Migration and Labour Mobility in an Enlarged European Union

How many will come? Thousands, millions? Does Europe need a New Iron Cuitain? These questions dominate the origoing negotiations of the East Enlargements of the European Union (EU) Western Europeans are afraid of being overflowed by cheap(er) eastern European labourers. It is feared that the removal of barriers to migration would lead to a mass exodus from eastern to western Europe. In this article. I draw a parallel between the southerly enlargement of the EU and the EU east enlargement with respect to migration. Then, I undertake an econometric estimate of South-North migration flows and assume that the estimated parameter are of exemplary significance for the eastern enlargement of the EU. As a result of some simulation exercises my calculations advocate that rather modest immigrant flows from Eastern Europe have to be expected in the EU, in free mobility of labour was allowed today. This paper is part of the HWWA rescearch programme "International mobility of Firms and Workers"

The Turkish economy: A winner of the Euro crisis?

While Turkey has opened up for trade, and export orientation has been seen as an important tool for development, foreign direct investments (FDI) have lagged behind. Turkey has not attracted a lot of FDI. Less than one billion US-$FDI came to Turkey per year before 2000. In the last decade, FDI to Turkey has risen sharply to a peak of about 22 billion US-$ in 2007 but with a significant decrease since (as a consequence of the worldwide international financial crisis). --

Is Turkey still an emigration country?

Located at the geographical intersection between East and West, with both Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts, Turkey was always a country with large movements of people. There were several waves of forced (ethnic) movement of people as a consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the following nation-building process in the Turkish neighborhood. In the post-Second world war period, Turkey became a country of emigration. In 1961 a bilateral agreement on labor recruitment between Turkey and Germany had been signed. In the following years, similar bilateral agreements were reached with a couple of other European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherland and Sweden). Nowadays, things have changed. Turkey is still a country of emigration. But it has also become a country of immigration and transit. And therefore, it faces similar challenges of migration and integration that are characteristic for areas with strong cross-cultural movements of people. In this paper, we concentrate on the emigration flows. --

The Turkish economy in a regional perspective

The end of the Cold War changed the political landscape of the Black Sea area and the Middle East completely: In the North-East, the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by the nascence of new sovereign nation states - with all the problems of nation building and all the costs of going through a fundamental economic and social transformation from communist systems to market oriented economies. In the West, the European Union (EU) widened geographically and deepened structurally, increasing the number of full members from 12 to 15 (1995) to 25 (2004) and finally to 27 (2007). Furthermore a European Monetary Union with a common currency for 16 members was established. Finally, the South-East - disturbed by political crisis and wars - has become more important as a supplier of energy (i.e. gas and oil) not only for the area itself but even more for Europe and other world regions. --

Turkey's globalizing economy

The end of the Cold War has been a catalyst for Turkish economic relations with its neighbors. Turkey moved from the periphery to the center of a region that is transforming politically, socially and economically very fast. It is now surrounded by 13 sovereign nation states, which are more or less open to international trade and factor movements. All these new nation states have become potential partners for all kinds of economic activities. Due to their proximity, they are easily accessible markets for Turkish exports of goods or for imports of energy. Furthermore, they could provide the Turkish economy with cheap labor force - either as migrants to Turkey or as workers for Turkish plants to be established in the neighborhood. --

Turkey: Change from an emigration to an immigration and now to a transit migration country

In the post Second World War period Turkey was an emigration country for a long time. But things have changed since. After the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, immigration from the neighborhood to Turkey increased substantially. A lively cross-border movement with the countries of the former Soviet Union, but also with the Middle East countries (i.e. especially Iran), has occurred. On the other hand, Western European countries have become extremely reluctant to open up their borders to Turkish migrants. As a consequence, Turkey is a country of emigration, immigration and transit, nowadays. In this paper, we concentrate on immigration and transit migration. --

The Turkish economy after the global economic crisis

The Turkish economy has gone thru a fast and strong change in recent years. Three dimensions are of special significance: 1. Firstly, the Turkish economy has grown very quickly, with three severe recessions in 1994, 2000/1 and 2009. 2. Secondly, it has opened up rapidly but is still not that open as other economies with a similar level of development. 3. Thirdly, private business has increased but state enterprises or publicly owned and run firms are still important. --

Numerical Optimization of Eigenvalues of the Dirichlet-Laplace Operator on Domains in Surfaces

Let (M,g) be a smooth and complete surface, Ω⊂M$\Omega \subset M$ be a domain in M, and Δ g $\Delta _g$ be the Laplace operator on M. The spectrum of the Dirichlet-Laplace operator on Ω is a sequence 0<λ 1 (Ω)≤λ 2 (Ω)≤⋯↗∞0 < \lambda _1(\Omega ) \le \lambda _2(\Omega ) \le \cdots \nearrow \infty . A classical question is to ask what is the domain Ω * $\Omega ^*$ which minimizes λ m (Ω)$\lambda _m(\Omega )$ among all domains of a given area, and what is the value of the corresponding λ m (Ω m * )$\lambda _m(\Omega _m^*)$ . The aim of this article is to present a numerical algorithm using shape optimization and based on the finite element method to find an approximation of a candidate for Ω m * $\Omega _m^*$ . Some verifications with existing numerical results are carried out for the first eigenvalues of domains in ℝ2. Furthermore, some investigations are presented in the two-dimensional sphere to illustrate the case of the positive curvature, in hyperbolic space for the negative curvature and in a hyperboloid for a non-constant curvatur