Refugee crisisEU governments may have deliberately allowed migrants in to boost domestic economies
Border controls which allow migrants to bypass them may have been part of a deliberate policy to boost domestic economies and garner party-political support, according to a new study. A study found that migrants have often been essential to domestic political and economic interests such as serving the needs of large informal labor markets that rely on cheap labor. As a result, policies and practices of border control which purport to exclude all migrants can in fact be imperfect by design.
Migrants flooding europe reaching critical numbers // Source: wikipedia.org
Border controls which allow migrants to bypass them may have been part of a deliberate policy to boost domestic economies and garner party-political support, according to new LSE research.
A study focusing on Greece, but with wider implications across European governments, found that migrants have often been essential to domestic political and economic interests such as serving the needs of large informal labor markets that rely on cheap labor. The study concludes that policies and practices of border control which purport to exclude all migrants can in fact be imperfect by design. Governments may adopt policies and promote practices that essentially relax border controls so as to enable the mass import of exploitable migrant labor. State policies restricting welfare and employment rights, combined with tolerance or even active support towards practices of violent intimidation, serve to bolster migrants’ exploitability in the labor market.
LSE reports that Dr. Leonidas Cheliotis, Assistant Professor in Criminology at LSE’s Social Policy Department, focused on Greece, a country with exceptionally high levels of undocumented migrants and at the heart of the current global refugee crisis with regular media reports of tragedies at sea. Its immigration policy has undergone little substantive change since the early 1990s. The paper notes that “in trying to enter Greece, be it by land or sea, irregular migrants often find themselves at serious risk of death.” Irregular migration has nonetheless undergone an “impressive overall rise” over the years. By 2011, for example, the estimated number of undocumented migrants reached 390,000, nearly one-third of a total of 1.2 million immigrants in Greece, itself comprising around one-tenth of the country’s total population.
