UNIT 6: High-skilled migration, Apuntes de Relaciones Internacionales

¡Descarga UNIT 6: High-skilled migration y más Apuntes en PDF de Relaciones Internacionales solo en Docsity! UNIT 6: High-skilled migration Reading: Recchi, Ettore. 2015. "EU Movers: How Many are There, Where are They, What do they Do?” Chapter 3 in Mobile Europe. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. High-skilled mobility closely correlated with middle-class mobility is a relatively recent phenomenon, brought about by globalization. Middle-skilled classes have rarely moved (permanently) and the reason for that is that international migration is traumatic. However, it used to be even more (traumatic) in the past, when transportation and telecommunication were not very developed, so those with resources didn’t move. This explains why with this wave of globalization, individuals of middle class have started to move. Mobility is less traumatic with communications. In the past when one moved, one broke with all social ties, and now not, because you can contact them with instantaneous programs. This makes the experience less traumatic for them. Other reasons why high skilled migration (middle class) has increase in the last decades… The most important, globalization related factors is the increasing competition between firms across the world; the firms are in a race to attract the best talent available, no matter where is he located, and also attract him at the least cost. That’s why they offshore activities or break administrative barriers, providing incentives for cosy, conservative skilled workers to a new place. This is done through associations of big and small employers… These incentives are especially high in “north” or “highly developed” countries because as we said in previous lectures, highly developed economies have their comparative advantage in their abandons of high-skilled workers (high value added production). In countries where low-skilled workers are necessary, less developed countries have a comparative advantage. The barriers to the mobility of high-skilled workers are eliminated. Ex. Australia and Canada have used these policies. The barriers to move there as long as you have a university degree or high qualification are almost inexistent. Also there are incentives: most world inequalities are between country, providing incentives for high-skilled workers in less developed countries to move to highly advanced economies. Focused in northern countries, the reason why there are also incentives to move to other countries (in the north) is that the middle classes of the advanced economies are the losers of globalization. The educated middle- classes are suffering. Who are those high-skilled workers? Professionals, managers, engineers, technicians, academics, scientists, entrepreneurs… However, about half of those immigrants have an intra-international mobility (intra-firm channel); they move out of the country while remaining part of the same company. Transnational corporations are those with branches in other countries that allows workers to move within the same corporation. The reasons to migrate within corporations: 1. A worker’s strategy to get up in the hierarchy. Some employees think that they would be able to get promoted if they move to another country. 2. An organized firm’s strategy. 2.a. The firm encourages their workers to get experience with the different elements of the activity of that corporation. 2.b.Mobility is embedded/implanted in the company; as workers move up within the company they have to go abroad, it is neither a choice nor a encourage 3. Academic strategy. Academics who in order to gather/collect the skills to succeed in a highly competitive world, they decide to get a job in another country or to gain experience abroad. 1 Types of migration: • Intra-organizational mobility • Academic mobility. • Free-lance1 migration: they move without having a pre-established job The main problem of migrants is the recognition of your skills in other countries. The key obstacle of this kind of mobility is the lack of recognition of your skills to perform your profession. Highly developed economies are interested in attracting talent, so they put pressure on governments to remove administrative and other type of obstacles for this type of mobility. Obstacle example: the time that immigrants have to wait to get their visa. To make it easier: eliminate all barrios to mobility (you don’t need a visa). The region that has moved the furthest to assure easy mobility is the EU (removed all visa requirements in 1968). 1993 they went further, eliminating visa and passport requirements also for citizens, not only workers. The creation of Schengen Agreement (1985), like the expansion of the right of movement, was a strategy that wants to facilitate the mobility across European Union, promoting mostly high skills workers mobility. (The Schengen treaty was signed in 90s when central European countries hadn’t united. There were some countries in northern Europe who had shortages of high-skilled workers because they were growing old and losing population. Part of the tension today within the Schengen area comes to the fact that once EU had mobility (from all to all European countries) and the weight these migrations (from poor to richer countries) created on welfare state.) Welcoming environment for high-skill workers The main step to facilitate the freelance moving by professionals has been to come to certain agreements about the number of years of post-secondary education needed to get a certain degree. Since it is impossible to homogenise education systems is to accept the number of years needed to attend a particular profession as the main requirement. The Bolonia process is aimed as standardizing post-secondary education so that people who get a degree in one country can use it in another country. The problem is that the number of countries that sign to that agreement is still small and the laws are still small. Even if you fulfil those requirements very often different countries have extracurricular requirements that make more difficult to move and start working in another place. • The most important obstacle: language requirement. • Other type of extra requirements are practical training, for instance in the medical profession. The US has a very good medical training that is very expensive and requires a number of years of learning, and then years of practice. If a Spaniard goes there, even if he has completed the number of years, you cannot work as a doctor if you haven’t finished the training period. Those types of barriers exist, even within the European Union in some regulated professions (for ex. law). All kind of obstacles that are extra- legal (that go beyond the requirement of having completed 5 or 6 years of education) that makes difficult for people to move from one country to another. • Other obstacles less tangible (that for ex. affect a lot of professors). The middle classes in countries earn money (have economic and cultural capital), and also have social capital: contacts (middle classes>lower classes). That means that for them, mobility creates a problem because once you move you find yourself you find yourself at a lower level than those you live there. When you move for adventure, you don’t care about that because you are excited and you forget those things. As time passes, you start realising 2 1 Free-lance = self-employed = independent