Conor O'Driscoll (p), Federica Rossi

Ewa Flaszyńska

This paper explores the extent to which working-from-home arrangements can impact the decision to relocate on one hand, and the destination individuals relocate to, on the other, in the periods before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, individual-level longitudinal data (N = 13,430), geocoded at the neighbourhood level, is paired with highly refined spatial data, to study these relationships in the UK. To this end, mixed-effects binary and multinomial logistic regression techniques are employed to account for correlations in the decision-making process across individuals, time, and alternative choices. This approach allows us to incorporate unobserved preference variation through random coefficients, which yields correlations in utility over time for the same decision maker. Our results indicate that, firstly, regardless of working-from-home capabilities, people were less likely to move pre- and post-pandemic relative to during the pandemic, thus implying that the pandemic appears to have boosted residential mobility. However, pre-, during-, and post-pandemic, the directionality of this mobility appears sensitive to whether individuals could work from home. In the pre-pandemic setting, individuals who could work from home consistently favoured rural and suburban residential areas. During the pandemic, the directionality is more mixed. In the post-pandemic setting, individuals who work-from-home consistently favour urban residential environments. These results hold direct implications for our understanding of how evolving work arrangements impact the location decisions of economic agents, something which holds important consequences for urban/regional development, political geography, and labour market outcomes in an increasingly changing world.

Ewa Flaszyńska (p)

Jemina Kotila

Poland has for several years become a destination country for an increasing number of labour migrants. They provide a very important support to the Polish labor market, allowing to fill the growing shortage of human resources in many industries and professions. It is very important to integrate them into the Polish labour market and Polish society in order to make the most of the potential of labor migration. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the activation policy towards Ukrainian refugees in Poland, with a particular focus on integration challenges, such as the language barrier, recognition of professional qualifications or social integration. The paper will present the results of research participating in the “Together We Can Do More” Program. An evaluation of the practical solutions introduced by Poland will also be shown, the results of the surveys will be presented, and recommendations will be made for future measures to support migrants. The author of the paper participated in the preparation, implementation and conclusion of the program.

Jemina Kotila (p), Jaakko Simonen, Philip McCann

Liv Osland

At the beginning of the millennium, the Oulu region in Northern Finland was home to one of the most significant technology clusters in the country. In its prime years, the high-tech sector of the region employed nearly 14,000 workers, and the majority of the workers represented the manufacturing industries. However, the high-tech sector of the region went through a sudden structural change in 2008–2013, and especially the electronics industry suffered a dramatic decline: its employment shrank from almost 6,000 in 2008 to less than 3,500 in 2013 causing major turbulence to the local labour markets. We focus on approximately 2,500 employees in the electronics industry who lost their jobs during 2009–2014 and were forced to adapt through industrial and/or regional mobility. We provide a longitudinal analysis of the adaptation processes within and across regions and industries using exceptionally comprehensive, high-quality microdata FOLK from Finland. FOLK start from the end of 1980s and include virtually all individuals living in Finland, offering a unique possibility to investigate individual labour market outcomes, adaptation processes, and career paths in the long run. We contribute to the literature by investigating the role of previous work history in the adaptation process using logistic regressions. Preliminary results show that many of the individuals had substantially long work histories within high-tech manufacturing before displacement. Experiencing industrial mobility has been more common compared to regional mobility in the past. This trend is also visible right after the redundancy, as most of the re-employed displaced workers remain in the Oulu region, and this share only increases over time. Many workers in the Oulu region find initially jobs within high-tech services, but later the shares in high-tech manufacturing and outside the high-tech sector grow. Workers who leave the Oulu region appear to also leave high-tech manufacturing and end up working in high-tech services or outside high-tech industries.

Liv Osland (p), Henrik Lindegaard Andersen

Conor O'Driscoll

Over the past few decades, millions of people have been compelled to flee and seek safety in other countries, and over time, many states have developed or plan to develop policies that are more restrictive, temporal, and which may also encourage voluntary returns. We study the emigration of refugees, who were settled in Norway under a spatial dispersal policy. Under this policy, refugees are settled administratively in municipalities by the authorities. The policy implies that refugees cannot freely choose their initial residing municipality, and there are restrictions regarding residential mobility within Norway. The quasi-experimental nature of the policy allows us to study the impacts of local contextual factors, measured, on the decision to emigrate from Norway, both in the short and the long run. Moreover, we also study individual factors which may be related to emigration patterns. Our results indicate that families who are settled in the most rural areas are more likely to emigrate from Norway. A lack of economic integration is a strong predictor of emigration, whereas having children significantly increase the probability of staying. We also find that emigration rates vary by legal status and over time, as emigration are mainly occurring during the first 2-3 years in the host country. However, overall emigration is a rare event, except for cohorts of refugees who initially had a temporary protection status.