The Sustainability of EU Labor Immigration in Terms of Poverty Inequalities and Employment

Abstract

The basic feature of developed economies is a high economic growth rate, which creates the preconditions for a high living standard of population based on high incomes from economic activities. Development processes in advanced economies also include changes in demographic development, resulting in population structure changes, as well as labor force structure changes caused by birth rates reduction and life expectancy increase and an aging process. Due to the high standard of living in European developed countries, they are becoming attractive to less developed countries, having a surplus of labor that migrates to work with a vision of increasing living standards and quality of life. The workforce does not always find full employment here in terms of qualifications, leading to social inequalities between the domestic population and immigrants for whom the social situation poses a risk of poverty. The goal of the article is to determine the specifics of inequalities between the domestic and immigrant population in terms of social status in individual EU countries. Immigrants coming out of the EU are significantly at higher risk of poverty. In most EU countries, the employment rate in the group “nationals” is lower than in the group “foreign” from the EU.