Professor To Research Europe’s Immigration Issues

Waikato Professor To Research Europe’s Thorny Immigration Issues

An internationally acknowledged expert on the economics of immigration from the University of Waikato is to co-lead a $4.5 million international research project looking at the impacts of immigrant diversity in Europe.

Professor Jacques Poot of the Population Studies Centre will spend three months each year over the next four years at VU University in the Netherlands, which is coordinating the Migrant Diversity and Regional Disparity in Europe research project.

He will be working with researchers from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland and Estonia to assess how the scale and diversity of migrant populations in Europe affect socioeconomic outcomes.

“We’re aiming to get a better understanding of how cross-border population flows into, within and out of Europe affect regional socioeconomic development and disparity,” says Professor Poot. “The results may help design the social safety net, the education system and taxation structure in an efficient and just way in the presence of increasing streams of diverse migrants in Europe.”

Professor Poot says migrant diversity can increase productivity in the host economy, as workers from different cultural backgrounds bring with them different skills, problem-solving abilities ideas and aspirations. But too much diversity brings its own problems. “It can make communication more difficult and lower the trust between the different groups, and so reduce productivity.”

His research group is one of just 12 selected out of 240 to receive funding from the European research funding body, NORFACE, to study immigration in Europe.

Professor Poot says the foreign-born population has grown faster in Europe than in any other part of the world, from some 22 million in 1980 to more than 60 million today. “Unlike in New Zealand, where the causes and consequences of immigration have for many years been well-researched, European countries have up until recently paid little attention to the longer term consequences of permanent immigration. That’s resulted in quite ambivalent if not outright hostile attitudes among the host populations.

“Through research projects like ours, NORFACE aims to provide solid data for policy-makers to improve the balance in migration flows with respect to skills, entrepreneurship, family reunification and international obligations.”

Professor Poot heads to London later this month for the first meeting of the leaders of all twelve projects, hosted by the Centre of Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London.

For more information on the project visit www.norface-migration.org

ENDS

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