We study how the EU enlargement in 2004 and the Great Recession in the late 2000s have shaped the scale and composition of migration flows from the New Member States to Germany. We demonstrate that immigration increased substantially despite the restrictions on the German labor market, and that...

Immigrants’ higher responsiveness to regional differences in labor market conditions has long been recognized as a potentially important adjustment mechanism to labor market shocks such as the European debt crisis from 2010 onwards. Using household- level data for the Euro Area from 2007 to...

We analyze the role of labor mobility in cushioning labor demand shocks in the Euro Area. We find that foreign born workers' mobility is strongly cyclical, while this is not the case for natives. Foreigners' higher population to employment elasticity reduces the variation of overall employment...