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Intra-EU Migration: Legal and Economic View on Jobseekers’ Welfare Rights

Journal of International Migration and Integration volume 18, pages 917–936 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

International migration influences economies of both the home and the host country. Some countries perceive immigration as a threat and consider limitations to their social security system to protect the domestic economy. Within the European Union, both the economic and the legal side of the issue must be taken into account. The paper presents an empirical analysis of natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates in EU15 countries and discusses a possible use of the findings in intra-EU migration policy. Using Labour Force Survey Data for 2012, we estimate a series of logistic regressions in order to compare the immigrant/native unemployment rates, considering the differences in the structure of both subpopulations (in terms of age, sex, education and types of jobs). We conclude that a substantial part of the gap between natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates can be explained by these additional characteristics in most of the EU15 countries.

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Notes

  1. We used yearly, rather than quarterly, data files, since the availability of some variables is limited in the latter; for instance, the ISCOPR1D variable used in our analyses is limited to those who have lost their job within the past 12 months in quarterly data files, with the same limit being 8 years in yearly data (Eurostat 2013b, p. 83).

  2. In AT data, wave 1, only 7.65 % of all EU migrants are the newcomers, i.e. residing in the host country for less than a year. Such a number cannot be ascertained for the remaining countries, as other countries’ data do not contain either wave 1 or data on the length of residence in the host country.

  3. We exclude the inactive from our analysis, as we want to focus on jobseekers, the most problematic group from the legal standpoint. Moreover, unlike with the unemployment rates, the non-active (= inactive + jobseeker) percentages are in fact lower for the migrant population, by approx. 9 percentage points on average (ICF GHK 2013, p. 18).

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of the research projects of the Faculty of Finance and Accounting (IP100040) and the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics (IP400040), University of Economics, Prague, institutionally supported by the University of Economics, Prague. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Finance, University of Economics, Prague, W. Churchill Sq. 4, 13067, Prague 3, Czech Republic

    Jana Tepperová

  2. Department of Econometrics, University of Economics, Prague, W. Churchill Sq. 4, 13067, Prague 3, Czech Republic

    Jan Zouhar

  3. Chair of Social Security Law and Civil Law, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Fürstengraben 1, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Florian Wilksch

Authors
  1. Jana Tepperová
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Correspondence to Jana Tepperová.

Appendix

Appendix

A Regression Results – Numeric Output

Numeric results obtained from the regressions are presented in Tables 4 and 5.

Table 4 APEs of the migrant indicator – country-of-birth definition
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Table 5 APEs of the migrant indicator – nationality definition
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Tepperová, J., Zouhar, J. & Wilksch, F. Intra-EU Migration: Legal and Economic View on Jobseekers’ Welfare Rights. Int. Migration & Integration 18, 917–936 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-016-0509-6

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