Labor Economics European Union labor migration Essay

Labor Economics European Union labor migration - Essay Example That is, it sets very comprehensive goals for itself, covering economic, political, social and regional and international security policy frameworks, in addition to future plans for the expansion of the Union. As a means of understanding the European Union's path and its goals, a brief overview of the evolution process of the Union will be helpful. This overview will provide the basis for a discursive analysis of the phenomenon of labor migration within the framework of the European Union. Labor migration, as the analysis shall highlight, has proven, despite some benefits, to be highly problematic especially since the Barcelona Declaration expanded the parameters of the stated to include migrant labor from within the larger EU neighborhood. In other words, labor migration within the EU is not confined to labor flows between member countries but has been expanded, and further complicated by the inward flow of labor from without the EU. Most people would date the roots of the European Union to the 1940s, yet W.T.M. Molle, traces the roots of European integrationist dreams much further back. Specifically, during the Napoleonic era, marked by the emergence of a modern economic system, as compared to the feudal one that had come before it, certain economic policies were established in order to ease trade between the nations of the European continent.1 From that moment onwards, one finds several policies that attempt to encourage trade within the continent and overcome specific obstacles to trade. When one looks at this fact, one can conclude that from the earliest history, the European countries were guided by the understanding that regional trade and economic links were important for the economies of the different countries and for the purpose of development. The current structure of the European Union, however, does not have its roots in the policies discussed above; those policies only indicate the historical understanding of the importance of regional economic cooperation. Instead, the roots of the current structure are to be found in three distinct treaties. These, as mentioned by Molle, are the "ECSC, the EEC and the EAECP.2 These three treaties are the foundations of the European Union that has emerged nowadays, despite the fact of their having been limited in terms of countries that had been involved and the treaties themselves. For instance, the ECSC was a steel trading treaty that involved only six European nations. This can not be compared in scope to the current structure of the Union but, the fact of the matter is that the success of the Union and the reason why it has emerged today as a model for deep integration is that it proceeded in a step by step manner, dealing with limited areas of economic cooperation and limited numb ers of countries so that they could stabilize each step and move safely to a new level of expanding integration.3 Even though the European Union sought to stabilize and fortify each step in the unification process before progression to the next step, problems inevitably arose. Among the more challenging of these problems directly pertains to the removal of restrictions on capital flow, included in which is labor. The comparatively unchecked labor movement between the variant member countries, on the one hand, and from the larger neighborhood, on