Covid-19: decline in immigration will reinforce deterioration of our economy

In 2020, the num­ber of first-time res­id­ent visas issued in France (220,535) decreased by 20.5% com­pared to 2019. Immig­ra­tion to re-join fam­ily remains the main reas­on for visas being gran­ted (75,245), although the total has decreased by 16.9%. There are few­er for­eign stu­dents (71,900, down 20.4%) and eco­nom­ic immig­rants (26,950*) is the group most affected by the Cov­id-19 crisis with a 31% decrease. What are the con­sequences of this downturn?

If the down­turn recov­ers, the effects will be fairly lim­ited, par­tic­u­larly in com­par­is­on with oth­er dis­asters caused by the pan­dem­ic. How­ever, if there are last­ing restric­tions on inter­na­tion­al mobil­ity – due to health-related causes or a paradigm shift lead­ing to soci­et­ies clos­ing them­selves off – the effects will be very neg­at­ive for the eco­nomy. Our empir­ic­al work with Ekrame Boubtane and Dramane Coulibaly shows that a fall in inter­na­tion­al migra­tion reduces per cap­ita income, increases unem­ploy­ment, wor­sens the bal­ance of pub­lic fin­ances and con­trib­utes to the growth of cer­tain inequalities. 

When we break­down the reas­ons for admis­sion that you men­tion, it makes it pos­sible to cla­ri­fy this over­all ana­lys­is. Half of the non-EU nation­als enter­ing France each year are admit­ted so that they may join their fam­ily (spouses of French nation­als or for­eign­ers). The decrease in this inward flow con­sti­tutes a loss of well-being for the house­holds con­cerned and a breach of the right to live with one’s fam­ily. At the begin­ning of the crisis, there was a dif­fer­ence in treat­ment between French nation­als abroad wish­ing to return to France and for­eign­ers wish­ing to join their fam­il­ies leg­ally resid­ing in France.

A quarter of non-EU nation­als enter­ing France each year are admit­ted for study pur­poses. The decline in the num­ber of inter­na­tion­al stu­dents rep­res­ents a reduc­tion in oppor­tun­it­ies to acquire skills; in addi­tion to the per­son­al effects, this will have con­sequences for the devel­op­ment of coun­tries in the South, whose youth will be less well trained.

Labour migra­tion is in the minor­ity, account­ing for 10%. Nev­er­the­less, it is essen­tial because it makes the labour mar­ket more flu­id and fills jobs that would oth­er­wise remain vacant. Immig­rants are over-rep­res­en­ted in sec­tors that have dif­fi­culty hir­ing such as con­struc­tion, cater­ing, per­son­al care and ser­vices, secur­ity guards and agri­cul­ture (which depends on for­eign sea­son­al work­ers). We saw this in Spring, dur­ing the first lock­down, with the call to help farm­ers in France. The eco­nomy is simply less pro­duct­ive when these jobs are not filled.

Assess­ing the effects of immig­ra­tion should not be lim­ited to microe­co­nom­ic approaches as there are many extern­al­it­ies involved.

From an eco­nom­ic point of view, what can be said about the decline in the num­ber of people admit­ted as stu­dents or for fam­ily reasons?

Even when not admit­ted for eco­nom­ic reas­ons, immig­rants can con­trib­ute to the eco­nomy. In an art­icle pub­lished in 2016 in the Annals of Eco­nom­ics and Stat­ist­ics, we even showed that people arriv­ing for fam­ily reas­ons con­trib­ute more than oth­ers. This is explained by the fact that they work, pay taxes and above all con­sume in France. The eval­u­ation of the effects of immig­ra­tion should not be lim­ited to microe­co­nom­ic approaches because much of the big­ger pic­ture is at stake. 

As far as stu­dents are con­cerned, some of them stay in France after their stud­ies and thus con­sti­tute the qual­i­fied immig­ra­tion that gov­ern­ments want and that too many immig­ra­tion ana­lysts refuse to see, repeat­ing tire­lessly that immig­ra­tion to France is not qual­i­fied. The stakes are high: one study showed that for­eign stu­dents in the US were more likely than US stu­dents to file for a pat­ent. In sup­port of these stat­ist­ics, there are many anec­dotes and without going back to Mar­ie Curie, we can men­tion Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sah­in (BioNTech’s mes­sen­ger RNA vac­cine) in Ger­many or Sergey Brin (Google) in the US.

Are there areas of com­pet­i­tion for cer­tain jobs between French, Europeans and non-EU citizens? 

There is com­pet­i­tion for skills from non-EU coun­tries and EU coun­tries, espe­cially East­ern European coun­tries. Nearly 80,000 people from EU coun­tries came to France in 2017; this is five times less than Ger­many and, rel­at­ive to the French work­ing pop­u­la­tion, these low flows are insuf­fi­cient to meet eco­nom­ic needs. Indeed, France massively employs seconded work­ers – more than 240,000 people in 2017, i.e. three times more than ten years ago – who do not come under the head­ing of immig­ra­tion because they come in the con­text of a one-off mis­sion, but who gen­er­ate scan­dal­ous social dump­ing. These unfilled needs of the French eco­nomy also reveal that the edu­ca­tion­al offer in France does not fully cor­res­pond to the coun­try’s needs. 

What are the con­sequences of Brexit on the UK eco­nomy and labour market?

Immig­ra­tion to the UK has not decreased in recent years, but it has increased less than emig­ra­tion. The bal­ance of the two has been fall­ing stead­ily since 2016. And as much as immig­ra­tion is good for a coun­try’s activ­ity and employ­ment, emig­ra­tion has the oppos­ite effect. This devel­op­ment is there­fore reces­sion­ary for the UK. 

Interview by Clément Boulle

*The bal­ance includes immig­ra­tion for human­it­ari­an reas­ons (32,080, down 15.3%) and immig­ra­tion for oth­er reaso