Karolis Žibas, migration sociologist; Founder, Research and Policy Advisor at Diversity Development Group.

The elephant in the room

There is a fact that Lithuanian public discourse on migration consistently avoids stating directly: demographic problems, and their consequences, will not be resolved by family policy, by waiting, or by

hope. Lithuania has recorded negative natural population growth since 1994, nearly a quarter-century ahead of the EU average. The total fertility rate stands at 0.9–1.0, one of the lowest in the EU (where the average is 1.3 and the natural replacement threshold is 2.1). Even one of Europe’s most effective models – France, which allocates 4% of GDP annually to family policy – achieves a rate of 1.7, which does not ensure natural population replacement but does slow demographic contraction and ageing.

A closer examination of demographic indicators reveals a trend that speaks for itself. The effects of demographic policy become visible only over decades, requiring a national consensus that transcends the “electoral cycle” thinking prevalent in parliament. Even if Lithuania were to raise its fertility rate tomorrow, the impact on the labour market would not be felt for at least 20 to 25 years. Yet population contraction and ageing is not merely a labour market issue. It affects the entire economic ecosystem: the domestic market shrinks, the tax base narrows, financing social protection and healthcare becomes more difficult, and the country’s attractiveness to investment declines. Demographic decline and sustained economic growth are difficult to reconcile over the long term, even accounting for processes such as increasing life expectancy or artificial intelligence. Labour shortages are structural, and they are only one symptom of this broader challenge.

For years – or more precisely, for decades – migration has been the only positive component of the EU’s population balance, and this is not an ideological position. It is Eurostat data. The EU’s natural population growth is negative, while net migration keeps the overall balance in positive territory. Without migration from third countries, the EU’s population would shrink by more than one million per year: in 2024, the natural deficit reached 1.3 million. Yet due to migration flows (whether we welcome this or not) the EU’s population did not merely hold steady but actually grew: net migration in 2024 exceeded 2.3 million people. This is not a new phenomenon or an anomaly. Migration as the sole positive component of the EU’s population balance is a systemic process, observable not for one or two years but for decades. And that is the elephant in the room we avoid discussing.

In Lithuania, this dynamic is no less pronounced: immigration and overall population change move in synchrony, while natural population growth continues to decline. The data presented in the figures speak for itself. In recent years, migration’s role in Lithuania has become super clear: nearly 78,000 Ukrainian nationals who arrived following Russia’s invasion in 2022, a growing stream of labour migrants, and nearly 49,000 Belarusian nationals (as of June 2026, Migration Department), alongside a markedly rising trend of return migration among Lithuanian nationals. Taken together, these trends signal that Lithuania’s migration structure is undergoing a qualitative shift, and this shift is not incidental. It corresponds to the widely recognised migration transition model: as countries develop economically, emigration declines while immigration and return migration increase. Lithuania’s current trajectory follows this logic precisely. This is what the eminent migration scholar Hein de Haas refers to as the “migration transition”. Within this evolving migration structure, there are several distinct components, not all of which receive equal attention in public discourse. Forced displacement, encompassing asylum seekers and refugees, is one such component. Not the only one, but structurally significant and systematically undervalued.

And here lies a paradox. At a time when millions of migrants from third countries arrive legally in the EU each year – almost without public debate – the political focus has settled on the EU solidarity mechanism, which redistributes tens of thousands of refugees among member states. The proportions and the political rhetoric are conspicuously misaligned.

When the facts contradict the narrative

On this occasion – on the eve of World Refugee Day – It is worth pausing to consider this population more carefully. Not as a problem, but as people, and as a resource. Over more than two decades working in the field of international migration and displacement, I have engaged with a wide range of countries: from those that are only beginning to build integration systems to those that are continuously refining them. The Nordic and Baltic states, Central and Eastern Europe. And everywhere, the same paradox: the further the debate strays from empirical evidence, the louder it becomes.

But there is something else I have observed everywhere, regardless of country or context. People who left their countries because of war, persecution, or violence – people I have worked with in both research and policy evaluation settings – rebuilt their lives. Some did so for a second time, some for a third. And they did so with a determination that never ceased to astonish. That is resilience. Not an abstract concept, but something you see in a person’s eyes when they describe what they built from nothing, afresh, in a place entirely unfamiliar to them. This determination and resilience, together with specific human and professional capacities, is what forcibly displaced persons bring to receiving societies and their economies.

Yet in both public discourse and political rhetoric, refugees are almost invariably framed as a burden. This framing is methodologically questionable. It is contradicted by systematic empirical evidence. On the occasion of World Refugee Day, with UNHCR’s recently published Global Trends reporting that by end-2025 there were 41.6 million refugees and 68.7 million internally displaced persons worldwide, and over 120 million forcibly displaced people in total, these figures demand strategic debate and serious political attention.

