St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series - Liliana Harding

Wed 22 November 2017

St Catharine's College

Speaker:
Liliana Harding is a lecturer in Economics at the University of East Anglia (UEA), in Norwich. Dr Liliana Harding has a long-standing research interest in the political economy of migration, while her teaching is focussed in the areas of labour economics and European economies. She is currently the convenor of the East Anglia Research Migration Network, an interdisciplinary research group at the UEA designed to facilitate participatory action research in topics related to international migration. Her research interests further extend to the development of economic systems, regional economies and the implications of public arts and culture for wellbeing and urban economies.

Talk Overview:
In the same way as the resolution of the financial crisis has been sought through austerity across the board, migration policy beyond the Great Recession has focused on downward revisions of ‘acceptable levels’ of immigration. And as concerns about the implications of austerity on rising inequalities and general access to public services are rising, limitations to migrants’ access to the labour market and the welfare system are now sold as localised patches to society-wide challenges. In this context, this talk proposes to explore the extent to which a long period of austerity has warranted the call for more restrictive immigration policies, and explores the significance of distributional effects of immigration. It reviews the economic effects estimated for the UK from migration and its expected restriction linked to Brexit, and stresses the role of skill in the economic migration debate. Finally, the talk reflects on the significance of mass migration flows for economies experiencing it at various points in time, and makes a brief reference to the recent refugee crisis in Europe.


Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

Cost: FOC