A Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU POlicy
- Wolfgang Lieberknecht
- 7. Juni
- 4 Min. Lesezeit
EU, Geopolitics, Migration and Economics
Peo Hansen is professor of political science at REMESO. At REMESO he is the director of the PhD Programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies and the Swedish Research Council’s Graduate School in Migration and Integration.
He has been senior fellow at New York University’s Remarque Institute (2006); visiting professor at the Max Planck Sciences Po Center in Paris (2018); and Simone Veil Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, in Florence (2023, 2025).
He has writte several books (see below) and his work has appeared in journals such as British Journal of Sociology; History of the Present; European Political Science; Globalizations; Journal of Common Market Studies; Mediterranean Quarterly; European Societies; European Journal of Social Theory; Interventions; Race & Class; SAIS Europe Journal of Global Affairs; and Journal of Historical Sociology. In 2016 he was commissioned by the OECD to write a paper on the EU’s external labour migration policy (OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, 2016).
A Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU POlicy
Hansen, Peo
Linköping University, Department of Culture and Society, Division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO). Linköping University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Linköping University, REMESO - Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0497-473X
2021 (English)Book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
The widely accepted narrative that refugees admitted to the European Union constitute a fiscal burden is based on a seemingly neutral accounting exercise, in which migrants contribute less in tax than they receive in welfare assistance. A “fact” that justifies increasingly restrictive asylum policies.
In this book Peo Hansen shows that this consensual cost-perspective on migration is built on a flawed economic conception of the orthodox “sound finance” doctrine prevalent in migration research and policy. By shifting perspective to examinemigration through the macroeconomic lens offered by Modern Monetary Theory, Hansen is able to demonstrate sound finance’s detrimental impact on migration policy and research, including its role in stoking the toxic debate on migration in the EU. Most importantly, Hansen’s undertaking offers the tools with which both migration research and migration policy could be modernized and put on a realistic footing.
In addition to a searing analysis of EU migration policy and politics, Hansen also investigates the case of Sweden, the country that has received the most refugees in the EU in proportion to population. Hansen demonstrates how Sweden’s increased refugee spending in 2015–2017 proved to be fiscally risk-free and how the injection of funds to cash-strapped and depopulating municipalities, which received refugees, boosted economic growth and investment in welfare. Spending on refugees became a way of rediscovering the viability of welfare for all. Given that the Swedish approach to the 2015 refugee crisis has since been discarded and deemed fiscally unsustainable, Hansen’s aim is to reveal its positive effects and its applicability as a model for the EU as a whole.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing , 2021. , p. 238
Migration and Economics
He has written extensively on the EU’s migration policy and the related issues of citizenship, migrant integration and identity. This includes a particular focus on the economics and political economy of migration in the EU. Here, he develops an alternative to the dominant orthodox economics approach and its focus on the fiscal impact of migration and refugee reception. By examining migration through the macroeconomic lens offered by modern monetary theory (MMT), Hansen not only demonstrate orthodoxy’s detrimental impact on migration policy and research.
His work also shows why MMT offers the tools with which both migration research and migration policy could be modernized and put on a realistic footing. Such a realism would include an appreciation of migrants’ significant real resource contributions to societies in the EU, in general, and low-paid migrants’ over-representation in essential work and other important welfare state functions, in particular. Real resource realism, as Hansen’s recent award-winning book, A Modern Migration Theory, argues, thus challenges the prevalent orthodox assumption that there is a trade-off between refugee and low-skilled migration and the fiscal sustainability of the welfare state.
Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU Policy
Created: 20 April 2021
Today both researchers and policy-makers agree that refugees admitted to the European Union constitute a net cost and fiscal burden for the receiving societies.
In this lecture, Peo Hansen shows that this consensual cost-perspective on migration is built on a flawed economic conception of the orthodox “sound finance” doctrine prevalent in migration research and policy. By shifting perspective to examine migration through the macroeconomic lens offered by Modern Monetary Theory, Hansen is able to demonstrate sound finance’s detrimental impact on migration policy and research, including its role in stoking the toxic debate on migration in the EU. Most importantly, this undertaking offers the tools with which both migration research and migration policy could be modernized and put on a realistic footing. Investigating the case of Sweden, Hansen demonstrates how Sweden’s increased refugee spending in 2015–2017 proved to be fiscally risk-free and how the injection of funds to cash-strapped and depopulating municipalities, which received refugees, boosted economic growth and investment in welfare. Hansen’s aim is to reveal its applicability as a model for the EU as a whole.
About this book
2023 EUSA Book Award - Honorable Mention
Current migration policy is based on a seemingly neutral accounting exercise, in which migrants contribute less in tax than they receive in welfare assistance. A "fact" that justifies increasingly restrictive asylum policies. Peo Hansen shows that this consensual cost-perspective on migration is built on a flawed economic conception of the orthodox "sound finance" doctrine prevalent in migration research and policy. By examining migration through the macroeconomic lens offered by modern monetary theory, Hansen is able to demonstrate sound finance's detrimental impact on migration policy and research, including its role in stoking the toxic debate on migration in the European Union. More importantly, Hansen's undertaking offers the tools with which both migration research and migration policy could be modernized and put on a realistic footing.
Read less
Kommentare