Managing migration promises to be one of the most difficult challenges of the twenty-first century. It will be even more difficult for south European countries, from which emigration has levelled off and to which immigration has become a significant economic issue. Southern Europe is close to other regions where the pressure to emigrate is intense: these regions have a high level of unemployment, above the European Union average, and a large informal sector, often 15-25 per cent of their economies as a whole. This book analyses the southern European migration case using an economic approach. It combines a theoretical and an empirical approach on the fundamental migration issues - the decision to migrate, effects on the country of departure and country of destination, and the effectiveness of policies in managing migration. It also explores the transformation due to migration of southern European countries in the 1980s and 1990s.

"...the complete treatment of the existing body of work on issues such as emigrants' remittances, competition and complementarity in labor markets, or the difficult reproduction of the labor population in Western Europe makes it a very up-to-date reference book on the economic aspects of actual migration waves in general." - Leen Beyers, Catholic University of Leuven