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John Salt: “Today’s migrants are the keys to tomorrow’s economic success”

John Salt, migration expert and professor of geography at University College London (UCL), will describe the impacts of migration on employment, health, education and housing at the European Population Conference at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 7 and 8 April 2005. He sums them up here.

Question: While emphasising that there is no such thing as a single type of immigration, but many different kinds of migration, ranging from the search for work to applications for political asylum, you also underline that migrants settle in regions which they believe to be the most prosperous or most favourable, rather than in areas which might actually need a population influx for development purposes. Can this situation be remedied?

John Salt: Economic prospects are the main driving forces behind migration. Australia and Canada have recently tried to channel migration into rural or under-populated regions. However, that does not work in the long term and many migrants do not stay there, but move to the larger cities, like the local population. Loss of population is not just a rural problem. Scotland as a whole is currently losing population and is seeking to attract migrants to counter this.

Question: You point out that migrants, as both producers and consumers of goods, are factors in economic development. Is it possible to quantify the “benefits” they represent for the host countries?

John Salt: The economic impact of the arrival of well-paid, single engineers cannot be compared with that of large migrant families with no schooling or vocational training. However, it is true that migrants can progress very quickly and that some who arrive with only a few personal belongings go on to be successful, although that is clearly not always the case. Attracting the best-trained migrants is now one of the effects of globalisation. However, it is also necessary to prepare for the future: even though educating migrants’ children places a burden on host societies, they will be part of that future.

Question: You describe the main challenges of migration for Europe. What is the situation regarding health, for instance?

John Salt: In several countries, including the United Kingdom, the health service would be unable to operate without foreign doctors and nurses. While that demonstrates their importance, migration as such also poses new challenges like the transmission of diseases related to travel, a phenomenon that was much rarer in the past, and demand for specific types of treatment. Care for the elderly is becoming a major issue. Lastly, of course, it must be remembered that migrants will also grow older and, in a few decades’ time, will require just as much medical care as ageing Europeans. On the whole, for instance, the elderly migrants prefer to be cared for by people from their own cultures.

I hope my report will raise policymakers’ awareness of all these facts. At the same time, there are many areas of economic and social life where too little is known about the role and effects of migration: for instance housing, which needs to be studied much more closely.