Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them

The movement of people across borders is the essence of
globalisation and increasingly important to the growth of the economy.
But immigration is becoming an ever more contentious issue, in Europe
as well as in other parts of the world. The United States has built a
fence on its southern borders to stop people from unsolicited entry. In
Europe newspapers carry headlines of immigrants stealing jobs and
abusing benefit systems. The two recent enlargements of the European
Union have involved special rules prohibiting citizens in new member
states to move as freely as other European citizens.

This is
the backdrop to a new book by Philippe Legrain – Immigrants: your
country needs them. Legrain, a best-selling author and former
journalist at The Economist, makes a compelling case for freer
migration that binds together scholarly studies with individual stories
of migration.

You are cordially invited to a Book Forum with Philippe Legrain. Legrain’s presentation will be followed by comments from Stefano Bertozzi, member of Commissioner Franco Frattini’s Cabinet, and Fredrik Erixon, a Director of ECIPE.