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Business Weekly Archive: Hard Times & Emigration

08/10/2010

Hard Times & Emigration

BBC World Service - Business Weekly Archive, Hard Times & Emigration

Time to go home or seek a new life abroad?How recession is affecting migration patterns.

Time to go home or seek a new life abroad? How high unemployment is affecting migration patterns. And why five year-olds are learning about business by selling breakfast to their classmates.

The global economic crisis has led to rapid job losses across the developed economies. Countries like Ireland, that had attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the boom years, are seeing many of them leave again.  Our Dublin reporter Julie Kirby speaks to people preparing to seek work elsewhere. 

As stock markets languish and interest rates rumble around record lows, investment funds are buying up farmland and making good money out it.  Jonny Dymond speaks to Jeff Conrad who grew up on a farm but is now the chief executive of Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, based in Boston in the US.  But not everyone thinks land should be bought and sold like any other commodity - Professor John Peck of the group Family Farm Defenders puts the case for small farmers. 


How young should children learn about business? The British government has said it wants the nation's young people to be more entrepreneurial.  Simon Atkinson went to Rotherham in the north of England, where children are being exposed to business skills in the classroom as soon as they start school.

And it's not just children who are being encouraged to think like entrepreneurs - the British Prime Minister has made a passionate plea to the nation to start up companies to help return the economy to growth.  David Blanchflower is an economist who used to advise Britain's central bank. He tells Tanya Beckett that building a start up is very definitely not for everyone. 

Pawnbrokers operate on a simple principle - they'll loan you money using your possessions as security.  And when the loan is repayed with interest, you get your stuff back.  The system runs up against a big problem in much of the Islamic world because Islam prohibits the charging of interest. So how come pawn shops are thriving in majority Muslim Malaysia - our correspondent Jennifer Pak investigates.

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