Abstract

As transportation and communication costs decline and the income gap between sending and receiving countries remains large, migration pressure in Europe is likely to increase in the near future, and temporary and return migration will become an even more widespread phenomenon. The TEMPO research project will extend the frontier of knowledge on this important issue along several directions. First of all, using an array of existing and new datasets, it will look at the causes and consequences of temporary migration, considering both the perspective of the source and the destination country. Second, it will study the patterns of integration of economic and non-economic migrants, and how they relate to the time dimension of the migration decision. Particular attention will be paid to the role played by the diffusion of information within immigrant networks. Finally, the project will look at the process through which policies towards temporary and return migration are formed, and analyze their welfare effects both on the destination and the source countries.