For subscribers
How to make immigration palatable in a populist age
Guest-worker schemes are booming. They offer vast benefits to both host countries and the workers themselves.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Vietnamese workers at a factory in Tochigi, Japan. Workers from other parts of Asia are coming to fill jobs left vacant by Japan’s ageing population.
PHOTO: NORIKO HAYASHI/NYTIMES
The Economist
Follow topic:
Businesses hiring migrants have a surprising new idol. The inspirational figure is neither a liberal nor a devotee of globalisation. It is Ms Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister, who in 2022 climbed to power on a hard-right platform. She intends to issue 165,000 low-skilled work visas in 2026, up from 30,000 five years ago. Italy has also signed a labour-mobility deal with India that a recruiter praises as “one of the (world’s) most progressive”.
Ms Meloni is not the only hard-right leader learning to love immigration – or, at least, a certain sort of immigration. Although Mr Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, once said that his country did not require a single migrant for its economy to function, he has quietly embraced guest-worker schemes. In 2024, around 78,000 non-EU migrants worked in Hungary, some 92 per cent more than in 2019.
