said in 2008 that Japan must welcome 10 million immigrants over the next 50 years in order to re-balance an aging, shrinking population.
China is also trying to do something for its “floating population” by embarking on massive public works programs. So far, an estimated 20 million rural migrant workers - about 15 percent of such workers throughout China - have lost their jobs. While millions went back home to the countryside, millions more simply have no home left to go to.
Beijing fears that a tide of young, jobless men could swamp provincial China and threaten political and social stability. For China, an economic crisis could still turn into a political crisis.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: February 6, 2009
Do you have something interesting to add? Write a comment and discuss this topic with other readers. Comments should be on-topic, non-commercial, and not contain abuse of any kind.
Comment Policy
Migrants in Ireland turn to Charity
Many of the migrants in Ireland who came during the boomtime, otherwise known as 'The Celtic Tiger' worked in the building trade. When the property slump came they lost their jobs and...