The global movement of people, capital and labour has become increasingly intensive, particularly since the fall of the Communist regimes. People emigrate to the West in search of work, but work is also emigrating from the West in search of cheap and increasingly qualified labour. Nowadays it is not merely manufacturing jobs which are being moved. All activity which can be packaged digitally is becoming globally “tradable”.

Migration is an increasingly important and controversial phenomenon, as it affects people’s lives so fundamentally. The homogeneity of the nation states is disappearing; their ability to draw boundaries is being reduced. If jobs disappear, are new, better or in any case equivalent jobs being created? If skills become subject to global competition, does this mean that salaries will fall in the West through a process of evening-out? What consequences will there be for the labour market if immigration continues to countries with relatively high unemployment? Do immigrants take jobs from the majority population, or do they burden the social protection network, or are both these fears essentially groundless? And what is it like for the countries exporting labour – is this a brain drain or a long-term brain gain?

Almost everyone has a view on questions such as these, explicit or otherwise. Nevertheless the phenomena are empirically little-known, and need to be studied. This is the intention of the project “The migration of workers and work”.

Project start: Autumn 2008.