And The Flows Go On

People move to places where they can do better. And the shifting economic fortunes of countries within the European Union illustrate that fact dramatically:

Since 2004, when the European Union added eight Eastern European countries, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans have moved west -- mostly to Ireland and the United Kingdom, among the first EU countries to open their borders to workers from the new members. Now, with the Western economies flirting with recession and Eastern Europe flourishing, the wave of immigrants is slowing sharply. Many of the recent arrivals -- half of them, by some estimates -- are heading home.

The shift shows how rapidly some Eastern European economies are catching up to their Western counterparts, as their growth, wages and currencies surge. And it illustrates how a new, nimbler breed of immigrant, aided by discount airfares and technology, can hopscotch across countries to capitalize on economic cycles.

That last sentence is actually pretty striking. This new breed of "footloose' immigrants is obviously going to have a different assimilation profile than the more permanent type of immigrant, a different type of economic impact, and it fundamentally changes the nature of the "contract" between the immigrant and the receiving country.

On a personal note: Blogging has been extremely light in the past few months. I'm in the midst of finishing up the 5th edition of my Labor Economics textbook (and working on several other research projects as well). Blogging is nice and fun, but it has a sizable opportunity cost at this point. Every hour spent blogging is an hour not spent at working on my research projects or finishing my manuscript.