Managing Population Movements

In the last decade of the 20th century, political, economic, and social changes together with conflicts and globalization induced stronger labor and human mobility in the region of the South East Europe during the first decade of the 21st century. Current financial and economic crises caused a major decline in migration and resulted in significant unemployment among immigrants in OECD countries. These developments have had positive and negative implications for both origin and destination countries. In order to maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative impact, states need to engage in migration management, negotiating relations between origin and destination countries, even regionally. Decolonization and the latest wave of industrialization in most developing countries coincided with the first significant immigration into Europe during the 1960s, resulting in a strong demand for unskilled labor. A growing worldwide urbanization, an unprecedented rise in population, and a widening of the global divide between the North and South, particularly the quality of life, triggered new migration of poorer peoples from the South.