Core-Periphery Inequalities in Liberal Migration Regimes: A Comparative Political Economy Approach

Abstract

This article examines epistemic imbalances in the EU migration literature and their connection to socioeconomic inequalities. While scholarship has largely focused on immigration to EU core countries, emigration—particularly from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)— remains underexplored. Through a meta-review of 1563 CEE-focused migration studies (2007–2022) and 9801 studies on EU core countries, the article identifies knowledge silos and academic regionalism as two key challenges. It argues that these structural imbalances hinder comprehensive analyses of migration's socioeconomic effects and policy responses to them. To address this, the article advances a Comparative Political Economy lens to show how the varying structure of interdependent national economies shape these effects and how governments introduce policies to respond to them. It is applied to a case study of Poland's PiS government (2015–2023) to illustrate how peripheral countries can navigate the unequal effects of liberal migration regimes. The findings underscore the need for integrated, cross-regional and transdisciplinary approaches to account for the interdependence between core and peripheral countries in explaining socioeconomic effects of international migration.