Which Skilled Temporary Migrants Become Permanent Residents and Why?1

While most countries of destination of temporary migrants expect them to return home, it is likely that some temporary migration will become permanent if the migrants decide that they would like to remain longer or indefinitely for various reasons. This paper examines the factors associated with temporary migrants’ decision to become or not become permanent residents and the reasons for their decision, using survey data on skilled temporary migrants in Australia. It also looks at whether temporary migration facilitates or substitutes for permanent migration and discusses the likely effectiveness of temporary migration programs that assume temporary migrants will return home.     

Come Back or Stay? Spend Here or There? Return and Remittances: The Case of Moldova

This paper examines the determinants and consequences of temporary and permanent migration from the perspective of migrant source countries. Based on a large and detailed household dataset on migration in the Republic of Moldova, the most important factors that influence a respective migrant’s decision whether to return to the home country or to stay abroad for good are presented first. Second, the remittance behaviour of temporary and permanent migrants is analysed to investigate how developing countries benefit from either type of migration. The results indicate that the most important determinants of permanent migration relate to the economic conditions at home and abroad, as well as to the legal status of a migrant in the host country. Furthermore, economic and political frustration plays an important role in the decision of permanent migrants not to come back. On the contrary, family ties as measured by the number of close family members at home act as a pull factor for migrant return. Interestingly, permanent migrants use source country networks that differ from those of temporary migrants, indicating that the return decision of individuals is influenced by the decision of their migrant peers. Concerning remittances, the results reveal that, in absolute terms, temporary migrants remit around 30 per cent more than their permanent counterparts. This outcome is surprising, because temporary migrants often reside in countries where wages are much lower. Overall, the findings indicate that when compared to permanent migration, temporary migration is favourable for developing countries, as it fosters not only repatriation of skills, but also higher remittances, and home savings.     

International migration policies: conceptual problems

Kritz reviews national concepts and policies of migration. She examines how nation-states approach migration and how they define who is a migrant. Policies for permanent, temporary, and illegal migrants are examined for selected countries. While the traditional permanent immigration countries--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US--continue to admit large numbers of permanent migrants, they are also admitting growing numbers of temporary migrants. Other countries, in Europe and the developing world, have different migration histories and use other approaches to admit foreigners--migrants are generally admitted on a temporary basis for work or other purposes. Growing numbers of these temporary migrants, however, do become long-term or permanent settlers, and the distinction between permanent and temporary migration policies becomes a short-term legal one rather than a long-term sociological one. Governments have been seeking those policy instruments that would allow them to improve control over who enters and settles in their territories, and temporary migration policies are the measures to which they are turning. While increasing restriction characterizes the policy stance of most countries toward international migration, this does not necessarily mean that the number of migrants entering is declining. Kritz argues that the concepts employed by countries in their immigration policies frequently do not correspond to the reality, making it necessary to examine the actual context.     

From Permanent Settlement to Transnationalism – Contemporary Population Movement between Italy and Australia: Trends and Implications

Australia has one of the largest communities of overseas Italians which has evolved from a number of waves of migration. The contemporary migration relationship between the two countries is complex involving movement in both directions, much of it temporary. This article demonstrates that although there has been little permanent migration from Italy to Australia for several decades there has been a substantial increase in non‐permanent movements in both directions. The article examines the characteristics of different types of movers and then addresses the implications of the mobility.     

From ‘temporary migrants’ to ‘permanent residents’: Indian H-1B visa holders in the United States

Literature on international migration from India in the past has focused on the formation and development of ‘Indian diasporas’; that is, Indians who have moved to various parts of the world and maintain socio-economic, cultural and political lives in India as well as other countries. However, little attention has been paid toward ‘temporary migrants’ who have migrated to different countries with a temporary visa and in the course of time extended their visas to become ‘permanent residents’. Temporary migration from India has become a common trend over the last two decades, especially since the acceleration of globalisation and the developments in the fields of information and communication technologies. Although it is argued that this type of migration took place in the past – for instance, Indians migrated to British, French, Dutch and Portuguese colonies during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries as indentured labourers for a period of three to five years and later extended their stays – what is new about the current trend is the new state policies of different host countries and the socio-economic and cultural background of the immigrants. This paper is an exploratory study of this contemporary phenomena of movement from ‘temporary migrant’ to ‘permanent resident’, a phenomena which has not been given much attention by academicians and policy makers in India. The present paper outlines this trend with an illustration of Indian H-1B visa holders in the United States.     

