Can Poland accommodate the Ukrainian refugees?
After Romania, which is also packed with Ukrainian refugees, Poland has the lowest ratio of housing space per capita in Europe (29 square meters, compared to the EU average of 40). And, owing to already high inflation and the knock-on effects of sanctions (and Belarusian and Russian counter-sanctions), the Polish economy is heading into a period of slower growth and higher unemployment. Poles may start to attribute these problems to the refugees, even though refugees take jobs that aging societies like Poland’s often struggle to fill.
Poland’s Refugee Crisis in Waiting
By: Sławomir Sierakowski – German Council on Foreign Relations
The Ukrainian refugee flow: an opportunity
In this commentary Bahar et al. look at how refugee inflows have impacted the receiving countries in the past. They mention:
- Israel, which from 1989 to 1995 accepted over 600,000 immigrants from Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union. As a result the population of the country increased by nearly 15 percent in only five years. This wave of immigrants seeking a new home, alongside tremendously effective public policy, played a big role in Israel becoming the “startup nation” we know today.
- The U.S., which between 1975 and 1994, accepted around 1.4 million Vietnamese refugees. Their presence had a positive effect on trade and on investment between the U.S. and Vietnam, thanks to the international business networks that refugees created between countries.
- Germany, which in the 1990s accepted over half a million refugees from the former Yugoslavia following the war in the Balkans that ended in the disintegration of the country. They not only integrated into the German labor force, but also contributed significantly to the reconstruction of their home countries after the war, as this study shows, through the development of export industries upon their return.
The economic gains for countries receiving these refugees could be enormous, if accompanied by the right public policy.
Countries should seize the opportunity to take in Ukrainian refugees—it could transform their economies
By: Dany Bahar, Chris Parsons, Pierre-Louis Vezina – Brookings
Lessons from Turkey and the Syrian refugee influx
Turkey was the largest recipient of refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war, which started in 2011. As of the end of 2015, 2.5 million Syrian refugees had taken up residence in Turkey. In this paper, Akgündüz et al. use administrative dataset of the full population of firms in Turkey to analyze the effect of the Syrian refugee inflow on Turkish firms. They find:
- Most Syrian refugees work informally;
- The arrival of the refugees also leads to an increase in the establishment of new firms;
- A 10 percentage point increase in the refugee-native ratio raises firms’ sales by 3.8%, and the number of active firms by 5.8%.
Consequences of a Massive Refugee Influx on Firm Performance and Market Structure
Authors: Yusuf Emre Akgündüz, Yusuf Kenan Bağır, Seyit Mümin Cılasun, Murat Güray Kırdar
From: Sabanci University, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, TED University, Boğaziçi University
