Suchergebnisse

This is a draft chapter for B. R. Chiswick and P. W. Miller (eds.) Handbook on the Economics of International Migration. It provides an overview of trends and developments in international migration since the industrial revolution. We focus principally on long-distance migration to rich destination countries, the settler economies in the nineteenth century and later the OECD. The chapter describes the structure, direction and determinants of migration flows and the assimilation experience of migrants. It also examines the impact of migration on destination and source countries, and explores the political economy behind the evolution of immigration policy. We provide an historical context for current debates on immigration and immigration policy and we conclude by speculating on future trends.

We examine the labour market experience of the UK and the US in the recessions of the early 1920s and the early 1930s and the subsequent recoveries. These were deep recessions, comparable to that of 2008-9, but the recoveries were very different. In the UK the recovery of the 1920s was incomplete but that of the 1930s was rather less protracted than in the US. By contrast the US experienced very strong recovery in the 1920s but weaker recovery from the much deeper recession of the 1930s. A key ingredient to understanding these patterns is the interaction between economic shocks and labour market institutions. Here we survey the large literature on interwar labour markets to identify the key elements that underpinned labour market performance. We find that developments in wage setting institutions and in unemployment insurance inhibited a return to full employment in interwar Britain while in the US, New Deal legislation impeded labour market adjustment in the 1930s. We conclude with an assessment of the policy responses to labour market crises in the past and in the present.

On 26 August 2001 a Norwegian freighter, the MV Tampa, rescued 433 asylum seekers from their vessel the KM Palapa 1 that was in distress in the stretch of ocean between Christmas Island and the coast of Indonesia. At the insistence of the rescued passengers, the captain of the Tampa asked the Australian government for permission to land them on Christmas Island — a request that was refused. There followed a week-long standoff while the world watched the drama unfold.

On 26 August 2001 a Norwegian freighter, the MV Tampa, rescued 433 asylum seekers from their vessel the KM Palapa 1 that was in distress in the stretch of ocean between Christmas Island and the coast of Indonesia. At the insistence of the rescued passengers, the captain of the Tampa asked the Australian government for permission to land them on Christmas Island — a request that was refused. There followed a week-long standoff while the world watched the drama unfold.

Australia's policies towards asylum seekers hit the headlines when it refused to admit those aboard the Tampa in September 2001. This tough stance and the raft of legislation that followed became known as Australia's "Pacific Solution". It was clearly intended to deter those who might otherwise arrive by sea or by air to claim asylum in Australia. Several other countries toughened their policies after September the 11th 2001. This paper examines the effects of those policies on the subsequent streams of asylum applications by estimating the effects from panel data using a differences-in-differences approach. We find that the post-Tampa effect for Australia was to cut asylum applications by more than half. In other countries such as New Zealand and the UK, negative policy effects are also found but they are somewhat weaker. We conclude that the deterrent effects of policy are greatest not only when tough policies are enforced but when they are also widely publicised.

In his third social survey of York carried out in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree reported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in poverty. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms enacted during and after the war. This article re‐examines the survivingrecords from the 1950 survey, using a revised poverty line and looking more closely at the measurement of income. It also re‐assesses the impact of welfare reforms on working‐class poverty, and finds that poverty in York was significantly higher, and the contribution of welfare reform substantially less, than was originally reported.

This article examines the effects on wages and employment of the minimum wage in agriculture during the interwar period. It finds that the impact of regulation was to raise the wage for agricultural labourers by 13 per cent when it was (re)introduced in 1924, by 15 per cent in the late 1920s, and by more than 20 per cent in the 1930s. The effect on farm employment was to reduce it by about 54,000 (6.5 per cent) in 1929 up to a peak of 97,000 (13.3 per cent) in 1937. The minimum wage lifted out of poverty many families of farm labourers who remained employed, but it significantly lowered the incomes of farmers, particularly during the 1930s.