Attracting the best talent in the context of migration policy changes: the case of the UK

ABSTRACT

Employment projections and skills strategies emphasise the importance of (highly) skilled labour for competitiveness. A strategic focus on ‘attracting the best talent’ globally may conflict with policies to ‘grow local talent’. This issue is considered in the UK context of a shift from a liberal immigration regime to a demand-led system characterised by increasing restriction, through adjustments to a points-based system to manage labour migration from outside the European Economic Area (EEA). The specific focus is on an annual limit on non-EEA labour migrants introduced in 2011 and tightening of eligibility criteria for entry of (highly) skilled migrants, amid business’ concerns that this might stifle economic growth. Drawing on 20 employer case studies and literature on skills and migration policy, the article investigates the costs and implications for business in adhering and seeking to adapt to migration policy changes. Such changes pose administrative burdens on employers and limit business flexibility but associated monetary costs to businesses are difficult to quantify. Adaptation strategies and the impact of migration rule changes vary: some firms experience limited impact, some adjust their recruitment behaviour and some feel their underlying business rationale is threatened. Developing local talent is a partial long-term solution.     

Labour migration brokerage and Dalit politics in Andhra Pradesh: a Dalit fabric of labour circulation

ABSTRACT

Why and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.     

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

New directions in exploring the migration industries: introduction to special issue

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue explores the directions through which we can take research on the migration industries. In this introduction, we review existing research on migration industries to look at how this explores questions on how migration industries foster, assist and constrain migration. In doing so, we argue that these questions have primarily been approached from three different perspectives: structuralist, labour market and mobilities, but these perspectives often speak past rather than to one another. In highlighting how these approaches can work together, the question that the Special Issue explores becomes how do the migration industries function and when/where/how do they intersect with other domains of migration. In highlighting the contributions that each paper in the special issue makes to answering this question, we show how an understanding of the migration industries is not just a research field in itself, but can strengthen our understanding of migration.     

Student-workers and tourist-workers as urban labour: temporalities and identities in the Australian cosmopolitan city

ABSTRACT

Ethnic and cultural difference have long been regularly encountered and produced in Australian cities. However, these processes have predominantly been understood through the lens of permanent ‘settler’ migration. Recent migration policies are seeing increasing numbers of transnational workers residing in Australia with various noncitizen statuses and uncertain temporal horizons. Among these are student-workers and tourist-workers, who, although constructed through transient mobilities of education and leisure travel, play increasingly important roles in Australian cities as migrant labour. Drawing on fieldwork with student-workers and tourist-workers in Melbourne and Sydney, this paper seeks to examine how the temporal and legal status of these mobile subjects is entangled in complex ways with particular sites of production, consumption and labour within the cosmopolitan urban environment. It looks in particular at how the identities of student-workers and tourist-workers are constructed through specific temporal and spatial boundaries within urban space as well as how they are implicated within hierarchies of labour and spaces of cosmopolitan consumption. This highlights some of the complex socio-spatial relationships between and citizen and noncitizen subjects both within and across ethnic boundaries in the cosmopolitan city.     

The making of ‘skilled’ overseas Koreans: transformation of visa policies for co-ethnic migrants in South Korea

This paper investigates a transient border between the temporary and (potentially) permanent migration schemes, by reviewing the changes in migration policies relating to Korean-Chinese (Joseonjok) co-ethnic migrants in South Korea in the last 10 years. We pay attention to Working Visit Status and Overseas Korean Status and the fluidity between the two visa streams, to argue that the government utilises the arbitrary notion of ‘skilledness’ as an indicator to distinguish the temporary from the non-temporary migrants. To interrogate how the visa system operates, this paper reviews politics between and within the government, the market and the migrants. Although the government rhetorically uses visa policies as a quality-control mechanism to selectively accept a desirable population, it can only do so by relying on the market to ‘evaluate’ migrants. However, Korean-Chinese migrants are welcomed in the low-skilled employment market to fill labour shortages, and they also contribute to the expanding migration industry as consumers, which stand at odds with the government’s effort to limit ‘unskilled’ migration. The relegation of the state’s responsibility to the market provides an opportunity for migrants to contest the border and negotiate with the state. However, their negotiation comes at the expense of precarisation of their legal status.     

