Labour Migration and Economic Voting in Contemporary Europe

Employment patterns in Europe are currently in a state of flux due to global recession and labour force mobility across national borders. Very little, however, is known about the effects this has had on the voting patterns among European electorates. This project has been designed to fill in this gap in the literature.
The study contrasts Western Europe with Central and East European countries (CEE) in terms of the effects increasing migration has had in these regions, the former demonstrating higher tendencies of immigration, and the latter - of emigration. The study aims to assess the effects of contemporary labour force patterns on economic voting (i.e. incumbent punishment stemming from economy-centred difficulties) in these regions. It strives to find significant differences in the roles that the newly arisen employment patterns have in CEE (tendency to emigrate and high levels of local unemployment) and Western European countries (reception of migrant workers, but varying levels of local unemployment) and Luxembourg in particular (reception of migrant workers and relatively low level of local unemployment.
First, the study expects to establish that choices of the voters in Western European countries, and particularly of the 'native' unemployed, are affected by the rise of immigration level, leading to more punitive behaviour towards the incumbents due to additional challenges that newcomers bring into the jobseekers' market.
Second, the study hypothesises that CEE emigrants who still vote in their countries of birth punish incumbents for their need to relocate. By contrast, it is expected that CEE emigrants who do obtain the right to vote in their host countries support incumbents as the providers of the opportunity for the newcomers to work.
Mixed quantitative and qualitative data will be utilised to answer these questions.