Migration and mobility

This chapter explores the changing and dynamic migrant reservoir in Europe, specifically looking at the labour market outcome of migrants with an emphasis on youth. Since the end of World War II, Europe has experienced large-scale migration both internally and from the outside of the EU. The descriptive analysis using aggregate country data suggests that even though migration from non-European countries is very substantial, the intra-European flows from Southern and Eastern Europe are non-negligible, with comparable emigration rates and differing trends and composition in the post-war period. The chapter then demonstrates that young migrants from both Eastern and Southern Europe are more likely to be overqualified than young native-born workers. To tackle issues of persisting native–migrant gaps in labour market performance, policies could be geared toward further integration and non-discriminatory treatment of foreign-born residents in the destination labour markets.