Do migration policies affect whether immigrants contribute more to public finances than they receive as transfer payments? Yes. But simply accumulating the annual fiscal transfers to and fiscal contributions by migrants is not sufficient to identify the policy impact and the potential need for...

Comprehensive and coordinated action across levels of government responsible for different policy domains (labour, education, housing and welfare/health) as well as across local actors is crucial to migrant integration. To respond to this need for co-ordination, different policy instruments are...

As migration flows to developed countries have increased in recent decades, so have the number of countries from which migrants arrive. Thus, it is increasingly important to consider what role differences in culture and language play in migration decisions. Recent work shows that culture and...

Restricting immigration to young and skilled immigrants using a point system, as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, succeeds in selecting economically desirable immigrants and provides orderly management of population growth. But the point system cannot fix short-term skilled labor shortages...

Who pays for immigration control? According to the Lisbon Treaty the cost of enforcing the European border against illegal immigration shall be shared among the EU members. Nonetheless, the Treaty is vague with respect to the “appropriate measures” to adopt in order to distribute the...

Although South-South migrants face much of the same discrimination and integration challenges as their South-North counterparts, South-South flows need to be analysed from a different standpoint. An investigation of immigrant experience in West Africa, with particular focus on Ghana, shows that...

Most developed countries have foreign aid programs that aim to alleviate poverty and foster economic growth in less developed countries, but with very limited success. A large body of evidence indicates that the root of the economic development problem is cross-country differences in the...

The majority of immigrants stay only temporarily in the host country. When many migrations are temporary, it is important to know who leaves and who stays, and why. The key questions for the host country are whether immigrants are net contributors to the welfare system and whether migrants...

About a billion people worldwide live and work outside their country of birth or outside their region of birth within their own country. Labor migration is conventionally viewed as economically benefiting the family members who are left behind through remittances. However, splitting up families...

We study the determinants of the willingness to acquire citizenship of Latvia by ‘non-citizens’ – the former Soviet migrants and their descendants born on the territory of Latvia. The country of Latvia serves as an instructive laboratory for the analysis of naturalisations: due to the...