scholarly journals Highly Skilled or Highly Wanted Migrants? Conceptualizations, Policy Designs and Implementations of High-skilled Migration Policies

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Metka Hercog ◽  
Laure Sandoz

This special issue offers an opportunity to delve into the construction of migrant categories through policy design and policy implementation. It proposes to widen the focus beyond immigration authorities in order to include actors that are in one or another way involved in the process of selecting, supporting or employing highly skilled workers and therefore also contributing to their definition. The aim of the special issue is to bring to the surface the indistinct objectives of immigration policies, and to analyse the interplay between policies, discourses and practices. More precisely, we discuss the argument that the definition of highly skilled migrants depends more on how potential migrants are viewed by interest groups than on migrants’ characteristics.

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Pekkala Kerr ◽  
William Kerr ◽  
Çağlar Özden ◽  
Christopher Parsons

Highly skilled workers play a central and starring role in today's knowledge economy. Talented individuals make exceptional direct contributions—including breakthrough innovations and scientific discoveries—and coordinate and guide the actions of many others, propelling the knowledge frontier and spurring economic growth. In this process, the mobility of skilled workers becomes critical to enhancing productivity. Substantial attention has been paid to understanding the worldwide distribution of talent and how global migration flows further tilt the deck. Using newly available data, we first review the landscape of global talent mobility. We next consider the determinants of global talent flows at the individual and firm levels and sketch some important implications. Third, we review the national gatekeepers for skilled migration and broad differences in approaches used to select migrants for admission. Looking forward, the capacity of people, firms, and countries to successfully navigate this tangled web of global talent will be critical to their success.


Over the past decades an increasing number of countries have developed a growing interest in attracting and retaining skilled and highly skilled migrant workers. This chapter provides an introduction into the nature and dynamics of the global skill market and the role of states and state policies in international migration processes of highly skilled workers. This introduction also outlines the subsequent chapters of this volume which address questions regarding (i) the nature and scope of high-skilled migration and ‘immigration policy packages’ states implement to attract and select high-skilled migrants; (ii) the rationales and determinants of high-skilled migration policies evolving over time and space; (iii) the extent to which policies and other drivers affect high-skilled migration processes in general, and international migration of students, scientists, and health professionals in particular.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisuke Wakisaka ◽  
Paul James Cardwell

AbstractJapan and the UK appear to have few commonalities in terms of their history of and approach to migration law and policy. However, strong similarities in their contemporary approaches can be detected. Migration sits at the very top of the national political agendas and both have undertaken successive, major policy reforms over the past decade. Both have governments publicly committed to policies to attract ‘highly skilled’ migrants, with a restrictive approach towards ‘unskilled’ migrants. This article draws out the similarities and differences of migration law and policy in Japan and the UK via their respective legislative structures and policy trajectories on highly skilled migration. The article argues that Japan and the UK promote a market-driven model which enables highly skilled migration to be ‘sold’ to publics believed to be hostile to increased migration. Yet, the rapid changes in policy and revising of applicable rules often prevents the successful recruitment of highly skilled migrants to both countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 31-59
Author(s):  
Vladimir I. Mukomel

The Russian labor market is experiencing a shortage of highly skilled workers, and there is a consensus in Russian society that it is necessary to attract and utilize the labor of highly qualified foreign specialists. The key question of the article is: how much demand is there on the Russian labor market for the knowledge and experience of highly qualified migrants? What types of economic activities and occupations are typical for highly skilled migrants? What is their horizontal and vertical mobility on the Russian labor market? The article shows that highly skilled workers who come from post-Soviet states to Russia take jobs which are not in demand among Russian workers; the main types of their economic activities are trade, construction, utilities, social and personal services, and household assistance. Neither specific skills and knowledge nor qualifications of foreign workers are demanded on the Russian labor market: over 80% of highly skilled migrants work at jobs which do not require their education or qualification. Vertical labor mobility is predominantly downward, and upward mobility is quite rare (downward mobility is less typical for highly skilled migrants who have received education in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus). The empirical basis of the study was the results of sociological surveys of 1,450 highly qualified migrants from the CIS and Georgia in 2017 and 1,050 in 2011.


