3071-The political economy of new slavery

Jeroen Doomernik 39
to have a country where they knew themselves to be welcome. 3
For many other prospective or actual migrants this was very different.
As a result, the number of asylum seekers increased rapidly. To them
applying for asylum was the only feasible way to get a foot in the door,
regardless of whether they were in need of protection or not.
During the mid-1980s, the numbers of migrants asking for asylum in
Europe fluctuated between 150,000 and 200,000 annually. By the end of
that decade, their numbers started to rise and reached 400,000 in 1990.
In 1992 they reached 676,000, two-thirds of the claims being filed in
Germany alone. Many of those applications were unsuccessful in that
they did not lead to a permanent residence permit, be it as a Convention
refugee 4 or because of less specific humanitarian considerations.
This does not mean, however, that these migrants did not settle. There
were those who found alternative means of getting a residence permit
(for example, through marriage, a work permit, as a student, and so on),
were tolerated (currently Germany is host to half a million of such
aliens) or simply remained in an undocumented state. Of the latter we,
obviously, have no figures. Other immigrants too, are not always easily
enumerated, especially not if figures for different countries are to be
comparable. From Table 2.1, which is based on figures from the EU
statistics office (EUROSTAT) (1995), we can get some idea of the volume
of immigration in the EU from Central and Eastern Europe in the early
part of the 1990s. 5 The table is based on stocks (in contrast to flows,
documenting arrivals and departures) for 1993. If we look at the inflow
of migrants in this particular year it becomes very clear that by far the
largest proportion of those persons must have arrived recently (Table 2.2).
Table 2.1 Foreign nationals from East and Central Europe in selected EU countries,
1993
Germany* Netherlands France Belgium
Former USSR 79,049 2,123 4,661 1,160
Poland 285,553 5,362 47,127 4,812
Romania 167,327 1,851 5,114 not available
Hungary 61,436 1,184 2,736 720
Former CSR 63,724 802 2,433 557
Bulgaria 59,094 615 968 not available
Total 716,183 11,937 63,039 7,249
* excluding approximately 3.5 million Aussiedler, who are German nationals.
Source: EUROSTAT, 1995