New figures released by the OECD this month show that permanent migration flows in OECD countries, while still below their pre-crisis level, have nevertheless started to rebound. Figures indicate some 4.4m extra permanent migrants in 2013 compared to 2012.
The small (1 percent) increase is mainly attributable to a rise in free-movement migration (for a definition, click here), which in 2012 generated an extra 10 percent migrants, most of which moving between EU states, and of which Germany saw the largest in-flows, receiving almost a third of all free movement migrants.
And while Germany has seen its fourth consecutive annual rise in permanent migration flows in 2013, on the other side flows to the US, Italy, Portugal and Spain have seen a decline.
Family migration however, although also on the decline since 2008, continues to provide the bulk of the migratory flux into the OECD, albeit with reduced numbers into Italy, Spain, the US, the United Kingdom and Belgium. The OECD report also shows a decrease in labour migration by 12 percent compared to 2012, and in the European Economic Area alone an almost 40 percent decrease between 2007 and 2012.
Asylum seekers have also risen in 2013 compared with 2012 figures, with the Syrian conflict the main reason for a 20% increase. Indeed some 560,000 new asylum claims were made in 2013, the bulk of them to Germany, which alone received about 110,000 of them.
The report highlights there are some 115m immigrants in the OECD, equivalent to 10 percent of its total population. At 10% of all flows, China is the greatest sending country, followed by Romania at 5.6 percent and Poland at 5.4 percent.
Of interest is also that 70 percent of migrants are highly educated, 30 percent of which are university educated, but that university educated immigrants are less likely to be in work than their native counterparts and when employed, they are 50 percent more likely to be overqualified, clearly indicating a great waste of economic potential.
Indeed these findings are also in line with those of another study, which found that although the educational level of new arrivals to Germany is now higher than that of the natives, immigrants are still a less likely to be employed in high paying sectors than the natives, and more likely to be overqualified for their jobs.
By Annalisa Dorigo