The impact of the Corona-crisis on migration

The webinar addressed possible scenarios of how labour migration might evolve in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Effects distinguished between several groups such as migrant workers prevented from leaving or entering a country because of travel restrictions; migrants becoming unemployed as a result of the recession triggered by anti-COVID 19 measures and irregular migrants living in COVID 19 affected countries. Professor Rainer Münz discussed how past labour shortages witnessed until recently in many countries of destination were to be understood in the context of the simultaneous explosion of unemployment rates and rapid digital transformation of work. He also compared the current situation with related experiences from the financial, public debt and banking crises 2008-2010.

About the speaker:

Rainer Münz was Adviser on Migration and Demography at the European Strategy Policy Centre (EPSC), the in-house think tank advising European Commission President J.C. Juncker during his time in office (2014-2019).  Prior to joining the European Commission, he was the Head of Research and Development at Erste Group, a Central European retail bank headquartered in Vienna. He was Senior Fellow at the European think tank Bruegel (Brussels), the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI, Washington DC). He also worked as a consultant for the European Council, the OECD and the World Bank. Until 2004, Rainer Münz had an academic career as a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and at the Department of Mathematics of Finance/TU Vienna, as well as a tenured university professor at Humboldt University, Berlin.