Trade - Off Between Number Of Migrants And The Rights That The Host States Are Providing

Trade - off between number of migrants and the rights that the host states are providing.

To start, it should be mentioned that the authors advances the neoclassical argument, putting large emphasize on the wage differences between migrant sending and migrant receiving countries. Their argument draws on the liberal framework and indicates the positive character of the open-borders. Namely, they point out that the migration has “win-win-win” outcome (p.249). Firstly, the migrant receiving countries benefit from additional workers, which in turn increases economic output. Second, the migrant sending countries benefit by remittances – money that migrants send home – and the better skilled returning workers. And finally, migrants’ gains are higher wages and better rights compared to their own country. However, their major claim, as was already mentioned in the introduction, is that there is an inverse relationship between increased rights and the number of labor migrants. The article does not suggest the solution to this problem. It rather aims to investigate this relationship and provides a possible explanation. Hence, in the next few paragraphs this paper will provide a short summary of the authors’ theory.

To proceed, the article distinguishes three main actors (state, employer, and migrants), which have the impact on the migration policy that the host countries will pursue.