Foreign Direct Investments and the New Migration Pattern for Europe
Foreign Direct Investments and the New Migration Pattern for Europe

Summary/Abstract: The present paper explores the relationship between Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and immigrant workers. Two different groups of countries are compared: traditional host (United Kingdom, France and Germany) and new host (Spain, Portugal and Ireland) EU Member States, in order to highlight that the actual reasons for the flows of immigrants are the needs of international movements of capital. FDI features are studied along with its stimulating impact, mainly on job generation. A comparative approach is used to evaluate both the demographic situation of each country and the difficulties they face to fulfil the gaps in their labour markets as the diminishing native workforce calls for foreign labour. This article primarily focuses on the “pull” factor. Finally, an econometric dynamic panel model is presented; the empirical evidence indicates that the economic-demographic pull factors in the receiving countries like unemployment rate, the real Gross Domestic Product and the inflows of FDI and the ratio of the economically active population over the total population, are significant variables related to the migration flows in both groups of countries, new and traditional.

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