Date: Wednesday 22 November 2017
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Liliana Harding
Talk Title: ‘From austerity to immigrants as ‘significant others’ in economic policy changes’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College

The next St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar in the series on the Economics of Austerity, will be held on 22 November, 2017 – Liliana Harding will give a talk on “From austerity to immigrants as ‘significant others’ in economic policy changes”. The seminar will be held in the Ramsden Room at St Catharine’s College from 6.00-7.30 pm. All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.

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.