High-Skilled Migration in Times of Global Economic Crisis

Abstract

We introduce two pioneering databases in order to analyze the implications of the Global Economic Crisis on international migration. The first details inflows of migrant workers of 185 nationalities to 10 OECD destinations, disaggregated by skill level (highly skilled and otherwise), between 2000 and 2012. The second comprises immigration policies implemented by 19 OECD countries between 2000 and 2012. We distinguish between six skill-selective admission policies, six post-entry policy instruments and three bilateral agreements. Subsequently we present preliminary analysis of these data against the backdrop of the Global Economic Crisis. The Global Economic Crisis negatively affected annual inflows of both highly and other skilled migrants between 2007 and 2009, although they resumed their upward trend thereafter. The starkest trends in policy terms include: the emergence and rapid diffusion of student job seeker visas, the relative stability in the prevalence of skill selective policies in the wake of the Global Economic Crisis, a greater use of financial incentives to attract high-skilled workers and increased employer transferability for migrants at destination.

The Gravity of High-Skilled Migration Policies

“…The data collection underpinning the current analysis took over two years to complete and proved particularly expensive. For the sake of brevity, interested readers are referred to Czaika and Parsons (2016) for a more complete overview of the data collection.…”

High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration

“…More frequent and/or topical data can be obtained from global or country-level surveys or from national administrative data sources that focus on particular corridors (say, from India to the Persian Gulf countries) or occupations. To the best of our knowledge, the only harmonized dataset of bilateral migration flows by skill level is that detailed in Czaika and Parsons (2016) and analyzed in Czaika and Parsons (forthcoming). Examples of the latter include databases on doctors Pettersson 2008, Bhargava et al 2011), foreign-born scientists (Franzoni et al 2012), Indian academics (Czaika and Toma 2013) or inventor mobility (Miguelez and Fink 2013).…”

Highly skilled migration between the Global North and South: gender, life courses and institutions

“…In their work on the effect of the global economic crisis on the flow of skilled migrants into 10 OECD countries, Czaika and Parsons (2016) observe that there was a steady increase of highly skilled migration between 2003 and 2007, but then between 2007 and 2009 there was a decline of about 20%. They further document an increase in migration from 2010 which resulted in flows of skilled migrants returning to pre-crisis levels even in the face of high unemployment rates in the OECD countries.…”