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

Abstract

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.

Understanding access to the labour market through migration channels

“…Finally, a migration channel approach highlights the role of both state and nonstate actors in defining and selecting 'wanted' or 'good' migrants (Van Riemsdijk, Basford, and Burnham 2015, Findlay et al 2013, Hercog and Sandoz 2018a. Migration is never solely an individual project: it is also a business in which various actors have stakes Harvey 2015, Cranston, Schapendonk, andSpaan 2017), and it involves major political issues concerning who should be allowed to live and participate in a given society (Favell 2008).…”

Who Receives More Help? The Role of Employer Support in Migration Processes

“…Several authors in recent years have argued that the representation of citizens as sedentary subjects that differ from migrants based on the rights and privileges granted to them by the state is not sufficiently reflected upon in the academic literature (Dahinden 2016;Fassin 2011;Favell 2008). These authors acknowledge the central influence of political categorizations in migration processes, but they encourage researchers to maintain a critical stance to allow research to remain an independent field of knowledge production rather than a tool in the service of states (Hercog and Sandoz 2018a). They remind us that although political constructions such as nationality shape the possibilities of individuals to move and stay in different places (Wagner and Reau 2015;Kaufmann et al 2004), these categories are not neutral because they rely on political, economic and social dynamics that normatively construct migrants according to culturally situated values.…”

“…Although approaches that critically analyse migrant categories remain rare in the social sciences (Hercog and Sandoz 2018a;Favell 2008), several authors have contributed to this field by reflecting on the problematic dimensions of some commonly used categorization processes. They have shown that, although policies that select migrants based on their skill levels are often perceived as less discriminatory than other selection tools because of their merit-based approach, they nonetheless lead states to discriminate between migrants according to criteria such as their race (Tannock 2011), cultural closeness (Yeung 2016) and social desirability (Hercog and Sandoz 2018b;Simon-Kumar 2015).…”

Unequal Access to Support and Privileges

“…For this reason, migration is never solely an individual project but is also an industry in which various actors have invested stakes (Cranston et al, 2018;Groutsis et al, 2015). The business of migration involves major political issues concerning who is allowed to live and participate in a given society (Favell, 2008) and brings into play both state and non-state actors who define and select "wanted" or "good" migrants (Findlay et al, 2013;Hercog & Sandoz, 2018;Van Riemsdijk, Basford, & Burnham, 2015). Mobile individuals can in some cases benefit from these systems but have little control over them and, for this reason, depend on those who do.…”