RAPID ECONOMIC growth, shifting demographics and revolutionary changes in mass travel have combined to boost labour migration from poorer to richer parts of the world in recent years. As a result the human links between central and north America, Latin America and Spain, central and eastern Europe and Ireland, or south Asia and Gulf states, have been deepened and reinforced. But it is a heartless process, since changing economic realities can suddenly close pathways to jobs just as rapidly as they previously opened up, leaving migrants stranded between unemployment in their new homes or their old ones.
It is important to understand that this is an international story, however much its effects are felt at national level. As the series of articles in this newspaper by Ruadhán Mac Cormaic has made clear, the pattern and scope of migration is remarkably similar in Brazil, Spain and Ireland, where he investigated its impact on different individuals and communities. Even in China – where the greatest internal migration in modern times has taken place over the last 20 years, bringing some 200 million people from the rural interior to work in eastern cities – economic growth has been driven by the world market which has made the country the ultimate labour outreach.
The credit crunch, the financial crisis and the sharp contraction in major economies have suddenly made migration into a heated political issue in most societies. For the moment most migrant workers are opting to stay put and ride out the crisis rather than reverse their movement. This is easier for those in the European Union and the Schengen regime, where mobility is provided for, than for other world regions. But as was seen in the European Parliament election results, growing numbers of voters in Italy, Slovakia, Austria, the United Kingdom and Spain want to make an issue of it. Governments are suddenly tightening access and restricting work permits in response, often without any evidence that migrants are responsible for the higher unemployment and crime they are accused of.
Migrant workers in Ireland are facing the same pressures as elsewhere in the middle of this convulsion. Work permits are sharply down and much more difficult to renew for non-EU residents, while migrants from other EU states are mostly staying put in the hope of economic recovery. So far there has been little explicitly political resentment or open hostility from Irish citizens, but this may change if unemployment persists and the prospect of recovery recedes. The newcomers are not responsible for the economic crisis and should not be blamed for it. We have gained a lot from the experience.
Analysts are now debating whether this period will mark a reversal of these large-scale migrations and see a return movement by most workers. It is surely too soon to say that is so about such a complex issue. Demographic factors, for example, complicate the picture, so that countries with ageing populations like Japan or Sweden are prepared to make special provision for skilled migration.