EMN National Contact Point in Ireland, holding current EU presidency, organised a conference focused on labour migration entitled Migration during and after the economic crisis taking place in Dublin on June 14, 2013.
Presenting experts from various EU countries as well as international organisations and institutions shed more light on the impact of the economic crisis on migrants, migration, and migration policies in Ireland, Europe and the international context.
Many of the presentations analysed whether and, if so, how migration affects countries of destination during the economic crisis. The crisis caused irregular migration, temporary labour migration, and family migration to decrease. Furthermore, the crisis resulted in a higher proportion of women providing for their families. As for the return migration, mostly highly qualified migrants returned back to their country of origin. Some countries established quotas during the crisis. From the economic point of view, the immigration had a positive influence on the GDP and employment in the crisis. As the social security has not always been accessible for the third-country nationals, they are not prone to abuse it. It has not been proven that an increase in social security benefits or unemployment allowances motivates migrants to higher immigration into their destination countries.
Conference programme and presentations are available on Irish EMN NCP website.