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In Europe, migration has become an extremely divisive topic. But the region desperately needs “key workers” and is joining the battle for talent with nations such as New Zealand.
In Europe, migration has become an extremely divisive topic. But the region desperately needs “key workers” and is joining the battle for talent with nations such as New Zealand.
Europe needs migration, but nobody will talk about it. Europe also needs migrants to take care of its ageing population and do things such as agricultural work. But the biggest problem here at the moment is the impossibility of any kind of constructive discussion about how to organise that.
“No compulsory masks – make learning German compulsory instead!” the election posters in Berlin proclaim angrily.
The German elections take place in just over a month and this particular poster for the right-wing political party Alternative for Germany is hanging on a lamp post in one of the capital’s most multicultural neighbourhoods, where the most common languages include Arabic, Turkish, English and Russian.
With its racist undertones, and a wink and a nod to dubious Covid-19 conspiracy theories, it is yet another indicator of how toxic the discussion about immigration has become here. This is despite the fact that, just like New Zealand, the nations of the European Union desperately need more immigrants.
The EU is one of the most rapidly ageing regions in the world and, by 2050, just over 40% of the EU population will be 55 or older. The number of Europeans aged 85 or older will have doubled to 26.8 million and will make up just over 6% of the total population. At the same time, the birth rate has been dropping since 2008. In 2019, it was 1.53 births per woman.
The ageing European population needs what are known as “key workers”. These are not just healthcare workers to look after all the old folk but also teachers, agricultural labourers, food-processing staff and lorry drivers.
Last year, 31% of working-age migrants in the EU were classified as “key workers”. Europeans themselves apparently don’t like doing what are known as key-worker jobs. Migrants from outside the EU make up 25% of the continent’s cleaners and 17% of mining and construction workers.
Yet at the same time, immigration has become an incredibly contentious topic here. This is mostly a result of 2015’s so-called “migration crisis”, when more than a million asylum seekers made their way to Germany.
“Migration is inevitable,” researchers at the Centre for European Reform (CER) wrote in a 2018 report titled, Why Europe needs legal immigration and how to sell it. “Sooner or later, European leaders will need to drop the pretence that it can be stopped. Europe also needs migrants to supplement its ageing labour force. But European migration policy has fallen hostage to populism … and moderate politicians have been weak at making the argument for migration.”
Studies show how, after 2015, formerly positive popular sentiment towards refugees turned negative. Even in 2019, after irregular arrivals decreased massively, a continent-wide opinion poll indicated that just over a third of Europeans still saw migration as an issue more concerning than even climate change.
Last September, in an attempt to ameliorate some of the conflict around this topic, the EU published its proposal for a new “migration pact”. Because legal migration is the purview of member states and not Brussels – the seat of the EU – the new proposal mostly focused on what to do about irregular or illegal migration. Irregular migration, which includes asylum seekers and illegal arrivals, is the area where Brussels has more authority over member states.
EUROPE WAS ASLEEP
Between 2014 and 2016, 48% of the world’s 6.7 million asylum seekers were registered in the EU. But what to do about people arriving in Europe without a visa? How to manage
An opinion poll indicated that a third of Europeans still see migration as an issue more concerning than even climate change.
By 2030, about 50% of all university graduates aged between 25 and 34 will be qualified in China or India. Only 15% will come from the EU or the US.
them, integrate them, or even prevent them from turning up altogether? Are these people the much-needed “key workers” of Europe’s future or not?
“I don’t think many countries [in the EU] would tell you they have been successful at managing migration,” says Camino Mortera-Martinez, a senior research fellow who specialises in migration policy at the CER, which has offices in London, Berlin and Brussels.
She believes that in 2015, part of the problem was that Europeans were not at all prepared for the hundreds of thousands risking their lives to get to the continent from places such as war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well as crisis-riven African countries.
“It was the perfect cocktail for a crisis,” says Mortera-Martinez. “But we learnt a lot from it. For example, that you need to be able to look outside your own sphere, and when there is a crisis elsewhere, you need to be nimble enough to react, possibly to intervene.
“And if you have a passport-free travel area such as the Schengen area [named for the Schengen agreement on visa-free travel inside 26 European countries] and you want to secure your external borders, then you need an appropriate understanding of what that entails. For example, the funding of a border agency.”
The EU’s budgets are six-yearly and in the most recent one, for 2021 through to 2027, it has added a €9.3 billion ($15.6 billion) fund to support member states in securing the EU’s external borders.
When the last EU budget, starting in 2014, was approved, it didn’t have money allocated to that.
“Europe was asleep,” says Demetrios Papademetriou, one of the world’s leading researchers into migration who has acted as a consultant for all manner of organisations on the topic, including the OECD, the World Economic Forum and the US Government.
This is why Papademetriou, who cofounded the Migration Policy Institute, advocates for a more “active migration policy” in the EU and elsewhere.
This sort of migration management could include attracting more skilled migrants. By 2030, about 50% of all university graduates aged between 25 and 34 will be qualified in China or India. Only 15% will come from the EU or the US.
However, as a statement from Brussels pointed out last year, “The EU is currently losing the global race for talent.” Despite the fact that inviting skilled migrants in would be a far less complex proposition than figuring out what to do with asylum seekers, most European countries are way behind the likes of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway. These were the most attractive destination countries for skilled workers and entrepreneurs in 2019, according to the OECD.
GETTING TO THE POINT
One idea being advocated – and debated – in Europe is a points-based system to admit skilled migrants. New Zealand, Australia and Canada have had systems such as this for several decades – they started using them as early as the 1970s – but the idea is only now finding more favour in the northern hemisphere.
