Regional Economic Integration and Migration: The European Case

Heinz Werner

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1994, vol. 534, issue 1, 147-164

Abstract: Since the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, economic and regional integration in Western Europe has been achieved. What consequences has this had for labor migration between the member states? What lessons are to be drawn from the EEC experience as to the effect of regional integration on unwanted migration? Would analogous results occur under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? The development of the European Communities (EC) shows that regional integration can attenuate socioeconomic disparities that induce people to migrate. Increased trade and welfare has had a leveling effect among EC states that has dampened migration. Trade exchanges and competition within the EC occurred more within industrial or product groups than between economic sectors. Thus adjustment to freer trade did not lead to the loss of whole industries and mass redundancies. But NAFTA differs from the EC in many respects. Although there are some similarities, the differences between NAFTA and the EC warn against the facile presumption that Mexico will go the way of Italy after ratification of NAFTA.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716294534001012 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:534:y:1994:i:1:p:147-164

DOI: 10.1177/0002716294534001012

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().