Migration and Integration - Common Challenges and Response from Europe and Asia

Migration trends and flows are changing, and calling countries and regions to provide new answers and policies. In this changing landscape, many European and Asian countries are characterised by ageing and shrinking populations. In order to ensure their economic growth and maintain their welfare systems, they have implemented a series of measures to reduce the demographic effects, among which opening channels to legal migration plays a key role. As these countries try to attract the same group of people, mainly highly-skilled professionals and low-skilled workers, increasing competition between the two regions might be observed in the upcoming years. In particular, high-skilled professionals are targeted by receiving societies. They are encouraged to stay for longer periods, or even enticed to settle down permanently. This is achieved by providing them with rights and benefits, facilitating their stay, and making them the target of integration policies.

As the status of the countries in Europe and Asia differs greatly in terms of whether they are considered sending, receiving or transit countries of migration, it is hardly possible to generalize both the problems and the policies to tackle them.

In order to contribute to the understanding of current challenges and implemented solutions, this publication includes papers with perspectives from Europe and Asia. What are the migration and integration policies as well as present challenges in these countries? What can they learn from each other? How do they try to facilitate migration and make it a beneficial process?

These and other questions are addressed by this publication, realised in the context of the ‘EU-Asia Dialogue’ (www.eu-asia.eu), a three year-long project co-funded by the European Commission and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), in cooperation with the European Policy Centre (EPC), the East Asian Institute (EAI) and the EU Centre in Singapore (EUC).