Integration carries costs, its trajectory is not always smooth, and the policy challenges are real. But the fundamental problem lies elsewhere. The problem is that public debate on migration at EU level is frequently not grounded in evidence. It is grounded in emotion, personal opinion, and fragmentary impressions, and this is a qualitative distinction that directly affects the rigour of policy decisions. The analogy is apt: when a government considers investing hundreds of millions in a new tram line or hospital, no one questions the need for a feasibility study, a cost-benefit analysis, independent expert assessment. Migration policy deserves exactly the same analytical rigour and the same quality of strategic debate. When that standard is applied, the picture changes fundamentally.

What the evidence shows

Today we have systematic research from across Europe, and the overall direction is clear. In Poland, a study conducted by UNHCR and Deloitte estimated that in 2024 Ukrainian refugees contributed 2.7% to Poland’s GDP – approximately 84 billion zloty of economic value through consumption, employment, and tax contributions. 69% of working-age Ukrainians were employed, somewhat below the rate for Polish nationals (75%). Crucially, Ukrainian labour did not generate unemployment or wage depression. On the contrary, it contributed to employment growth and productivity.

In Finland, a study by Diak University of Applied Sciences (Diaconia University), drawing on official statistical and social insurance fund data, provides concrete figures: residents of foreign origin (including refugees) account for approximately 10% of the population yet receive only around 5% of all social benefits. In 2023 they paid 2.7 billion euros in taxes and received 2.4 billion euros in benefits, yielding a net fiscal contribution of approximately 225 million euros. “The common perception that immigrants are a burden on public finances is incorrect,” concluded researcher Pekka Myrskylä.

A 2026 study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) of Ireland reveals a clear pattern: on average over the past twenty years, residents of foreign origin in Ireland have made a greater fiscal contribution than native-born Irish nationals. Migrants are younger and have higher employment rates. The study also found no systematic difference in benefit receipt between migrants and Irish nationals.

In Sweden, statistical data on unaccompanied minors who arrived as asylum seekers in 2015 are particularly revealing: by 2022, males from this cohort were employed at a higher rate than Swedish nationals born in the same year. They were most concentrated in the health and social care sector – precisely those areas that have long faced acute labour shortages and that represent some of the most demographically strained segments of the Swedish economy. The interdisciplinary study Coming of Age in Exile (CAGE) explains this simply: the better the integration policy, the better the outcomes.

Research from Germany points in a similar direction: a 2025 Bloomberg Businessweek analysis, macroeconomic research by independent institutes and a longitudinal analysis by DIW Berlin. The overall message is consistent: asylum seekers and refugees complement the labour market rather than displacing native workers, and their fiscal contribution is positive over the long term.

In Lithuania, comparable evidence is emerging gradually. Ukrainians working in Lithuania contributed over 205 million euros to the state budget, according to data from the Ministry of Social Security and Labour. Belarusians who have received protection on grounds of political persecution are characterised by high educational attainment and active labour market integration. The growing influx of labour migrants is already visible in construction, logistics, and care work. None of this is a future scenario. It is the present reality, and it calls not for anxiety or emotions, but for strategic thinking.

This is a pattern also documented by OECD research: integration outcomes for refugees improve over time. Yet research on second-generation integration outcomes in the Nordic countries reveals a paradox: the more integrated the second generation becomes, the more discrimination it encounters. This means that integration is not solely a labour market question. It is also a question of social recognition.

The analytical framework that is missing

Swedish political scientist Professor Peo Hansen, in his scholarly work and Discover Society article, argues that the conventional framework for evaluating migration – straightforward fiscal cost-benefit calculation – is not only incomplete, but methodologically flawed. He identifies a fundamental blind spot: such calculations separate “real resources” (labour) from financial resources, yet are unable to value the former. As a result, a cleaner who arrives as a refugee is counted as a fiscal burden because he earns below the average wage, even though society could not function without him. Hansen presents concrete Swedish data: since 2008, all growth in Sweden’s working-age population has consisted exclusively of persons of foreign origin – the majority of them – refugees. In 2017, the labour market generated 94,000 new jobs, of which 75,000 (80%) went to workers of foreign origin. Again, predominantly refugees. Sweden is the only EU country whose working-age labour force has not aged over the past decade, and this is directly linked to refugee reception. The costs of migration are concentrated and visible in the short term – reception, accommodation, language instruction – while the benefits are dispersed and accumulate over years and decades. Conventional accounting captures the former effectively while systematically undervaluing the latter.

OECD research – both the classic Making Integration Work series and the most recent study State of Immigrant Integration: Nordic Countries (2025) – demonstrate that countries which have invested in language training, employment pathways, qualification recognition, and early childhood support for arriving families have achieved measurably better outcomes. As OECD Chief Economist Emily Farchy noted at the 2025 Nordic Conference in Helsinki: “The Nordic countries are actually doing quite well, and this reflects policies put in place seven to ten years ago.” The implication is uncomfortable for a certain strain of fiscal conservatism: realising the potential of forced displacement as a resource requires investing in integration. The returns are real. but they are deferred, and they demand the political patience to look beyond the next electoral cycle.