Temporary versus Permanent Youth Brain Drain: Economic Implications

Existing high levels of temporary migration between Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union (EU) have highlighted a number of concerns relating to the eastern enlargement of the Union. While much of the debate has focused on the destinations, we use Slovakia as a case study to explore economic implications for the countries of origin of highly skilled migrants. First, the paper examines estimates of the scale of “youth brain migration”, comparing survey‐based and expert‐opinion estimates with our own estimate based on reconciling labour market and educational data. This identifies a substantial loss of graduate workers from the labour force through migration, accounting for a potentially significant proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. Second, we consider whether such migration will constitute “brain drain/overflow” or “brain circulation”: in other words will it be temporary or permanent? In some ways, however, this is a false dichotomy, for there are strong links between initial temporary migration and intended permanent migration, explored here through a survey of the motivations and social networks of returned migrants. Third, we address the ability of national states to intervene to mediate such losses. We generally concur with other commentators on the need for a multi‐scalar and multi‐functional approach, focusing especially on economic development. However, we are pessimistic about the likely speed of economic convergence and, moreover, argue that initial temporary migration (with implications for permanent migration) will continue to be driven by non‐economic goals.     

A Model for Managed Migration? Re‐Examining Best Practices in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

This paper situates Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) within the policy and scholarly debates on “best practices” for the management of temporary migration, and examines what makes this programme successful from the perspective of states and employers. Drawing on extensive qualitative and quantitative study of temporary migration in Canada, this article critically examines this seminal temporary migration programme as a “best practice model” from internationally recognized rights‐based approaches to labour migration, and provides some additional best practices for the management of temporary labour migration programmes. This paper examines how the reality of the Canadian SAWP measures up, when the model is evaluated according to internationally recognized best practices and migrant rights regimes. Despite all of the attention to building “best practices” for the management of temporary or managed migration, it appears that Canada has taken steps further away from these and other international frameworks. The analysis reveals that while the Canadian programme involves a number of successful practices, such as the cooperation between origin and destination countries, transparency in the admissions criteria for selection, and access to health care for temporary migrants; the programme does not adhere to the majority of best practices emerging in international forums, such as the recognition of migrants’ qualifications, providing opportunities for skills transfer, avoiding imposing forced savings schemes, and providing paths to permanent residency. This paper argues that as Canada takes significant steps toward the expansion of temporary migration, Canada’s model programme still falls considerably short of being an inspirational model, and instead provides us with little more than an idealized myth.     

The need to import skilled personnel: factors favouring and hindering its international mobility

Skilled migration has become a major element of contemporary flows. It has developed in scale and variety since the 1930s and now takes many forms, including “brain drain”, professional transients, skilled permanent migrants and business transfers. Nevertheless, the data are poor, inconsistent and usually not differentiated by sex. The importance of policies, both national and regional, to control the movement of skilled migrants has escalated. Receiving countries have come increasingly to see the benefits from admitting skilled workers and have adjusted their permanent and/or temporary migration laws/policies to facilitate entry, usually on the proviso that it does not disadvantage their own workers by taking away their jobs. Another set of policy frameworks within which skilled migration is occurring is regional blocs. The experience of the European Union (EU) in promoting the flow of skilled labour, movement in this direction in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mercosul, the Closer Economic Relations (CER) Agreement between Australia and New Zealand and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum are analysed. The article poses two sets of issues facing sending and receiving countries. For sending countries they are: whether to free up or tighten migration; whether to support temporary skilled flows; whether to introduce protective or preventive measures to stem skilled emigration; how to encourage the return of skilled nationals; and whether/how to pursue compensation from post-industrialized countries. For receiving countries they are: whether to encourage temporary or permanent skilled immigration; the level of entry to permit/promote; how to select/process skilled immigrants; whether/how to protect the jobs of locals; and how they ensure the successful labour market integration of skilled immigrants. The article argues that the neo-classical view that skilled migration leads to overall improvement in global development does not apply. “Brain waste” or “wasted skills” occur frequently, to the detriment of both individuals and nations. Improved data and constructive dialogue on skilled migration are needed. Within both regional and international contexts, countries have obligations and responsibilities towards each other which need to be taken seriously.     

