A warm welcome to highly‐skilled migrants: how can municipal administrations play their part?

Abstract

The global competition for highly-skilled professionals and their knowledge has grown over the past decades. Cities have increasingly become aware of the importance of highly-skilled labour for their future development. The aim of our paper is to analyse urban policies towards highly-skilled migrants. Our paper is based on empirical research in three German university cities, Aachen, Bonn and Cologne. Our results emphasize that there is a growing awareness of local policy-makers concerning this topic. We found that the cities made efforts to create a welcoming culture in order to attract and retain highly-skilled migrants. However, there are differences between our cities regarding their approaches to attract highly-skilled migrants.

Diaspora strategies: Actors, members, and spaces

“…Beyond the realm of skilled return, an embryonic literature on the involvement of subnational bodies in connecting with and rallying economically valuable migrants is noteworthy. Conforming with the recent “urban turn” in migration studies (Glick‐Schiller & Çağlar, ), this strand is mostly concerned with municipal policies aimed at creating a friendlier “receiving context” for skilled, nonethnic migrants (Föbker, Temme, & Wiegandt, ; Nijenhuis & Leung, ), although sporadic evidence for similar frameworks for diasporic returnees have also been found (Chacko, ).…”

Socio‐Cultural Incorporation of Skilled Migrants at Work: Employer and Migrant Perspectives

“…In the absence of a strong government‐led incorporation scheme for skilled migrant workers, employers, municipal governments (Föbker et al., ; Glick Schiller and Çaglar, ), immigrant organizations (van Riemsdijk, ), and labour unions play increasingly important roles in the incorporation process (OECD, ). In the following sections, we analyse the ways in which companies, managers and colleagues facilitate or hinder the socio‐cultural incorporation of skilled migrants in the workplace.…”

Introduction to the Dossier: Institutions and Skilled Mobility

“…The local level is also the main focus of the third paper by Stefanie Föbker, Daniela Temme and Claus‐C. Wiegandt (). It provides an analysis of the role of highly‐skilled migrants for local development, and the position of three German municipalities – Bonn, Aachen and Cologne – in the field of migration policy.…”

“…However, it is precisely at the local level, namely the level of cities and municipalities, where the demand for skilled migrants materialises and that accompanying policies are necessary (see Föbker et al . ).…”