Interjecting the geographies of skills into international skilled migration research: Political economy and ethics for a renewed research agenda

Abstract

There is now a large literature on skilled migration, which uses multiple definitions, concepts, theories and understandings of skilled migrants. However, this research has not adequately considered the geographies of skills—the spatial and temporal relations through which skills get meaning, are accrued and claimed and their outcomes and how these shape and are shaped by skilled mobilities and migration. This paper explores sites and networks as two interrelated elements of a geography of skills in order to highlight how they have prescribed, produced, prevailed and precluded who attains the skills to migrate. The paper goes on to outline how and why the geographies of skills and skilled migration matter in contemporary knowledge capitalism and the ethical issues they raise for a renewed research agenda on skilled migration. Crucially, it suggests that the spatio‐temporal configurations of skills raise not only empirical and analytical questions but also normative ones about the politics and ethics of skilling.

Emplacing English as lingua franca in international higher education: A spatial perspective on linguistic diversity

“…In this context, we can use 'geographies of science' to question the notion of English as lingua franca of higher education. In a similar fashion, we draw on 'geography of skills' (Raghuram, 2021), which has shown how skills are spoken about as universal, but are in fact spatially situated and contextual.…”

“…Here, the need for a lingua franca (currently English) in academia can be seen as a legitimate one, as it enables international cooperation among those who share the language, but in such an environment, not having 'the right' English skills means not being academic. As Raghuram (2021) has shown, skills are not universal or innocent either (see also Allatt & Tett, 2019 for a critique of the 'skills' discourse). Not all programme directors, however, agreed that the use of English was enough to define a programme as international.…”

New racism or new Asia: what exactly is new and how does race matter?

“…It highlights that not all forms of difference are inherited; some are acquired through vectors that shape and are shaped by the body in interesting ways. For instance, skills are not natural or obvious, but people are often racialized through skills (see McKay 2021; Tsuda, this issue; and for an extended discussion see Raghuram 2021). They are geopolitically coded and ascribed differentially based on colour.…”

Human capital space: a spatial perspective of the dynamics of people and economic relationships

“…There is a continuous call for attention to the role of the population in an economy, with talent (Florida, 2002;Faulconbridge et al, 2009;Nifo and Vecchione, 2014;Geddie, 2015;Yang and Pan, 2020b;Adler and Florida, 2021;Gu et al, 2021;Raghuram, 2021;Cui et al, 2022) and creative classes (Florida, 2005;Asheim and Hansen, 2009;Lorenzen and Andersen, 2009;Alfken et al, 2015;Audretsch and Belitski, 2021;Bergan et al, 2021) in knowledge economies (Asheim et al, 2007;Mudambi, 2008;Rantisi and Leslie, 2010;Cicerone et al, 2021;De Propris and Bailey, 2021). While globalisation has dramatically expanded the space for production (Coe, 2011;Werner, 2019), the returns on the factors of production decrease with a product surplus or competition among homogeneous products (Adhikari and Paul, 2018).…”