The global financial crisis has shifted the patterns of global migration, with migrants in the Western Hemisphere increasingly avoiding the United States for the emerging South American democracies and migrants in Europe flocking to Germany. In an email interview, Stephen Castles, a specialist in international migration at the University of Sydney, discussed changing global migration patterns.
WPR: What impact has the global financial crisis had on global migration patterns?
Stephen Castles: The sharp fall in migration predicted by some experts in 2008 and 2009 did not materialize. Stocks of migrants overall have not declined and have indeed begun to increase again. Remittances, the money sent home by migrants, fell in 2008 and 2009, but are now increasing again. One of the key findings is thus the unexpected degree of resilience of migrant employment. Although migrant workers did play a “buffering role in the labor market,” as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put it in 2010, they also continued to be a key part of destination-country economies, with migrant employment actually growing in some countries during the crisis.