For example, as Mortera-Martinez points out, the United Kingdom always wanted one but, while it was a member of the European Union and therefore open to freedom of movement throughout the EU, it couldn’t really have one. After Brexit, however, the UK now has its own points-based system for skilled migrants, in use since the beginning of this year.
In Germany, politicians from centre-left parties have also advocated a points-based system and there have been several stateled experiments with it, even though, in the end, Germany’s new migration law, enacted in early 2020, didn’t use points. Instead, the Germans use “key” qualifications to decide who can come and live here. Somewhat tellingly, Germany has only had a genuine legal framework to attract skilled migrants since 2012.
The EU itself also has what is known as the “blue card”, introduced in 2009 in an attempt to emulate the famed green card for immigrants to the US. However, partially because the EU and its leadership in Brussels don’t actually have much say over
Most European countries are way behind the likes of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway.
legal migration in member states, the blue card “was not as useful as it should have been”, says Mortera-Martinez. “It never really offered a lot of advantages.”
This means that “the blue card didn’t have enough value to a highly skilled foreigner, given they would have had many other choices”, Papademetriou says in explaining why people opt to go elsewhere. “Brussels has not been able to create a flexible enough system and in terms of being able to attract and retain foreign talent, both of Europe’s hands were tied behind its back.”
The new migration pact does include a revamped version of the blue card, one which will offer skilled migrants more advantages, such as the opportunity to move more freely around the continent as well as better options for family reunification and more pathways to permanent residency and even citizenship.
WIN-WIN SOLUTION?
Another idea recently finding favour in Europe is that of “global skills partnerships”, often referred to as GSPs.
GSPs see countries where a lot of wouldbe migrants live – also known as “countries of origin” – partner with countries that need labour in certain sectors. One example would be nursing. As the European population ages and requires more healthcare, there’s a shortage of nursing staff here.
Hypothetically, two nations involved in a GSP could set up a nursing training facility in the country of origin, with the aim of teaching locals there to the standards of the destination country. An added bonus for the destination country is that it is probably going to be less expensive to train nurses in the origin nation.
Eventually, some of those trainee nurses will graduate and should be able to emigrate more easily to the country they want to move to. They may even have learnt the language of the destination country during their training. An added bonus for the country of origin may be that their migrant nurses, who are earning more money overseas, will send foreign currency back home, too.
But some of the nurses will also stay at home. They’ll enter the workforce there or possibly train the next generation of nurses.
This is why GSPs are perceived as a win-win for all concerned, supplying much-needed labour to the destination country and offering a form of development aid in the country of origin.
In Germany, one of the biggest foreign-aid spenders in the world, there’s a lot of emphasis on preventing irregular migration – and all the political problems it brings – in the country of origin, by encouraging people not to leave home in the first place and using development aid to make “home” a better place to be.
Over the past few years, a number of European nations have been involved in GSPs, with varying degrees of success. Germany has trained builders in Serbia and Nigeria and nurses and auto engineers in the Philippines; Belgium sought IT staff in Morocco and the seafaring Norwegians coached sailors in various locations, including Russia, Latvia and Shanghai. Private companies have also gotten involved.
It seems like a good idea, but the jury is still out. “To date, this global skills partnership model remains largely untested,” migration analyst Kate Hooper wrote in a 2019 policy brief. Measuring the success of European GSPs has been hampered by the time it takes to train people, the ongoing costs, and projects ending because of changes in political climate.
In fact, one of the only countries that has really tested the idea is Australia, says Hooper, because it was among the first to try it. Australia has been off-shoring immigration in more ways than one for decades and, in the early 2000s, was one of the first countries to test a GSP, with its Australia Pacific Training Coalition and its related technical institutes. The latter provide different sorts of vocational training around the South Pacific and are, according to Hooper, “highly rated”, even if not enough of the scheme’s graduates seem willing to emigrate later.
SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
Papademetriou also believes there should be more thought given to who is wanted in Europe, with reconsideration of what may best be described as “formal” skills.
“We have to find a way to reward people who have a combination of skills and experience, the kind of thing that qualifies somebody as if they had an actual [formal] degree,” he says. “It’s important for us [as destination countries] to be imaginative on how to measure and reward less-formal skills.”
But unless we eventually get a United States of Europe, which seems highly unlikely right now, none of this is likely to happen on a continent-wide basis, the experts say.
Germany has trained builders in Serbia and nurses in the Philippines. Belgium sought IT staff in Morocco and the seafaring Norwegians coached sailors in Russia, Latvia and Shanghai.
“The EU has not managed to set up a common European system to bring migrants legally into Europe, and it may never do so,” the CER conceded in its advice to EU leaders. “A more realistic way for the EU to get involved would be for it to support the implementation of bilateral projects between member states and third countries, with a focus on medium-skilled migration.”
Right now, though, one of Europeans’ biggest problems with immigration is this: whether dealing with asylum seekers or university graduates, the discussion here is poisoned and nobody can really talk about it in any constructive way.
“Talking about immigration never pays politically,” Papademetriou says. “In some sense, New Zealand is protected from this disease that afflicts Europe and the US and also has a foothold in Australia. It’s also a big issue in the UK and has divided the country there.”
After the Schengen crisis, migration became such a hot political potato, says Mortera-Martinez. “So now, if you’re a politician here, you’re either going to trash migrants for your own ends or, if you are more moderate, you’ll dodge the question altogether.
“In Europe at the moment, it doesn’t pay politically to openly explain the benefits of migration. Migration is either portrayed in a negative way or it’s not talked about at all.” l