Recession and its effects on immigrants

Abstrakti

Confronted with the very severe economic crisis in decades and rising unemployment, governments in locations across the globe embraced a range of policies to for example suppress the infl ow of migrants and encourage their departure. The United Kingdom has tightened admission requirements. One policy response has been the “pay-to-go” schemes that encourage unemployed migrants to return home. Spain and the Czech Republic are offering economic incentives such as a paid one-way ticket home and lump sum payments typically pegged to unemployment insurance benefi ts in exchange for migrants’ promise to leave the country for some period of time or even indefi nitely. In Czech Republic the policy is targeted largely at Vietnamese and Mongolian contract workers who have lost their jobs. This is a sharp contrast to the Spanish programme which is targeted at settled immigrants.