Guest worker schemes are on the rise, offering a way of threading the needle between immigration’s economic necessity and political unpopularity.
Across the OECD, temporary working visas rose from 1.5 million in 2014 to 2.5 million in 2023; even anti-immigration governments such as Italy and Hungary have increased them. Rome introduced “one of the [world’s] most progressive” labor mobility agreements with India, one recruiter said.
The rich world needs workers, but low-skilled arrivals on long-term visas may be “a false economy” in countries with generous welfare states, and anti-immigration populism is on the rise. “Temporary migration is a pretty good alternative to the permanent sort,” The Economist argued, although there is “squeamishness” over issues of integration and abuse.