Sending countries and the politics of emigration and destination

This article examines available means and activities of sending countries in their efforts to exert control over the "long-term temporary" emigration process. In the European case, the structure of migration has provided sending countries with ongoing channels for promoting their interests. In this picture the political dimensions of immigration are analyzed as epiphenomenal, dependent, or inconsequential. It is assumed that 1) state power directly correlates with economic power, and 2) economic and strategic power differences between states necessarily imply inequality in social and cultural terms. Although emigration may not serve the long-term "objective" interests of senders, it does provide a short-term safety value from the point of view of political managers. Both sending and receiving countries' interests are best served by a system of temporary labor migration, not permanent immigration. The receivers' ability to act according to narrow economic self-interest is restricted by a host of multilateral agreements that regulate and define the obligations and rights of the participants in international migration. Bilateral agreements not only specify the conditions of recruitment, employment, and family migration, they also provide a continuing basis for sending country influence throughout the migration process. Sending states that have a long history of emigration tend to have more developed and articulated emigration policies and commensurate institutional structures to channel and control the migration process in all stages--leaving, working abroad, and returning. The reluctance of Europe's immigrants to serve their social and political ties to their countries of origin is reinforced by the sending countries' activities aimed at insuring the continued long-term but temporary nature of migration.     

Best Practice in Temporary Labour Migration for Development: A Perspective from Asia and the Pacific

The dominant mode of international migration in Asia and the Pacific is temporary contract migration of low‐skilled workers. The potential for such migration to deliver significant development dividends to origin communities is substantial because of its large scale and the fact that most migrant workers return to their home community. However, there are a number of barriers that are intervening to dampen these potential positive effects, such as high transaction costs, high costs of sending remittances, and the fact that some areas of origin lack the infrastructure and potential for productive investment. Moreover, destination countries have been very welcoming of high skill temporary migrants but highly restrictive in their attitudes toward their low skill counterparts. This paper discusses the lessons of best practice in temporary labour migration programmes in the region, which can help to overcome these obstacles reducing the positive development impacts of migration. It assesses, in turn, best practice separately for each stage of the labour migration process ‐‐ recruitment and selection, and pre‐departure preparation ‐‐ at the destination and on return. In conclusion, a number of the barriers which impinge on Asian Pacific countries’ ability to introduce and sustain best practice are discussed. These include the need for capacity building, lack of cooperation between origin and destination countries, lack of data, poor governance of labour migration a failure among governments to recognise the significance of migration and the need for more “development friendly” migration policies in destinations.     

Managing the permanent temporariness of prolonged migration: The role of local and transnational care circulation among Argentine temporary migrants in Australia

In the past two decades, Australia has shifted from being a settler nation that promoted state-supported permanent migration to one where the scale and relative importance of temporary migration schemes have grown significantly. In 2017, Australia was the second largest issuing country of temporary visa permits after the United States, with temporary migrants applying, on average, for 3.3 temporary visas and spending 6.4 years in this multi-step visa journey to achieve permanent residency . As part of a broader research project on the social implications of temporary migration programs, we examine how Argentine temporary migrants exchange care to navigate temporary visa restrictions and the permanent temporariness in which they live. Our central argument is that transnational and local expressions, practices, and processes of care are co-constituted in particularistic temporary migrant care configurations that facilitate prolonged migration projects and continuity of care over time, despite the precarity that permanent temporariness brings. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Argentine temporary migrants, we illustrate the dynamics in which economic, accommodation, personal, practical, emotional and moral care is exchanged. The findings reveal the central role that transnational economic and practical as well as local, including local virtual, proximity care has in the everyday lives of Argentine temporary migrants. Ironically, their fragile temporariness may be an incentive to develop local support networks or maintain strong transnational ties to survive living in limbo.     

