Discussion paper: Demographic and labour force implications of high immigration events scenarios

• Main Authors: Potančoková, M., Marois, G., González-Leonardo, M.
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: IIASA 2023
• Subjects: Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/18938/; https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/18938/1/D10.1_discussion_paper_forsubmission_31-07-2023-merged-compressed.pdf; http://quantmig.eu/project_outputs/project_reports/

This report summarises the main results and findings from the model-based scenarios of high migration events into the EU+ (EU27, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland). We have tested the impact of several sets of high-migration events potentially occurring during 2025–29, either as an one off shocks lasting one calendar year, or an initial shock followed by persistently persistence in immigration of person from a given region for a decade, albeit of gradually declining volume in each subsequent year higher immigration for a decade following the initial shock. These events were implemented independently for flows from seven different world regions – Other Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, West Asia, South & South-East Asia, and East Asia – into the EU+ countries. The high migration events scenarios are conceived to illustrate and quantify impacts of high migration events into the EU+ countries against the Baseline scenario. As one might expect, the short impact for a duration of a single calendar year does not leave any lasting imprint on future population sizes and structures. Once-in-a-decade events do not generate sufficiently large flows to leave any sizeable imprint on destination populations. High-migration events that persist over time – for example, through family reunifications, migration networks or newly established migration opportunities – can increase the working-age population and labour force sizes in countries with existing diaspora, but mainly when these events arise in the regions of the world with established migration links to the destination country. What our results show, however, is that although population ageing is inevitable the decline in labour force is not. Most, but not all, EU+ countries will face working-age population decline, but the labour force would decline at a lesser pace or may not decline at all once we consider the continuing education expansion and trends in labour force participation.