Labour Migration, Crisis and Cohesion in Eastern Europe: The Formation of the New Austeriat

Abstract

This project focuses specifically on labour migration from the Baltic new member states in terms of challenges it offers to social cohesion and longer-term prospects for social development in the context of the continuing aftermath of economic recession and the global economic and financial crisis. The project analyses the intersection of global economic recession with the underlying crisis of neo-liberalism in a new European Union member state, Baltic Lithuania. It ethnographically charts the disappointment of expectations occasioned by the shock of crisis for the citizens of a post-communist society. Resulting social unrest and the fragmentation of social solidarities are depicted through an analysis of “voice”, as expressed in “discourses of discontent”. It is suggested that the failure of the political process to acknowledge these popular discourses, and the muting of popular political protest via increasingly repressive public order policing has led to an outward “exit” of labor migration on an unprecedented scale, as well as the concerning possibility of “internal exit” in the form of xenophobia, populism and racism.

Keywords

Civil society, Migration and development, Post-communism/socialism, social cohesion, pollitical protest

Publications

C. Woolfson and J. Sommers (2015) Crisis, austerity and the demise of Social Europe, Globalizations, 12 (Online 19 June 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2015.1052623.

A. Juska and C. Woolfson (2015) Austerity, labour market segmentation and emigration: the case of Lithuania, Industrial Relations Journal, 46(3): 236-253.

J. Sommers, C. Woolfson and A. Juska (2014) Austerity as a global prescription and lessons from the neoliberal Baltic experiment, Economic and Labour Relations Review, 25(3): 1-20.

J. Sommers and C. Woolfson (eds), (2014) The Contradictions of Austerity: The Socio-Economic Costs of the Neoliberal Baltic Model. London: Routledge Studies in Economics.

A. Juska and C. Woolfson (2014) The impacts of austerity on the Lithuanian labour market. In Sommers and Woolfson (eds) Contradictions of Austerity.

C. Woolfson (2013) Migration, Austerity and New Challenges to Social Sustainability in the Baltic States, in A. Horgby and V. Norland (eds.) Immigration in Times of Emigration. Stockholm: Global Utmaning, pp.19-25. http://issuu.com/globalutmaning/docs/immigration-in-times-of-emigration-?e=0

A. Juska and C. Woolfson (2012) Policing political protest in Lithuania. Crime, Law and Social Change. 57(4): 403-424.

C. Woolfson, (2012) The Economic Crisis, Austerity and Migration: Exploring the Failed Trajectory of Neo-Liberal Post-Communism. In Ulrike Schuerkens (ed) Socio-economic Outcomes of the Global Financial Crisis. London: Routledge. pp. 38-64.

A. Juskas and C. Woolfson, (2012) Exodus from Lithuania: State, social disenfranchisement and resistance in an era of austerity. In Kay Goodall, William Munro and Margaret Malloch (eds.,) Building Justice in Post-Transition Europe: Processes of Criminalisation within Central and East European Societies. London: Routledge. pp. 56-77.

C. Woolfson, (2010a) The Race Equality Directive: ‘Differentiated’ or ‘differential’ Europeanisation in the new EU member states? European Societies, 12 (4) 543-566.

C. Woolfson, (2010b) ‘Hard times’ in Lithuania: Crisis and ‘discourses of discontent’ in post-communist society.Ethnography, 11(4): 487-514.

C. Woolfson, (2009a) Labour Migration, Neo-liberalism and Ethno-politics in the New Europe: The Case of Latvia. Antipode: A journal of radical geography, 41(5): 952-82.

C. Woolfson, (2009b) Where state power and opposition collide: Discourses of labor protest in a new market economy. In M. Huspek (ed) Oppositional Discourses and Democracies, London: Routledge. pp.60-81.

J. Sommers and C. Woolfson, (2008) Trajectories of Entropy and ‘the Labour Question’: The Political Economy of Post-communist Migration in the New Europe. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 16(1): 53-69.