Yet Mr Carney’s more serious point was that UK productivity, which has been trailing other major advanced economies for decades, is no higher today than it was in 2005, when Mr Bugg got his first guitar. This appears to be the longest period of stagnation in UK productivity growth on record. Economists have widely described this phenomenon as a “puzzle”, a word they tend to use for any trend that breaks with past norms.

Dumitru Condrea has big plans, but an even bigger problem. After six years working in civil society, the affable 25-year-old activist says his hope for change has eroded. He says he loves his country, but has run out of options. “If you want to change something, you need money. And I can’t make money here in Moldova.”

Kazi Hasan Arabi, a longtime Indian expatriate in Saudi Arabia, talks about his experience of the country, its development and what led him to find a home in the kingdom. “My education started late, because in our family, in those times, we were not allowed to go to school, rather, teachers used to come home and teach us.

Once, Adil Ibrahim worked as a translator with American soldiers, introducing them to Iraqi culture and the streets of Baghdad and trying to bridge gaps of understanding. Now, he’s one of them. Ibrahim, an Iraqi who came to the United States on a media scholarship in 2008 and then sought asylum, is now a U.S. citizen and member of the U.S. military. He’s even been deployed to Afghanistan.

Dan Matthews is a rapper. He was adopted from Korea when he was 8 months old and grew up in Southern California as an American kid. But he was curious about his birth parents. So after many years of being on the fence about finding them…he wrote a letter to his adoption agency. He just never thought he’d get this response: "Dear Dan Matthews. I’m writing to share the information of your birth family. As you may be aware your birth parents were married and are still married. they have one son and a daughter.

When the banking and economic crisis broke around the world in October 2008, few imagined that its recessionary effects would linger for as long as they have. In Europe, and particularly in some eurozone countries, people accustomed to years of relative prosperity have had to get used to harsh government austerity measures, wage freezes and job cuts.

Why are the immigration debates in the United Kingdom and the United States going in opposite directions? Part of the answer is in the chart above: During a time of economic trouble, Britain saw a surge in foreign workers that the US did not. How did the US and UK part ways in the way they think about immigration? You can blame the difference on the European Union. Between 1995 and 2005, the US and the UK increased the foreign-born share of their population at about the same rate.

It is commonly known that monetary remittances, the funds that foreigners working abroad send back to their origin countries, make up an important part of many developing nations’ economies. Less commented on, however, are social remittances, or the influence migrants exert on their home countries’ politics. One of the most important mechanisms for social remittances is the absentee ballot. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 115 countries or territories now grant voting rights to their citizens living abroad.