Governance and Societies

India hosts millions of economic migrants from neighboring countries, especially Nepal and Bangladesh. It is also a haven for large refugee communities from Tibet or Sri Lanka. In the past years, India’s dynamic economic growth has brought in new types of migrants: young European graduates, entrepreneurs and highly skilled Indian migrants returning home.

This paper investigates the role given to economic actors in the definition of migration policies in France. In the early 2000s, Nicolas Sarkozy advocated for a policy of “chosen immigration” (“immigration choisie”) whose objective, amongst others, was to attract migrants with skills and expertise needed by the French economy. This policy catered directly to the needs of the business sector, and yet, companies participated only marginally to public debates, and their opinion on the issue is little known.

The second half of the XXth century is a unique stage in the history of Brazilian migrations: the attractiveness of Brazil as a country of immigration declines, due to economic hardships and a shift in public perceptions of migrants, who are increasingly framed as a security liability.

The discovery of petroleum wealth in the middle of the last century completely reconfigured the political economy of Qatar. Small local population size and low levels of labor force participation pushed Qatar to seek alternate sources of labor to meet burgeoning labor demands.

The " Swedish Model " of labor immigration management came to a turning point with the 2008 reform. This major reform consisted in a deregulation of the labor market, which until then had only opened a limited number of positions to migrants. However, what consequences can be expected from such a political shift: the benefits of a productive competitiveness or the threat of exploitation and social dumping?

The Arab Gulf is the third largest receiving region for global migrants (after North America and the European Union). The six states of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) are the richest Arab economies, boast some of the highest GDP per capita rankings in the world, and they all depend upon guest workers in virtually every economic sector. Guest workers have played an integral role in the Gulf since the 1970s, supplying the skills and manpower needed to implement ambitious development plans.

By the end of 2004, low migration flow regulation contributed to a high rate of irregularity and hampered adaptation of foreign labor supplies to the demands of the Spanish labor market, contributing therewith to an increase in irregular workers. The remarkable change came with the change of government in March 2004 and with the approval of the Royal Decree 2393/2004 which established a complex system for managing immigration and was accompanied by the sixth and final regularization process, driven by government, business, and employer organizations in the framework of the Social Dialogue.

In the past 2 years, Greece has experienced its most severe economic crisis of the post-World War II period. While it appeared at first not to have been hit particularly hard by the global economic recession that started in 2008, the effects of the recession and the acute internal crisis of public finances became visible in late 2009.

While public opinion and European governments usually present migrants as an outside threat for European societies, in this article, Danièle Joly and Khursheed Wadia focus on the local level to analyze the issue of migrants, in particular irregular workers, living in the UK.