Canada's Migrants without History: Neoliberal Immigration Regimes and Trinidadian Transnationalism

Temporary migration programmes have re‐emerged as a preferred mechanism for regulating labour migration in many migrant‐receiving countries in the past decade. In this paper, I consider the role of shifting Canadian immigration policies, notably the expanded streams for temporary workers, in the changing flow of migrants from Trinidad to Canada. Temporary programmes can bring workers to Canada relatively quickly, but they limit access to permanent residency and citizenship, in sharp contrast to most of Canada's earlier immigration policies. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals that Trinidadians actively seeking to make the move to Canada have little interest in new temporary work programmes. Rather, they continue to plan futures in Canada that they expect to be years in the making. I consider some reasons for this apparent refusal to submit to the new migration realities. I show that present‐day Trinidadian emigrant desires and practices are deeply connected to individual, familial and national emigration and immigration histories. Trinidadians are declining to participate in new immigration regimes and are restricting their migration practices to those forms that are historically familiar and have been proven successful. I attempt to show how ethnographic approaches that take seriously migrants' agency can assist in developing a fuller understanding of the ways in which migration flows are changing. These approaches reveal what are otherwise the silences and invisibility surrounding those whose previous access to permanent migration streams has been diminished through neoliberal restructuring of migration policy. I argue that temporary worker policies disregard long‐standing histories of migration and engagement with capitalist processes for people in particular regions of the world, rendering them, for policy purposes, effectively “people without history” (Wolf, 1982).     

Fleeting joy,divergent expectations and reconfigured intimacies: The visits home of Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore

For Filipino migrant care workers in Singapore, visits home are highly anticipated and longed for, but only as long as they remain brief. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this paper examines such visits as emotionally complex events that bring intense joy as migrants reunite with dispersed family members, but also reveal divergent expectations and feelings of loss and betrayal. These experiences are especially felt among migrant women given the gendered constructions of their migration journeys that demand strenuous relational work on their visits and far beyond. Visits home, nevertheless, are important moments through which migrant care workers re-orient their priorities and aspirations as migrants and as women over time, often leading to prolongations of their ‘temporary’ absences. The paper further examines how migrant care workers, many of whom are on temporary work contracts in Singapore, fear and anticipate the moment when short visits ultimately become permanent returns.     

Causes and Consequences of Migration in the Jequitinhonha Valley of Minas Gerais*

This study documents the recent development and expansion of temporary inter-regional labor migration in central-west Brazil. Several explanations for the expansion of this movement are investigated, including the financial crises that have affected Brazil's recent social and economic development. Temporary and permanent movement typologies are also examined in an attempt to discern why this region is now characterized by temporary rather than permanent moves. I suggest that permanent moves occurred primarily as a response to structural changes, while temporary movement resulted at least partially because of the country' recent economic crises. Examination of the consequences of this movement (for example, remittance usage) indicates that this temporary migration is more of a survival plan than a mobility strategy.     

Homeward bound: the circular migration of entertainers between Japan and the Philippines

One feature of globalization is the growing number of temporary labour migrants, but their experience of settlement does not always fit the dominant perspective of transnational migration. Unlike transnational migrants, circular migrants tend not to be equally entrenched in home and host societies, but instead hold feelings of greater affinity for the home society. They engage in repeated short periods of work abroad, an example being migrant Filipina entertainers in Tokyo, Japan. This article describes the settlement of these circular migrants and demonstrates how it is a process of returning to the home society that entails limited integration in the host society; they are routinely segregated in time and space. Migrant Filipina entertainers start thinking about their departure almost as soon as they arrive, and their departure is marked by a carefully‐planned ceremony, or sayonara party. Questioning the assumption in the literature that circular migrants will eventually become permanent residents, in this article I call for the formulation of new theoretical frameworks that better capture the qualitatively distinct experiences of circular migrants.     

Wages Differences Between Temporary and Permanent Immigrants1

Temporary “guestworker” programs are often assumed to have less impact on native-born workers than permanent immigration. However, there are theoretical reasons to expect temporary immigrants to accept lower wages and thus for temporary migration to have a greater adverse impact on receiving country wages. This article develops these theoretical insights and tests for differences in wages paid to temporary and permanent undocumented Mexican immigrants. Survey data from Mexico shows that temporary immigrants earned wages about 12% lower than permanent immigrants. Controlling for human and social capital, a 7.4% difference in wages remains. Among married immigrants, temporary immigrants earn 9.6% lower wages with these same controls.     