Achieving the sustainable development goals: surfacing the role for a gender analytic of migration

ABSTRACT

This paper forms the introduction to the Special Issue: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the Gender, Migration and Development Nexus. This article takes a broad look at the changing dynamics of migration and development through the feminisation of globalised labour flows and the gendered experiences of categorisation by states and multilateral bodies, and the gender-specific vulnerabilities and outcomes of human mobility. We illustrate how a more nuanced approach to the SDGs that incorporates gender and migration is needed in order that policy and programming designed to achieve the 2030 Agenda is accurately informed and appropriately framed. In this paper and this Issue, we argue, that it is necessary to confront the SDGs with a deeper understanding of gender, migration and development in order to illuminate the interconnected globalised and transnational realities of gendered labour flows. With this aim in mind, we look to civil society participation and the role of the existing human rights architecture, as the key to ensuring that a deep, wholistic and ultimately universal application of the SDGs can be achieved addressing those populations whose rights to development have been undermined by dint of their migration or flight and applying a gender analysis to our understanding of migration and development.     

Moving citizens: citizenship practices among Polish migrants in Norway and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Following post-EU-accession migration, Poles currently form the largest group of foreign nationals in Norway and the second largest group of foreign born residents in the United Kingdom. Given the considerable volume of new arrivals, there is a growing literature on Polish migration to both countries; however, there is little comparative research on Polish migration across different European settings. By exploring how Polish migrants reflect on the possibilities of settlement or return, this paper comparatively examines the effects that permanent and ‘normalised’ mobility has on Polish migrants’ self-perception as citizens in four different cities. In addition to classic citizenship studies, which highlight the influence of a nation-state based institutionalised citizenship regime, we find that transnational exchanges, local provisions and inter-personal relationships shape Polish migrants’ practices of citizenship. The resulting understanding of integration is processual and sees integration as constituted by negotiated transnational balancing acts that respond to (and sometimes contradict) cultural, economic and political demands and commitments. The research is based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with a total of 80 respondents, conducted in two British and two Norwegian cities that experienced significant Polish immigration, Oslo, Bergen, Bristol and Sheffield.     

Neglected middle men? Gatekeepers in homeland politics. Case: Flemish nationalists' receptivity to the plight of Turkey's Kurds

Studies of transnational political activism or diaspora politics have tended to disregard the importance of political gatekeepers in the pursuit of immigrants' and refugees' political change back home Furthermore, when attention has been given to the crucial role of gatekeepers for politically engaged migrants to negotiate their ways into host-country politics, it has often been confined just to resumés of those involved and the activities undertaken. Rarely has research engaged with questioning political gatekeepers themselves about their personal beliefs underlying their commitments to the cause. Nor has research often looked into how certain alignments and cooperative relationships between transnational political actors and their gatekeepers in receiving countries came into being, and how such genealogies might lend insight into the transnational advocacy networks and the particular types of activities that transnational political actors have developed. This paper aims to help fill this lacuna, by providing original and unique insights into the genealogy of Flemish nationalists' support for Turkey's Kurdish nationalist movement, and thus also to testify to how investigations into political gatekeepers can improve our understanding of the ways in which transnationalism materializes.     

Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life: reactions of left-behind children in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential ‘care crises’ at home, and consequently a ‘care deficit’ for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents’ absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents’ decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children’s views in development and migration studies to improve both the children’s and families’ well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all.     

The role of language skills in the settling-in process – experiences of highly skilled migrants’ accompanying partners in Germany and the UK

ABSTRACT

The role of the family in the international migration of highly skilled migrants has often been disregarded. Highly skilled labour migrants follow a concrete job offer abroad and are structurally integrated into the new environment through the work place. On the contrary, the migration of family members is subject to different conditions since most accompanying partners initially do not work. However, accompanying partners are described as managers of the settling-in process of the whole family [Yeoh, Brenda, and Katie Willis. 2004. “Constructing Masculinities in Transnational Space: Singapore Men on the ‘Regional Beat’.” In Transnational Spaces, edited by Peter Jackson, Philip Crang, and Claire Dwyer, 147–163. London: Routledge] and their experiences can be crucial for the duration of their stay. Our paper explores the experiences of mobility of highly skilled migrants’ accompanying partners in Germany and in the UK with regard to their strategies and practices during the settling-in process. The main focus is on the role of language, the establishment of new social networks and labour market participation. The paper draws on the concept of capital accumulation and conversion [Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Education: Culture, Economy, and Society, edited by Albert Henry Halsey, 46–58. New York: Oxford University Press] and asks how partners make use of their cultural capital language after migration. Our paper is based on empirical studies in Germany and in the UK, which focus on the migration and settling-in processes of highly skilled professionals and their families.     

