Temporary-migration programmes, associated historically with oil-rich Gulf states and Singapore, are spreading across the rich world. Across the OECD some 2.5m trainees, seasonal and other temporary workers arrived in 2023, up from 1.5m in 2014. France, Japan and Spain have experienced especially sharp rises.
The programmes reflect a clash between demography and politics. The rich world needs young workers—industries such as child care, construction and farming face staff shortages—but anti-immigration populism is ascendant. Centrist leaders are curtailing paths to citizenship: Germany abolished a fast-track route that had enabled citizenship after three years; Britain is in the process of demanding ten years' residence, up from five. Hard-right leaders have embraced temporary migration even as they crack down on permanent settlement. Giorgia Meloni intends to issue 165,000 low-skilled work visas next year, up from 30,000 five years ago, and has signed a labour-mobility deal with India. Viktor Orban has quietly expanded guest-worker schemes: in 2024 around 78,000 non-EU migrants worked in Hungary, 92% more than in 2019. Even the Trump administration is promising to speed up visas for farmers hiring short-term workers while cracking down on other migration routes.
Lant Pritchett of the London School of Economics estimates that workers in the 11 largest developing countries could lift their wages by an average of 424% were they able to take low-skilled jobs in America. Michael Clemens of George Mason University points out that if South Korea brought its temporary-migrant population from 3% to 15% of the total (the same share as Australia's), it could offset most of the GDP decline projected for the late 2040s because of its collapsing birth rate.
Laurent Bossavie of the World Bank and co-authors find that returning migrants are far more likely to start their own companies, using money made abroad. Based on data on 5,000 Bangladeshi migrants, they suggest that a 50% drop in the cost of migration for workers heading overseas raises Bangladesh's rate of business creation by 8%.
Developing countries, eager for remittances and a solution to domestic unemployment, are enthusiastic signatories of bilateral guest-worker agreements. Uzbekistan has signed deals across Europe; its central bank recorded $8.2bn in remittances in the first half of 2025, up from $6.5bn in the same period of 2024. India has signed deals with Britain, France, Italy, Japan and others—some bundled with promises to help repatriate anyone who overstays. Vietnam's government sets targets for "labour exports"; in 2025 it aims to send 130,000 workers abroad.
The most famous European scheme was West Germany's Gastarbeiter programme (1955-73), which brought in around 14m working migrants, many of them Turks. Many stayed for decades without a path to citizenship, spoke little German and struggled to build good lives. As late as 1982, Helmut Kohl mused about sending them back.
Many modern visas are tied to an employer, making it hard for migrants to quit. In 2022 Japan's health ministry found that 74% of firms employing guest workers were in breach of labour laws, including failing to meet safety standards and demanding unpaid overtime. In Europe, some countries issue few non-EU permits, so employers recruit in other EU states and take advantage of free-movement rules; migrants end up not knowing which country's laws apply.
Andrei Gorshkov of IFAU, a Swedish research institute, calculates that short-term migrants in Denmark enjoy slower productivity gains than permanent peers, reducing the benefits for themselves, their employers and the host country. Employers, expecting high turnover, are often reluctant to invest in training.
Pritchett estimates that if two-thirds of the demographic shortfall in the rich world's labour force were offset by temporary workers, it would raise global wages by $6trn in today's prices by 2050. Last year low-income and lower-middle-income economies received remittances worth 5.4% of their combined GDP. America now charges $100,000 visa fees for skilled migrants, deterring the very people countries should be striving to keep.
Economists who study migration argue in favour of portable visas that enable job-switching. Australia extended the time migrant workers have to find a new employer after leaving their sponsor from 60 to 180 days. Canada and Japan are making it easier for migrant workers to move jobs within industries. Even Texan Republicans are pushing for a portable visa for the state's agricultural labourers.
Saudi Arabia has reformed the kafala system, which binds a migrant to a single employer, making its labour market more dynamic by allowing workers to switch to higher-paying employers. New Zealand's seasonal farm workers are notably less likely to overstay their visas than their peers in Australia, for two reasons: businesses are fined when workers abscond, giving employers a strong motive to screen and monitor employees; and there is no mechanism for workers to lodge asylum claims that would allow them to remain indefinitely.
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