Polar Record ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trine Medby Fossland

ABSTRACTArctic Norway is a region with a shortage of highly skilled professionals and international expertise, in many work sectors. Fast growing cites attract people from other regions and also high skilled migrants. It is a paradox that skilled migrants often fail to get qualified work in the local labour market. To understand this and to capture the complexity of labour market participation, this article draws on interviews with recruitment agencies and highly skilled migrants, attending a recruitment programme initiated by the ‘Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry in Norway’. This paper draws on recent literature on highly skilled migration and analyses the complex and relational sides of labour market integration for skilled migrants in an urban Arctic town.


2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila V. Siar

This paper provides evidence that highly skilled migrants continue to remain connected with and deeply committed to their home country. These connections challenge the notion of knowledge and skills loss from high-skilled migration. Highly skilled migrants are also involved in remittance giving, which, although of the noneconomic type, offers new possibilities for building wealth. These are the so-called ‘knowledge transfers’ which consist of the flows of knowledge, skills and ideas to the home country. This paper analyses these knowledge transfers through the highly skilled Filipino migrants in New Zealand and Australia.


Author(s):  
Brad K. Blitz

Evidence shows that international flows of highly skilled workers are increasing, both between advanced states and between advanced and developing regions. The movement of skilled people around the globe is driven by a variety of political forces, including governments’ continued efforts to address domestic labor shortages and restock through preferential immigration policies and international recruitment drives. For social scientists, the unprecedented movement of highly skilled labor across the globe calls into question earlier approaches to the study of migration. Where international highly skilled workers were treated in the classical sociological literature on migration as a small population that reflected both the potential for human capital transfers between states and, more controversially, a corresponding “brain drain” from source countries, the realities of transnational migration now complicate this picture. The expansion of the European Union and other forms of regional cooperation have given rise to important trade liberalizing agreements, producing a truly global migration market and the policy context for much contemporary research. More studies are needed to tackle issues relevant to the study of skilled migration, such as estimates of skilled migrants, longitudinal studies of circular migration, and analyses of the differentiation of migrants by occupational group and country of origin, along with the relative access that such groups enjoy in the receiving state.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isik Kulu-Glasgow ◽  
Djamila Schans ◽  
Monika Smit

In recent years a growing competition for talent has emerged among developed nations. Policymakers across North-America, Australia and Europe have implemented targeted migration programs to attract global talent in order to gain the net positive effects associated with skilled migration. Research so far has mainly focused on analyzing such programs in traditional destinations for highly skilled migrants such as the United States, Canada and Australia. In this article we take the Netherlands as a case study of the more recent European involvement in the ‘race for talent’. We first describe how ‘highly skilled’ migrants are categorized in the various skilled migration schemes that exist in the Netherlands. Secondly, by using primary data on highly-skilled migrants who participated in one of these schemes we look at whether the policy measures attracted the intended target group. We conclude that policy measures that favor highly skilled migrants by themselves are not enough to attract talent. Having social capital in the Netherlands as well as the recruiting efforts of Dutch employers are more important in attracting highly skilled migrants. Also, being highly skilled does not necessarily mean that access to the Dutch labor market is without obstacles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
Armin Geertz

This introduction to the special issue on narrative discusses various ways of approaching religious narrative. It looks at various evolutionary hypotheses and distinguishes between three fundamental aspects of narrative: 1. the neurobiological, psychological, social and cultural mechanisms and processes, 2. the many media and methods used in human communication, and 3. the variety of expressive genres. The introduction ends with a definition of narrative.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Katherine Kirk ◽  
Ellen Bal

AbstractThis paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherlands, diaspora policies in India, and the transnational practices of Indian highly skilled migrants to the Netherlands. We employ anthropological transnational migration theories (e.g., Ong 1999; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) to frame the dynamic interaction between a sending and a receiving country on the lives of migrants. This paper makes a unique contribution to migration literature by exploring the policies of both sending and receiving country in relation to ethnographic data on migrants. The international battle for brains has motivated states like the Netherlands and India to design flexible migration and citizenship policies for socially and economically desirable migrants. Flexible citizenship policies in the Netherlands are primarily concerned with individual and corporate rights and privileges, whereas Indian diaspora policies have been established around the premise of national identity.


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