Different Dimensions of Diversity across Europe / Aspekte von Diversität im Prozess der Europäisierung
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: The two papers in this volume stress different aspects of diversity, made possible by “Europe and Europeiasation,” the central concepts of this forost project phase. The papers constitute evidence on that diversity incurs both benefits and risks for a society. Frensch and Gaucaite-Wittich stress the benefits of diversity, in as much as an increasing variety of products, available in an economy by way of trade, will result in higher growth. Dietz, however, demonstrates that the diversity of migration patterns may well be perceived as risk and chance on the receiving side, implying concerted action aiming at common migration regulations to benefit from the inflow of people.\n\nThe first paper tackles the issue of direct measurement of the state of technology by trade-based measures of product variety. A trade-based count measure of the variety of available capital goods, defined over an expanded product space allowing for product differentiation by country of origin, is indeed found to behave “as if” it represented technology when change of technology is understood as a learning process. Variety measures of available primary and intermediate inputs do not behave this way. Based on available capital goods variety estimations, there is conditional technological convergence among a panel of mostly OECD and transition countries.\n\nExtending the analysis to allow for transitional reforms to influence technological convergence shows that banking reforms exert a positive and significant effect on the speed of technological convergence.\n\nIn focussing on the migration policy challenges at the new Eastern borders of the enlarged European Union, the second paper of this report analyses the determinants, patterns and dimensions of recent migrations between the Ukraine and European Union member states. Concerning the choice of destination regions, the study reveals an increasing regional diversity in the movements between the Ukraine and European Union countries since the end of the 1990ies. Whereas high income differences and a lack of job opportunities in the sending country trigger these movements in general, they are additionally based on traditional migration patterns and network relations in states such as Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech and the Slovak Republic. In other countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, labour migrations from the Ukraine have developed in the absence of networks, cultural and political ties. In these cases, the demand for lowskilled labour in segmented markets, particularly in the nontraded goods sectors of the economy seems to have supported the movement of Ukrainian labour migrants. Although a considerable part of these movements are expected to be temporary or circular, European Union countries face a potentially substantial labour migration from the Ukraine, further diversifying their immigrant populations. As the number of Ukrainian citizens willing to enter the European Union will almost certainly exceed the legal opportunities currently in force, illegal migrations are likely to occur. Although the European Union has undertaken some efforts to develop common migration regulations, many of the proposed policy measurements are still indeterminate,´particularly in the case of low-skilled labour movements.
Authors: Barbara Dietz, Richard Frensch
Language: German
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: UNICEF
OpenAlex ID: W2344362982