What is the role of post-enlargement mobility for European Union’s (EU) ability to absorb asymmetric economic shocks during the current economic crisis? Has post-enlargement migration affected the European welfare systems; and has it contributed to the sustainability of the Eurozone? Can brain circulation act as a vehicle of improved allocative efficiency of EU labor markets? These are some of the key questions currently addressed within program sub-area “EU Enlargement and the Labor Markets” co-ordinated by Martin Kahanec and Klaus F. Zimmermann at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn.

The fifth in the series of workshops on EU Enlargement and the Labor Markets that took place on October 12–13, 2012, at CEU in Budapest marked the long-standing commitment of IZA’s Migration Program Area to the study of enlargement of the European union and its broader consequences. It built on the success of a series of workshops on this topic organized by IZA since 2006 that resulted in an edited volume „EU Labor Markets after Post-Enlargement Migration“ (Kahanec, M and Zimmermann, KF (eds), Springer, 2010) recently praised by the Princeton University, which covered early evidence about post-enlargement migration in the EU. Since 2011 the Center for European Union Research (CEUR) joined forces with IZA in organization of this workshop series.

Building on this expertise, this year’s workshop extended and deepened our knowledge about cross-border mobility and its role in an enlarged EU. More specifically, its main purpose was to enlighten the growing and yet rather uninformed debate about the role of post-enlargement migration for economic adjustment in the crisis-stricken labor markets of the Eurozone and the EU as a whole.

In Session A the workshop addressed the political economy aspects of post-enlargement migration, including its broader socio-political contexts and redistributive impacts. Sessions B and C covered the experience of receiving countries with post-enlargement migration and its role during the current crisis; Sessions D and E addressed the same questions from the sending countries’ perspective. Session F served as a forum to provide insights into overall mobility patterns in response to the crisis and synthesize evidence from the previous presentations.

Find the program here: http://www.ceu.hu/node/31625 and here: http://www.iza.org/…/viewProgram?…