3. ADDRESSING CHALLENGES In this final section we address some of the key concerns about the ultimate goal of global free movement.
Would free movement reduce jobs and wages? The argument is intuitive and simple: more migrants means more competition for jobs and fewer jobs for native workers. Moreover, if migrants are willing to work for longer hours or for less money they will push wages down. It’s an argument used by anti-migration politicians across the world from Nigel Farage in the UK (“What we have got is a massive oversupply in the labour market which has driven down wages”),93 to Donald Trump in the USA (“They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us”),94 to Tony Abbott in Australia (“It’s a basic law of economics that increasing the supply of labour depresses wages”).95 Many on the left also repeat this logic. For example, in the UK former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has expressed concerns about “employers being able to import cheap agency
24 | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
labour to undercut existing pay and conditions”96 and in the US, Senator Bernie Sanders has argued that “there is no question in my mind that [open borders] would substantially lower wages in this country”.97 There is, however, a large body of evidence on how migrants affect jobs and wages, with the consensus being that migration typically has a small or neutral effect. In the UK, a key report is a government-commissioned review of 12 studies.98 It found that migration has “no or little impact” on employment, and “the evidence shows that it as a small short-term negative effect on low-paid workers”. The report suggests that those on medium and high incomes enjoy a small positive increase in wages. This is because new workers can be complementary, stimulating new work, innovations and productivity among native workers. Similarly, recent work in Australia99 and the US100 has not found any profound impact of migration on wages or unemployment. The US study examined hundreds of papers, finding a positive impact
