Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

International migration is a functional component of modern societies, both wealthy and poor. In a way, one can see that migration solves the unequal distribution of people and opportunities. Despite the political pressure to control immigration, almost all changes in politics have broadened the scope of legal immigration to allow for settlement by refugees, farm workers (in case of urbanrural migrations), “illegal” immigrants with long-term residence in the country, and workers in great demand to move around freely. Our main research objective is to demonstrate, using the available data as well as the analysis of the metadata and the research literature, that migration, especially labour migration, has a narrow connection with the issues of national security. Large outflows and inflows of people might bring about security threats linked to organized crime, terrorism and the spread of radical ideas. Moreover, migration is responsible for the brain drain of young and well-educated people who are searching for higher wages and better opportunities abroad depriving their own home country of valuable human capital. Our paper analyses the phenomenon of international migration perceived from the angle of migration culture that goes hand in hand with recent globalization trends all around the world. We come to a solid conclusion that migration policy should be treated as an important element in establishing well-ballanced national security policy in the globalized world. It might be of a particular interest for the migration scholars, labour market economists and stakeholders and policy-makers dealing with the issues of national security, public and migration policies, as well as sustainable economic development.

The theoretical and methodological principles of researching the tax security of a state were substantiated with the emphasis placed on the two basic economic theories: the social choice theory and the reflectivity theory. The differential features of national tax systems under globalization conditions and their impact on the economic security of the countries that differ in the political regime, the level of economic development, geography and location were identified. There was given the assessment of the cross-sector approach, based on which multifactor effective marginal tax rates in the European Union (EU) are calculated, and of the marginal approach to taxation in general. The analytical study of tax security of the countries of Organization of economic cooperation and development (OECD) was carried out based on the assessment of the specific weight of taxes in gross domestic product, as well as the structure of taxes in the context of taxation objects: income individuals, income corporates, social security contributions, property, value added taxes, other consumption taxes. A particular attention is attached to the problems of taxation of the motion of capital and goods between the EU countries within the framework of ensuring the mutual economic benefits of the collective interests. The assessment of external and internal threats to tax security of Ukraine was performed based on the identification of the shadow economy segment, reasons for its emergence and consequences for the national economy, as well as the dynamics of the absolute and relative indicators of the budget-debt security. The recommendations on strengthening the tax security of Ukraine under the European integration conditions were given.

Driving factors and implications of foreign direct investments were widely discussed during the latest decade. Anyway, impression remains that due to the specifics of that type of investment, misinterpreting of their economic composition is rather frequent than rare. Hence, the paper starts with detailed classification of investment types. The next part of the paper is devoted to a review of approaches to FDI driving factors and outcomes. Finally, current trends of foreign capital flows in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are being observed and evaluated. Novel insights about new consistent patterns of foreign capital directions are being provided. The paper is being finalized by indicating contemporary implications of FDI withdrawal for host country related to its further secure and sustainable development.

Presented paper suggests an instrumental approach to soft security and aims to reveal capacity of soft security instruments in terms of contribution to both security and sustainable development in the region which is addressed by Eastern Dimension of European Neighbourhood Policy and which includes Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Russian Federation (which is neither part of EaP nor among 16 EU partners addressed by the European Neighbourhood Policy) is also included in the overview as an important factor of influence in respect of regional security and relations between EaP states and EU. Referring to the main ideas of researchers and policy makers using different approaches to soft security as a phenomenon, the authors of the paper define soft security instruments as purposely organised social practices which rely mainly on sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of security governance. Focus on the effectiveness of sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of the EU policies and related joint projects as well as relevant combinations of soft instruments with economic and normative hard means is seen as a possibility to gradually increase level of regional security and transfer elements leading to sustainable development in this region.

The article highlights the importance of the development of the society, as well as the measurement of this development, in the context of security, sustainability and competitiveness and goes much further by guiding to further research focus on the introduced new conception of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” in the context of globalisation. The definition of “Sustainable competitiveness” was broadened by including new aspect of security. The development of the society was introduced as common output of the globalization which goes hand-in-hand with competitiveness, sustainability and security. The interrelation of certain facets between security, competitiveness and sustainability lead to the proposal to create the new index of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” with possibility to evaluate the progress by looking back and provide prospects by looking forward. The research findings are in line with policy context and the development of the new index of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” could be an important research contribution to the European Union Strategy Europe 2020 for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (2010).