Migration decision-making and migration industry in the Indonesia–Malaysia corridor

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the involvement of migration industry (MI) in the migration system of Indonesia and Malaysia. The two countries share an extensive border and have much in common in culture and history but they are very different in geographical size, population and economic development, the latter being a main cause for labour migration from Indonesia to Malaysia. The changing context of government policies generates new niches for migration services taken up by formal and informal intermediaries, thereby confronting migrants with a varied migration-decision field and thresholds during their migration process. Much of the migration is legal, but a large part of it also takes place outside the control of the national governments. While taking mental processes in migration decision-making as starting point, we analyse how the MI, by way of fostering, facilitating and controlling geographic mobility and localised employment, connects to the production and negotiating of three migration decision thresholds faced by migrants.     

On ‘outsourcing’ the political in political science

ABSTRACT

Through a critical analysis of some of the most popular theoretical approaches in mainstream political studies, the paper draws attention to the dichotomist interpretations of the political made by political scientists in the context of social movements, either celebrating their ‘truly’ political and radical nature, or deeming them conformist and post-political. It suggests that both discourses, but especially the insistent discourse of de-politicisation by political scientists must be viewed critically as it contributes to what might be called as ‘outsourcing’ the political merely to social movements while reserving themselves the possibility of remaining politically non-engaged. In encouraging discussion on engaged scholarship in political science, the paper proposes that instead of expecting others to ‘reoccupy’ the political, political scientists should politicise themselves – and do so in a close relationship with social movements through the practices of unlearning privileges and solidarity based on the ‘ethics of sharing’, which can help to transcend the binary between political theory and political practice.     

Changing patterns of mobility,citizenship and conflict in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Mobility and migration are inherent ingredients of Indonesian cultures. In an archipelago with thousands of islands of various size, character and nature, mobility is an important means to make a living and to survive by migration. The right to free movement in Indonesia is constitutionally granted. It can create mobility and give expression to equal citizenship rights at the same time as it can trigger the enforcement of borders among cultural groups and the ethnification of local and regional politics. Mobility thus always comes along with immobility. Physical mobility of one group of people might cause immobility of another group or it might create cultural and political immobility in the same group. In places such as Eastern Indonesia, people have developed reciprocal means to integrate newcomers. Whereas the immigrants are usually disadvantaged citizens with regards to land and customary rights, those living in the area for generations have nonetheless become integral parts of quite peaceful local settings, one way or the other. The advancement of decentralization, democratization and direct elections of political representatives can lead to political empowerment, the promotion of ethnicity as election capital and changing patterns of belonging. This paper illustrates these ambivalences by looking at mobility in Indonesia more generally and how changing national policies and laws lead to reinterpretations of mobility patterns and trigger changes in relations between local population groups and existing mechanisms of cultural and political inclusion and exclusion. Butonese migrants in Maluku will here serve as a case study.     

In and out from the European margins: reshuffling mobilities and legal statuses of Romani minorities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the European Union

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the mobilities of Romani minorities between the ‘old’ EU Member States and the non-EU Post-Yugoslav space. It unravels how the mobilities of Romani individuals, who are Non-EU Post-Yugoslav citizens, were different from the mobilities of Roma coming from other post-socialist spaces, now EU Member States. Instead of focusing on motivations for mobility of Romani individuals as some previous work has done, this paper investigates the treatment of these mobilities by different states and the legal statuses these states ascribe to those labelled as Romani migrants. By using the combination historical and socio-legal analysis, this paper diachronically examines the precarious migrant statuses of Post-Yugoslav Romani minorities in the old EU, such as Yugoslav labour migrants, Post-Yugoslav forced migrants and subsequently the ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. The paper points to the interconnectedness of these statuses, but also to their interminable liminality: they are constantly on the verge of being rendered ‘illegal’ and are hence subject to deportability. I claim that while their legal statuses are being reshuffled, their liminality and interconnectedness also contribute to circular mobilities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. I investigate how these mobilities are not only socially produced, but are also legally and politically conditioned by the hierarchical relationship between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. As a side effect of this relationship, Roma are positioned as a racialized minority, treated only as temporary migrants in their ‘host country’ and without prospects of inclusion in their ‘country of origin’ as minority citizens.     