International migration in a changing world

This paper eulogizes the life and work of Gunther Beijer (1904-1983), an international migration research supporter, who was himself a refugee from Nazi Germany. The brain drain of professional workers of other nations into such traditional receiving countries as the US, Canada, and Australia particularly interested Beijer. The creation of many independent nations after World War II changed migration trends greatly. By the 1970s the immigration policies of receiving countries had changed to favor non-Caucasian professional workers and relatives of current residents. This new migration may be classified as 1) permanent settler, 2) guest worker, 3) professional transient, 4) clandestine, and 5) refugee. Non-Caucasian immigrants increasingly find that they may not be wanted when perceived as an economic or social threat. Beijer understood guest worker migration within Europe in the early 1960s, but he could not foresee the demands that guest workers and their families would place on receiving countries. Guest worker migration gives sending countries relief from unemployment and provides remittances; it also provides needed labor to economically health countries. Guest workers such as those currently employed in the Persian Gulf may not be accepted socially or politically by the host community and may be considered undesirable employees on their return home. Nations often tolerate illegal or clandestine migration when the labor need is high, but illegals may be expelled when economic or political conditions turn against them. The problems of the estimated 10 million refugees fall increasingly on developing countries, but must be shared by all nations since their increasing numbers affect domestic and international politics.     

BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS WITH THE DIVISION OF PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT

In the mainstream real business cycle (RBC) model, labor can be viewed as temporary employment since the firm's demand for labor behaves directly in response to stochastic productivity shocks in each period. This paper provides a tractable way of analyzing fluctuations in permanent and temporary employment over the business cycle, as well as the underlying driving forces. This inclusion of heterogeneity helps reconcile the RBC model with the U.S. data given that temporary employees in general only account for a small proportion of total private‐sector employment (about 2%–3%). We draw an explicit division between permanent and temporary employment and resort to this separation to account for stylized facts that characterize a two‐tier labor market. In particular, with regard to the U.S. labor market, our benchmark model can well explain the motivating facts: (1) temporary employment is much more volatile than permanent employment, (2) the share of temporary employment (the ratio of temporary to aggregate employment) exhibits strong pro‐cyclicality, (3) permanent employment lags by two quarters on average, and (4) the correlation between temporary employment and output is stronger than that involving the permanent counterpart. The quantitative analysis suggests that our proposed channels explain the main facts well and the model further provides plausible reasoning for a firm's labor hoarding. (JEL E24, E32)     

Rationalities and Images Underlying Labour Migration from Bangladesh to Malaysia

Most studies of temporary labour migration use economic models or examine the economic rationales of migrants to explain why people are moving. Although in migration research new approaches and perspectives have been introduced lately, temporary labour migration, especially in the global South, is still defined primarily as purely economic in nature. This article concentrates on the migrants and their rationalities for migrating, their networks as well as their perceptions and interpretations of the situation they are confronted with abroad to argue that concentrating solely on economic aspects means to lose sight of the tremendous role images and myths about migration in general and receiving countries in particular do play. Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia, who have contributed to the remarkable economic success of the country during the last decades, are in the focus. The construction of the images and the role networks play within these processes will be analysed using data gathered from field research in both settings. Of special interest in this context is the construction of a Muslim brotherhood between the countries for an understanding of the migration flows. This article intends to broaden the current discussions on temporary labour migration by analysing not only the different motives and rationalities but relating them to the constructed images in the new spaces that temporary labour migration has constituted. This important link is missing so far in studies on this global phenomenon.     

Estimation of International Migration in Post‐Soviet Republics

When annual migration data lack reliability, scholars apply alternative methods for estimating international migration. Yet, researchers note that alternative approaches have primarily been tested on developed countries, rather than developing countries that usually have dramatic migration shifts. I close this research gap. I use the example of 15 former Soviet republics to demonstrate several conclusions. First, I show that such alternative approaches as immigration‐by‐origin data of receiving countries do not result in reliable and valid estimates of post‐Soviet migration, given the large variation that exists in how former Soviet republics define “migrant”. Second, I demonstrate that population censuses, while a more superior alternative, fail to capture temporary migrants. In developing countries, the international emigration is mainly due to temporary (undocumented labour) migration. Third, I suggest that scholars and policy‐makers should apply household surveys as a possible alternative. However, while this method seems promising, given the limited use of household surveys in migration measurement in the post‐Soviet republics, future research by both scholars and applied researchers should explore the advantages and limitations of household surveys as an alternative source for estimation of migration. Finally, I outline methodological guidelines that researchers and scholars can advance on migration issues in the post‐Soviet region.