The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia

This book seeks to enhance the understanding of migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), and to propose policy solutions to better leverage its benefits and reduce its costs for all parties involved. It examines migration in the region in its diverse forms including forced and economic migration, low-skilled and high-skilled labor mobility, and temporary and permanent moves across borders. It analyzes these policy issues from the perspective of migrants, countries of origin, and destination countries. It shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity for all actors involved and helped address some of the large demographic and socio-economic disparities in the region. It also argues, however, that there is scope to increase the net gains from migration and to distribute them more equally among all actors involved. To do so, it utilizes a combination of existing evidence and new analysis carried out for the preparation of this book. Based on this evidence, the book proposes a set of policy recommendations tailored to the diversity of migration challenges and experiences in ECA. It argues that policy responses tailored to the specific challenge they aim to address can ensure greater and better distributed welfare gains from migration among origin countries, destination countries and migrants. While some of these policies can be taken unilaterally by either origin or destination countries, others require close coordination between the two, or even at the regional level. Some of these policies can be implemented rapidly in the short run, while others require more substantial institutional reforms but can yield large returns in the medium to long run. While this book focuses on Europe and Central Asia, the great diversity of migration patterns, experiences, and challenges in the region makes its policy lessons relevant on a global scale.