Lasse Sigbjørn Stambøl (p)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse factors affecting emigration of immigrants from Norway, and provide descriptions of how emigration varies between different groups of immigrants by reason for immigration in various regions. With a demographic development that provides perspectives on future labour shortage, the ability to retain migrants, and highly qualified migrants in particular, could be of key importance.

On the basis of aggregated time-series data and cross-sectional microdata we have analyzed how the emigration of immigrants is influenced by various factors such as gender, age, level of education, duration of residence, and labor force attachment, as well as their family size and family composition. The immigrants’ likelihood of moving domestically or remain in a region is also examined. We have estimated relative probabilities of how immigrant groups emigrate and move inland at various regional centralities accounted for individual characteristics.

Important issues to answer are: What drives the exodus of immigrants from Norway? Which groups of immigrants emigrate? Is it the resourceful immigrants or those with few resources? What is the impact of having family in Norway? And what is the significance of reason for immigration for emigration? How can differences in regional centrality explain different emigration from different parts of Norway, and the likelihood of alternatively remain in a region or move domestically within the country?

Important findings include that male immigrants are more likely to emigrate than female, that younger immigrants of working age have higher probability to emigrate than middle-aged and older immigrants, and that the immigrants' emigration probability falls with their duration of residence. These results apply to all regional centralities. Immigrants with education as reason for immigration show the highest emigration probability, while refugees show low likelihood of emigrating. They rather move domestically than to emigrate. It is consistently immigrants with unspecified education that show the highest emigration probability followed by those with long tertiary education. Furthermore, it is immigrants who are outside the labor force and the educational system who are most likely to emigrate, while employed immigrants are least likely to emigrate. It is unaccompanied immigrants that show the highest mobility, both out of the country as well as between regions, and immigrants living in families with only immigrants are more likely to emigrate than immigrants with non-immigrant family members. Immigrants in the most central localized municipalities show the highest tendency to emigrate.

Electra Pitoska (p)

In the last two decades in Europe and Greece an influx of economic immigrants from various parts of the world (India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Southeast Europe, the former Soviet Union, etc.) has taken place. In remote and disadvantaged border areas entrance and settlement of immigrants differs regarding not only their countries of origin but also the degree of integration into local society. The questions posed to the economy and host society preoccupied academic researchers and institutions to such extent that extensive research and studies have been developed.
The present paper is a case study on the identity and role of economic immigrants in Greek peripheral economies and specifically in the prefectures of Kozani and Florina in Western Macedonia.
Even before the Second World War the prefectures, whose welfare indicators are lower than the national average, had relations of cooperation with neighboring Albania and F.Y.R.O.M. During the Cold War all the relation was stopped. Since 1990, the area welcomed a considerable number of immigrants mainly from neighboring Albania. This transborder immigration flow towards Kozani and Florina went through three stages: initial settlement, the period of "prosperity" and the period of contraction due to the economic crisis.
The object of this research is to map the professional identity, financial assistance and social burden to the system and the difficulties that the Albanian immigrants are facing due to the crisis in the prefectures of Kozani and Florina. Contributions made to employment, financial contributions to social security services and services issuing permits, as well as participation in education are being recorded by collecting data from local and national services.
Additionally, an empirical sampling research with questionnaires took place, supplemented by personal interviews with 100 Albanian immigrants, for a two month period between November and December 2016. The analysis of responses revealed the degree of socioeconomic integration, their relation with their birthplaces, their attitude towards the host society, the intensity with which they experience the financial crisis and their expectations for their future.

Özge Öner, Alessandra Faggian (p)

Labour market integration of immigrants is an ever-growing concern in many European countries that are challenged by the increasing inflow of refugees in recent years. In Sweden, the country that received the highest refugees per capita compared to its European peers, many of the refugees are placed in rural and depopulating cities due to the housing shortages in the more urbanised parts of the country. Such imperative decision also entails that the refugees are further challenged by the undesirable local labour market conditions in their respective locations upon their arrival. An optimistic view suggests that the inflow of new comers may mitigate the depopulation problem such peripheral municipalities face. However, the sorting literature suggests an alternative hypothesis, that through positive selection immigrants with a greater likelihood of finding a job would sort themselves into more desirable local labour markets, which would leave the already troubled municipalities with a greater burden in their local labor market. We test this hypothesis by using Swedish micro-data for 2006-2013 to estimate the likelihood of a refugee to sort himself into a labour market other than his original location. We aim at finding (i) to what extent such location decision is determined by better local labour market conditions, and (i) whether the mobility of immigrants driven by a positive selection mechanism. The exogenous shock caused by the Iraq War led to a rather discrete and sharp increase in the influx of immigrants from the Middle East in 2006, which enables us to mitigate a prior selection bias in immigrants’ original location, as well as to identify a rather homogenous group of push-driven immigrants with a similar cultural background in our empirical design. The paper contributes to the existing literature by simultenously investigating the relevance of sorting and local labor market charecteristics on location decision of forced migrants.