Why has migration become such a big problem? Many reasons can be
adduced: the war in Syria, the integration of Eastern Europe, lack of
new jobs in many Western countries following the Global Financial Crisis
etc. But listing individual reasons is insufficient to understand it
and think what to do about it.
The origin of the problem, in most
general terms, is twofold: (1) globalization that has made the knowledge
of differences in income between countries much better known and has
reduced the cost of transportation, and (2) large gaps in real incomes
between the European Union (especially its more prosperous North) and
the Middle East and Africa.
The first point is well known. Many
studies show that the more people know about the rest of the world
(especially if that rest of the world is richer than their country) the
more they compare their own standard of living with that of presumed
peers in the richer countries, and the more likely they are to do
something about it: namely, to migrate.
The second point has to do
with the fact that the gap in GDP per capita between the original EU-15
and sub-Saharan Africa has risen from seven to one in 1980 to 11 to one
today. (This is the gap obtained after factoring in the lower price
level in Africa; without it, the gap would be even greater.)
At the same
time as real incomes have become so unbalanced, population growth rates
have become even more so. In 1980, the EU-15 had more people than
sub-Saharan Africa; today, sub-Saharan Africa has twice-and-a-half as
many people.
Within the next two generations, sub-Saharan Africa should
reach 2.5 billion people, five times more than Western Europe. It is
totally unrealistic to think that such large income gaps (in one
direction) and population gaps (in the other) can persist without
generating a very strong migration pressure.
Thus, Europe faces a long-term issue and the following dilemma. As we
just saw, if there is globalization and countries involved in
globalization have highly uneven incomes, there must be migration. You
can stop migration only if you give up on globalization by closing off
national borders, or help emitting countries get as rich as Western
Europe. The latter would obviously take, under the best of
circumstances, at least a century. So, it is not a feasible solution.
What then remains is to shut down globalization, at least when it comes
to the movement of people.
Read more: Migration Into Europe: A Long-Term Solution? • Social Europe
