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Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets

Authored by: Çağlar Özden, Mathis Wagner, and Michael Packard

Categories: Statebuilding
Sub-Categories: Economic Participation, Human Development, Migration
Region: No Region
Year: 2018
Citation: Özden, Çağlar, Mathis Wagner, and Michael MicPackard. Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets. Report. 2018.

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Executive Summary

This Policy Research Report is an attempt to address this tension between the academic research and the public discourse by focusing on the economic evidence. It suggests a labor market–oriented, economically motivated rationale to the political opposition to migration. Global migration patterns lead to high concentrations of immigrants in certain places, industries, and occupations. Immigrants are further concentrated in a narrow set of industries and occupations in specific geographic regions. The same pattern repeats itself in almost every major destination country. It is these geographic and labor market concentrations of immigrants that lead to increased anxiety, insecurity, and potentially significant short-term disruptions among native-born workers. Furthermore, the positive effects and benefits in the destination labor markets tend to be more diffuse whereas the costs are more concentrated and easily attributable to immigration.