Immigration,anti-racism,and Indigenous self-determination: towards a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial

ABSTRACT

Anti-racist attempts to conceptualize Indigenous decolonial justice are preoccupied with the contested relationship between immigrant settlement and Indigenous self-determination. In the process, an ethically and politically driven practice of implicating immigrants onto the settler colonial project has emerged. Paying particular attention to the emerging concept of ‘immigrant settlerhood’ as a sign of severing of political economic considerations from theories of settler nationalism, I advocate for a comprehensive and concrete analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession (of Indigenous people) and precarious incorporation/resettlement (of immigrants). Next, since notions of sovereignty primarily enact the conditions for exploitation of immigrants and impale them onto the settler project via anti-racist claims, I propose ‘no border’ politics as a conceptual tool for confronting settler colonialism. Finally, considering the centrality of land/place in Indigenous self-determination, I reflect on the possibility of a ground between Indigenous rootedness and diasporic placelessness. This essay thus makes an attempt to conceptualize an anti-racist politics that could meaningfully respond to the settler-colonial project of simultaneous recruitment/resettlement (of immigrants) and dispossession (of Indigenous people) without casting social justice demands of Indigenous peoples and immigrants as inherently oppositional.     

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACT

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.     

Facilitating labour migration from Latvia: strategies of various categories of intermediaries

ABSTRACT

Within the broad category of migration industries, we focus on intermediaries between employers in Norway requiring migrant labour, and suppliers of Latvian workers willing to migrate. Mediation of labour power is a regulated domain in both countries, but regulations may change: regulations in Latvia have become more lenient, whereas in Norway, they have become stricter in response to increased migration. Intermediaries must be responsive to fluctuations in labour supply and demand, as well as to changing regulations. Today, destination countries are experiencing an overabundance of available migrant labour. This buyer’s labour market represents a challenge for intermediaries, spurring adjustments and side-stepping of regulations. Formal temp agencies are supplemented by informal ones, challenging the conceptualisation of intermediaries. Also work migrants may become agents, shaping new forms of intermediation and expanding the concept of ‘migration industry’ to encompass facilitation of labour migration through social networks. In this article, we construct typologies inductively, establishing categories meaningful in the complex context of labour migration from Latvia to Norway. We distinguish between mediation through formal versus informal agencies, establish characteristics of agencies versus individual social network-based mediation and discuss mediation through the posting of workers by companies.     

Mobilising diasporas for justice. Opportunity structures and the presencing of a violent past

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how the global dominance of the transitional justice (TJ) discourse and practice – and the controversies and conflicts that arise around TJ – have come to make up an important context for diaspora mobilisation. The article looks at the increasingly globalised mechanisms and norms of transitional justice as a set of opportunity structures – political, legal and discursive – which shape diaspora mobilisation. Diaspora engagement in commemoration, truth-seeking and legal justice in relation to atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka is studied. The article shows that in relation to Rwanda, state dominance and divides are largely replicated in the diasporic space, while the Sri Lankan case provides examples of how Tamil diaspora engagement have been able to reverse power dynamics around TJ. Combining opportunity structures with the concept of ‘past presencing’, the article shows how diaspora groups appropriate and strategise in relation to the dominant norms and practices of TJ, and how in doing so the past is performed and experienced in ways which are both personally and politically meaningful.     

Enabling,structuring and creating elite transnational lifestyles: intermediaries of the super-rich and the elite mobilities industry

ABSTRACT

This article considers how the migration industries lens can be usefully employed in understanding how professional intermediaries enable, structure, and create transnational migration lifestyles of the super-rich. In particular, we examine how intermediaries and their services (1) enable the continued sustenance of transnational migration lifestyles for this group of elites; and (2) structure and create elite transnational lifestyles. This article primarily draws on interviews with professional intermediaries who service the super-rich, and content analysis of their websites and brochures. Inspired by insights from the new mobilities paradigm (and in particular the politics of mobility), we argue for an expanded conceptualisation of the migration industries beyond the literature’s current focus on labour recruitment and migration management. Specifically, we suggest thinking of the migration industries as a collection of actors and services that enable, structure, and create different types of ‘migrants’, their spaces and their highly uneven transnational mobilities – including that of the super-rich and their elite transnational lifestyles. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that may help to better understand the role of intermediaries in the creation of differentiated mobilities.