Forced displacement as a strategic component of migration policy

This mosaic of evidence leads to a fundamental question: does Lithuania view forced displacement as a strategic component of migration policy, or merely as a humanitarian obligation to be discharged as quickly and cheaply as possible? Migration policy is not monolithic. It encompasses labour migration (both skilled and unskilled), international protection and forced displacement, student mobility, EU freedom of movement (in which Lithuania is not competitive), and return migration, whose potential in Lithuania is visible and growing. Each of these components operates through different mechanisms and across different contexts. A comprehensive migration policy is precisely what a country with deepening demographic challenges requires. Such a policy must address all of these components simultaneously, rather than treating them as separate, competing processes.

Forced displacement occupies a distinctive place within this structure. Not because it should substitute for labour migration, but because it offers what labour migration typically does not: a durable connection to the receiving society, integration funding through EU solidarity mechanisms, and, when policy functions effectively, structural responses to the challenges of an ageing population. A labour migrant is often part of a circular dynamic: they arrive, they work, they leave. A refugee who is successfully integrated becomes a long-term demographic and economic contribution. There is also a dimension that is rarely discussed in public: Lithuania’s position in international negotiations. A country that participates consistently in the EU solidarity mechanism is a more credible partner: both in EU institutions and in bilateral negotiations on economic sanctions, defence cooperation, energy infrastructure, and national security, all of which are of vital importance to Lithuania.

Lithuania’s paradox: paying for what we decline

Under the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, Lithuania participates in the EU solidarity mechanism: the country may choose either to accept its allocated share of refugees or to pay a specified financial contribution into the EU budget for each person it declines to admit. Lithuania has opted for a mixed model – accepting some while paying for others. Formally, this is a legitimate choice, reflecting a complex balance between the desire to remain a credible EU partner, domestic political circumstances, and the public rhetoric surrounding migration and forced displacement. From an economic and demographic standpoint, however, this choice is paradoxical: the country not only forfeits potential GDP growth but additionally pays into the EU budget for each person it declines to admit – thereby relinquishing human resources it could have integrated into its labour market in accordance with its own needs and preferences.

More importantly, the EU solidarity mechanism, unlike circular labour migration or short-term work visa schemes, comes with integration funding. This therefore is not merely a humanitarian or legal question. It is also a question of maths.

And here emerges another instrument that is almost entirely absent from public discourse and policy discussions: Complementary pathways for admission from third countries. Having worked at UNHCR Stockholm, I had direct experience of these mechanisms, and what I observed in practice is simpler than it sounds in theory: an admission model that enables refugees to arrive in a targeted manner, matching their skills to the specific labour market needs of the receiving country. Canada, Australia, and certain EU initiatives, implemented in partnership with employers and permitting skills-matching in the selection process, are regarded as good practice cases for this model. All of this is documented by both UNHCR and ICMPD. Unlike many labour migration schemes, which are short-term and unstable, complementary pathways are sustainable for the individual, the employer, and the state alike. Implementing them requires political will and administrative capacity. But they work. This mechanism also confers on the state the right not merely to receive people, but to participate actively in selection based on labour market needs. The question is not “whether to admit.” The question is how to admit intelligently, and why we choose to pay for an opportunity we do not use.

In lieu of conclusions

Migration processes and integration are not a “soft” project or a social welfare add-on. They are a structural instrument – the only viable means of realising the potential that migration and forced displacement bring with them. This is a macro-level question requiring macro-level responses: structural investment, long-term planning, and the political resolve to assess outcomes not within a single electoral cycle but through the lens of demographic and fiscal impact trajectories and their evolution over time.

To conclude, I should be transparent: this article is not neutral. I am a migration sociologist. I have worked in this field for 20 years, and over those years I have arrived at one conlcusion: in sociology, in legislation, and in policy alike, data should be not decoration but the foundation of decisions. Regrettably, the current quality of public debate on migration damages the evidential basis of policy decisions, harms social cohesion, and affects the lives of people whose futures are shaped by decisions taken not on the basis of data but of anxiety and emotion. This is not a call to feel differently. It is a call to apply the same standard of evidence-based argumentation that we apply to every other area of public policy.

Refugees are not a problem to be managed. Given the right conditions and the right policy, they are a resource: demographic, economic, cultural, and human. The evidence for this is substantial, consistent, and routinely ignored. On World Refugee Day we celebrate people’s resilience in the face of catastrophe. Perhaps it is also time to demand political resilience: the courage to let the data speak.

This article was published under the project “Beyond Labels: Shifting Narratives on Migration and Forced Displacement in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.” The project is implemented by Diversity Development Group (Lithuania), the Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS (Latvia), and the Institute of Public Policy (Poland), with support from the Open Lithuania Foundation programme “VERTA!”