European Policy Analysis - Volume 2 , Number 2 - Winter 2016
Demographic Change and Migration in the European Care Sector Introduction to the Special Focus
Uwe Hunger A and Marlene Neumann B
Demographic change affects all European societies . Although there are national and regional differences , almost all European societies are increasingly aging and shrinking . As a result , many European economies are already affected by a serious labor shortage in certain branches . Several demographic outlooks forecast that this trend might strengthen in the next years and decades with far-reaching consequences for economic development , labor markets , welfare systems , and numerous other policy fields . One sector that has to face these challenges particularly is the healthcare sector . Demographic change affects this sector in two ways : On the one hand , aging societies lead to a growing demand for healthcare and elderly care and , on the other hand , the young skilled healthcare workers in Europe cannot cope with this growing demand . As a result , an expanded recruitment of healthcare workers from abroad is seen as a prime solution for that labor shortage .
The contributions of the following special issue aim to conduce to the debate on the consequences of healthcare migration for both receiving and sending countries . The included papers will analyze the structural differences in healthcare systems of different European countries and present how these differences affect the strategies to meet the possible labor market shortage . In this regard , the papers will also broaden the perspective on the consequences of demographic change in Europe especially for foreign countries , such as Poland and Greece , sending healthcare workers . The papers will illustrate how demographic change , labor shortage , and foreign recruitment lead to a transnationalization of the healthcare sector in Europe and beyond . The first two contributions of this series deal with the consequences of labor migration in the healthcare and elderly care system in Germany . Marlene Neumann and Uwe Hunger ( Neumann and Hunger 2016 ) analyze a special form of circular migration of Polish care workers in the German elderly-care sector and its consequences for the German labor market and the migrants . The second contribution in this special issue by Andreas Gkolfinopoulos ( Gkolfinopoulos 2016 ) focuses on the migration of Greek physicians to Germany and its effects on the German and Greek healthcare systems . Both papers illustrate how different sectors tend to address various challenges with different strategies and solutions , depending on the specific
A
Institute for Political Science , University of Muenster , Germany
B
Welcome Center Heilbronn-Franken , Germany doi : 10.18278 / epa . 2.2.7
118