Migration – Challenges and Opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe with special regard to Hungary
IV. Migration policy dilemmas
Not only in the illegal, but also in legal foreign employment do those sectors seem to have become important recently, which are traditionally dominated by migrant workers. As seen from Figure 1 in the Appendix, shares of construction and trade, tourism and hospitality have increased to a significant extent among those foreign employees who have work permits. Although the proportion of agriculture is not large, in some years it seems slightly higher than in the whole employment14.
When considering whether additional labour would be needed in the future, it is important to look at those main segments of the labour market where migrants are overrepresented. One could conclude from
14 It has to be noticed, however, that in the case of agriculture, it can be assumed that share of work per-mits depend to a large extent on the legal framework. Due to seasonal nature of the work in the sector, if procedures to acquire work permits are simple and the control is strict, this could lead to a higher share.
the aforementioned dominant sectors that it is mainly the bottom end of the labour market where most migrants are present (health and edu-cation as well as telecommuniedu-cation sectors have a low share).
In order to elaborate a sound migration policy, it is also important to assess the impacts of immigrants’ employment on the labour market and the economy as a whole. Literature on migration and experts’ opinion vary concerning this topic, they are sometimes even contradictory. There seems to be, however, a consensus that migration has important impacts on economic efficiency and distribution, which is manifested itself for example in its effects on national income and distribution among non-migrants (i.e. income per capita, economic growth, structural change, in-equality, poverty rates, etc.). Migration could also affect national labour market for example through wage level, unemployment, labour market segmentation, etc. At the same time, some empirical labour economists say that the impacts of immigration on local workers are minor or in-significant. According to other experts, however, “labour immigration has the potential to adversely affect wage and employment outcomes of some competing local workers in the short run”15. Indeed, also in Hun-gary the main question is whether migration is playing a complementary or rather a competing role. As regards illegal foreign work, according to survey results (mentioned above), its complementary character seems dominant. Those multinational companies, which are present in Hun-gary, attract also quite considerable foreign labour due to some labour shortage in that region, and lack of skilled workers. In these cases also complementary nature of foreign work seems to prevail.
The aforementioned conflicting views show how important it is to get a complex picture about the role of migration. Therefore it should be investigated whether and how labour and migration policy are inter-related and their changes within the context of the given economic situ-ation. It is evident that various types of migrants have different roles as well as economic and social impacts in the host country. For exam-ple, problems related with long-term migration are to be clearly distin-guished from those of temporary migrants. In addition, various cat-egories of foreign workers should also be treated in a different way (for
15 See: World Migration Report, 2005, p. 206. It refers to Borjas (2003), when mentioning this statement
example, labour inflow, connected with the presence of multinational companies on the one hand and seasonal migrants on the other).
It is clear that Hungary should also cope with those migration pol-icy dilemmas, which are generally acknowledged as being the most important ones. Therefore the balance between, sometimes conflicting, objectives should be found. They are as follows16:
- Labour market needs;
- Protecting national security;
- Minimizing public expenditure - Promoting social cohesion
- Respecting human rights obligations
- Promoting international development and cooperation
Out of these, it is the first which is most often highlighted in Hun-gary (both in public debates and also among experts). The problem with this is that it is difficult to foresee labour market needs in advance.
Concerning the current policy, however, experts suggest that in order to avoid possible disturbances, labour market monitoring is needed on a permanent basis17.
Recent efforts of harmonising migration policies within the Eu-ropean Union have important implications for the formulation and ap-plication of the Hungarian migration strategy. For example, although in Hungary up till now integration of migrants was not a major concern (due partly to their limited number and partly to the fact that many of the migrants are ethnic Hungarians whose integration has not proved a problem), now an integration policy is being elaborated.
As regards policy against illegal migration, there have been some conflicts among the members of the European Union. The experiences of other regions and countries (including the United States) have al-ready shown, however, (as pointed out by Borjas), that as regards ef-ficient protection against the inflow of illegal migrants, much room for manoeuvre remains in policy-making of the individual countries.
Under the above described circumstances the main dilemma is what kind of migration could help in meeting labour market needs, but avoiding any disturbances or conflicts there. There are several
propos-16 See: World Migration Report, 2005.
17 See Tóth, 2007.
als. One of them18 suggests that Hungary should pursue a more ac-tive migration policy in order to find those foreign workers who have the necessary skills to ease labour shortage in some areas. In order to launch such a policy, a thorough analysis of labour market develop-ments (supply and demand) is needed.
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Appendix
Figure 1.
Source: Central Statistical Office, Budapest