When Politics Trumps Economics: Contrasting High-Skilled Immigration Policymaking in Germany and Austria

Abstract

High-skilled immigration (HSI) policy has become of increasing interest among immigrant destination countries, but success in establishing liberal policies has varied considerably across countries. Focusing on two reluctant immigration states, Germany and Austria, this article explains why HSI policy reforms in these two countries have led to starkly diverging outcomes. Whereas previous studies have concentrated on the politics of organized labor market actors and the market-institutional context in which they are embedded, this article contends that variation in HSI policy liberalization also reflects increasing politicization through issue linkage to adjacent immigration domains, in this case, immigrant integration policy. The findings challenge the predominant interest-group–centric work on HSI and show how arguments for and against liberalization can traverse immigration policy domains.

Immigrant workers' movements in the U.S.: Where are high‐skilled ‘nonimmigrants’?

“…Gordon (2007) suggests that immigrant labor mobilization needs to conceptualize ‘transnational labor citizenship’ foregrounding how immigrants build ties with labor advocacy networks and unions across borders. But even ‘transnational labor citizenship’ remains fraught with intersectional differences of class, gender, race, ethnicity, visa status, geographical locations and varying labor norms (Chacon & Davis, 2006; Choudry & Hlatshwayo, 2016; Jaskulowski & Pawlak, 2019; Kolbe, 2020; Lu & Hou, 2020; Subedi & Rosenberg, 2015; Thomas, 2020; Wilkes et al., 2008).…”

Hidden in Plain Sight: “Neutral” Enclosures for High‐Skilled Immigrants During COVID‐191

“…Marking these less visible processes helps us to better understand the control mechanisms that are first tried on migrants and/or colonized subjects and then expanded to wider swaths of marginalized citizens (see Boatc a 2021; Kannabiran 2016;Samaddar 2018Samaddar , 2020. While most sociological studies pay attention to immigration laws, and some to the policies and political discourses (Daniels et al 2021;Del Real 2022;Kolbe 2021) the cumulative processes of the neoliberal migration regime directed at the highly skilled migrants are built through laws, policies, discourses, and the constant changes introduced in response to various real and imaginary crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Islamophobic apprehensions of terrorism. These need to be read simultaneously to understand the mechanisms of migrant control.…”

“…While most sociological studies pay attention to immigration laws, and some to the policies and political discourses (Daniels et al. 2021; Del Real 2022; Kolbe 2021) the cumulative processes of the neoliberal migration regime directed at the highly skilled migrants are built through laws, policies, discourses, and the constant changes introduced in response to various real and imaginary crises such as the COVID‐19 pandemic and Islamophobic apprehensions of terrorism. These need to be read simultaneously to understand the mechanisms of migrant control.…”