Policies on high-skilled migration

The index focuses on labour immigration (and related rights) in the EU27. The data reflect the policies in place by 1st of January 2012. IMMEX analyses admission schemes for migrant workers, looking at both general-worker schemes and schemes for high-skilled migrants. The index, which has been developed by the Migration Policy Group (MPG), addresses four domains: identification needs; conditions of admission; security of status acquired; rights associated with status. Dimensions are assessed through a set of indicators and policy options (principles of human rights and good governance). The policy options are designed to capture the scope of immigration policies with the first option representing favourable terms laid down in existing international legal instruments, national practices or NGO proposals, and in some instances EC legislation (enacted and proposed). The second and third options are based on less favourable or unfavourable provisions of EC legislation (enacted or proposed) or national legislation. Legal experts in each of the EU27 countries were asked to assess which of the three policy options comes closest to the situation in their respective country. The index is presented by scheme and country, for general migrant workers and high-skilled migrant workers.

The authors carry out a cross-country assessment of policies aimed to attract and select high-skilled workers. To capture immigration policy systems, they choose nine policy elements that collectively capture many of the key differences between destination countries’ policy stances. These instruments reflect policy categories comprising skill-selective admission policies (shortage lists, job offer requirements, labor market tests, PBS), and post-entry policy instruments (permanency rights, financial incentive schemes). Methodologically, the authors adopt a set of statements against which a 0 or 1 can be assigned to ensure consistency when coding our policy variables.

The Index addresses the admission programmes/policies for temporary and permanent high-skilled workers in 2001. The author presents two sub-indexes and one index: index of policies for temporary high-skilled workers and index for permanent high-skilled workers, and combined index of skilled immigrant competitiveness. Twelve countries are chosen, including the traditional countries of immigration (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States), the major European receiving countries (France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, and United Kingdom), South Africa and Japan. A list of comparative criteria is created for admission policies: Hard numerical caps; Strict labour market test; Extensive labour protections; Enforcement mechanisms; Limited employer portability; Restriction on dependents / working spouse; Limited permanency rights. A four point scale is used with a “4” being highly controlled and a “1” being highly competitive; and there are intermediate rankings of minimally (2 points) and moderately (3 points) controlled. The rankings are based on the addition of all points for each of the elements just described above, but converted into an index with the most “controlled” country given a value of 100.

Highly Skilled Migration and International Flows of Talent, Knowledge, and Capital (TKC) is a project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). TKC aims to improve our understanding of whether and how highly skilled migrants activate their social networks and leverage their role as international knowledge gatekeepers, contribute to solve cross-border information problems, and transform the brain drain into brain gain and brain circulation. Highly skilled workers play a key role in today’s knowledge economies, as they introduce and diffuse innovations that encourage economic growth and well-being. Migrants are an essential component of these highly skilled workers worldwide: in 2013, the worldwide stock of migrants stood at 230 million, namely 3.2% of worldwide population (UN-DESA and OECD, 2013). However, important variations emerge across skills’ groups: tertiary educated immigrants living in OECD countries augmented by 70% during the 2000s, with just 10% for low-educated ones. Migration rates for the tertiary educated are higher than for the rest of the population, and generally increase with further education. Thus, differently from the past, highly skilled individuals represent the most dynamic component of international mobility flows. Far from taking place exclusively along a South-North or East-West axis, highly skilled migration occurs also between advanced economies, with the UK, Germany and other European countries as both destinations and origins. Science, technology, and engineering migration contributes heavily to these trends, including to its geographical variation. TKC’s research topic stands at the cross-roads of different disciplinary approaches, ranging from the geography of innovation, the economics of migration, and IB studies. All of them can be re-examined within the general theoretical framework of diaspora economics. Constant and Zimmermann (2016) define diasporas as “well-defined group(s) of migrants and their offspring with a joined cultural identity and ongoing identification with the country or culture of origin”, and propose to put them at centre-stage in all studies concerning migrations. While migration is the necessary precondition for diasporas to exist, not all migrant groups are internally bound by diasporic ties, nor ethnicity is the only source of such ties. In the case of highly skilled migrants, professional ties matter, too, as they both imply different migration channels and cohorts, and allows for specific forms of interaction. TKC is a theoretical and empirical project, whose deliverables will consist in research papers and open access datasets. Its ambition is to enrich the debate on migration on a global scale, but especially in Europe and France, where the dominant focus on low skilled or refugee immigration both obscures the importance of highly skilled flows and contributes to negative stereotyping. TKC will be articulated in six work-packages, taking a complementary approach between the macro (country), meso (firm), and micro (individual) levels of analysis. TKC has a strong engagement towards collecting micro-data concerning specific categories of very highly skilled workers, such as inventors, scientists and executives, with the migrant status to be ascertained by available biographic information and/or name analysis. These data may provide a suitable and interesting alternative to more classic data sources, both because of their detail and for their pointing at homogenous professional groups, rather than generically tertiary educated workers.

This project asks how governments of migrant sending countries can influence the rights of their low skilled migrant workers in receiving countries. The project approaches this question from both the sending and the receiving country side; looking at factors that determine when and how sending states intervene and what determines the responses from receiving countries. The surplus of aspiring migrants and economic importance of remittances would suggest sending states have little bargaining power. Single case studies however suggest that some nevertheless intervene. A comprehensive overview of the drivers of immigration and emigration policy will result in a set of hypotheses. A survey of policy makers in sending countries will generate an overview of interventions by sending country governments. The project’s core is a systematic comparative case study of six sending countries with partly overlapping receiving countries and three of these receiving countries. The sending country cases are three sets of two countries in which migrant remittances constitute a similar share of GDP but involvement with the rights of their workers abroad differ; the Philippines, Senegal, India, Ecuador, Morocco and Vietnam. The receiving countries are South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Italy. These countries vary strongly in the rights for migrant workers and the level of cooperation with sending states. QCA and process tracing will be used to assess the hypotheses. The project is innovative in 1) providing a systematic analysis of a larger number of cases including countries rarely covered in comparative studies on migrant rights, 2) examining of the actions of both sending and receiving countries, and 3) taking the trade-off between migrant numbers and rights into account. The project will push theory development forward by connecting theoretical fields and expanding geographic scope. It is policy-relevant by providing further insight into how the rights of migrant workers can be improved.