Lucie Cerna

The crisis as an opportunity for change? High-skilled immigration policies across Europe

ABSTRACT The recent economic crisis provided a shock to the system, and led governments to scramble for solutions to problems of falling economic growth, high unemployment and weak job creation. Many European governments responded to protectionist calls by restricting immigration policies, even towards the highly skilled. Yet countries have faced different challenges and thus the cross-national variation in the demand for policy closure or openness is remarkable. Some seized the opportunity to restrict their high-skilled immigration policies, while others took advantage of the crisis for further liberalisation. The article explores different reasons for this variation, ranging from socio-economic conditions, the inflow of labour migrants to the role of labour market institutions and political actors. Countries badly affected by the crisis and with a recent influx of labour migrants were more likely to respond to mobilised groups lobbying for restrictive policies than those countries weathering the crisis relatively better but suffering from continuing labour shortages. The article examines the changing conditions and the role of mobilised stakeholders to explain policy change in selected European countries. It also presents an updated index on states’ openness to high-skilled immigrants to measure change over time. The findings are based on position statements of stakeholders, official documents and media coverage.

High-Skilled Immigration in Context

This chapter introduces the topic of high-skilled immigration—in particular how high-skilled immigration can be defined and why it matters for various challenges such as decreasing economic growth, declining productivity, ageing populations, pressing labour shortages and increasing political and social tensions. The chapter explains how the ideas of this book fit into the current academic and policy debates on high-skilled immigration and presents the main arguments and the research design.

Measuring High-Skilled Immigration Policies

This chapter introduces an index of states’ openness to high-skilled immigrants (HSI Index), discusses its construction and presents the ranking of OECD countries based on the index. Since an explanation of the variation in the openness of countries’ legislative high-skilled immigration policies is sought, a ranking of these policies is required. There is no such data available, so the index is constructed to fill this data gap. It provides a snapshot of policy differences between countries in 2007 and then again in 2012. The index of states’ openness is further disaggregated into admission mechanism and work permit rights; these are composed of six indicators: numerical caps, labour market test and labour protection, employer portability, spouse’s work rights and permanent residency rights.

High-Skilled Immigration Policies and Coalitions

This chapter explains in detail the main assumptions and hypotheses behind the argument and sets out the political-economy framework for the following chapters. Three actors (native high-skilled labour, native low-skilled labour and capital) that build coalitions to achieve their preferred policy output—more open or more restrictive high-skilled immigration policies—are identified. From the six possible coalition scenarios, coalitions that include native high-skilled labour will be more restrictive than those composed of capital and/or native low-skilled labour. These coalitions are intermediated by two institutions, labour market organisation and political representation. Several hypotheses on actors’ preferences, labour market organisation and political representation are established which are examined in the case study chapters.

Political Representation of High-Skilled Workers

This chapter considers the impact of political representation on high-skilled immigration policy outputs. It analyses the positions of political parties, as well as the links between labour market actors and political parties. The chapter provides a comparative analysis between the case studies in terms of political representation. The countries display different degrees of representation of (high-skilled) actors and hence high-skilled immigration policy outputs. The chapter also offers a discussion of the impact of the global economic crisis on high-skilled immigration and considers in particular changes in policies and the institutional representation of actors. In some countries, representatives of high-skilled labour became mobilised to push for more restrictions, whereas policy liberalisations have taken place in other countries.

The Lobbying of Associations in the UK and the USA

This chapter analyses the impact of lobbying of professional and employers’ associations on high-skilled immigration policies and compares low-centralisation/low-coordination countries, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (USA). The USA has low union density, though it is bit higher in the case of the UK. Nonetheless, the two countries have active professional associations, which can serve a similar role to unions. In the two countries, both unions and employers’ associations have fairly low integration in policy-making. The UK and the USA can be found in the liberal market economies group, but have displayed different coalitions and hence high-skilled immigration policies. The chapter displays the high-skilled immigration positions of labour market actors and show different types of coalition that have occurred in these two countries.

Unions, Employers and the State in Germany and Sweden

The focus of this chapter is on the impact of unions and employers’ associations on policy outputs in Germany and Sweden. The two cases were selected because they both have high centralisation/coordination of unions and employers’ associations. Sweden also scores highly on union density, while Germany’s density rate is medium. Because of the high integration into policy-making, Swedish and German unions and employers’ associations are involved in negotiations with the government. They both fall into the coordinated market economies group, but have exhibited different coalitions and consequently high-skilled immigration policies. The chapter displays the high-skilled immigration positions of labour market actors and explains the different types of coalition that have been formed in these countries. The analysis draws on primary sources, media coverage and elite interviewing.

Concluding Remarks and Policy Implications

The chapter summarises the main findings on high-skilled immigration policies from 1990 to mid-2015 and highlights the book’s key contributions. It emphasises some of the opportunities and challenges high-skilled immigration presents for countries. In addition, the chapter discusses several policy implications that flow from the research. For instance, governments are increasingly under pressure as the competition for ‘the best and brightest’ is evident in both OECD and non-OECD countries. Governments have to respond accordingly to the ‘global competition for talent’. For example, they have to reconcile at times competing preferences of capital and labour and balance staying internationally competitive while maintaining the protection of workers especially prevalent due to the economic crisis, as well as maximising benefits but minimising costs.

The French State and (Silent) Labour Market Actors

The chapter places France’s relatively recent experience with high-skilled immigration within a comparative context and analyses state-interest group relations. Even though interest groups, such as unions and employers’ associations, are consulted, the state has played a prominent role in immigration decision-making. Employers’ associations have had better access to the state than unions, but they have been less vocal about policy liberalisation than their counterparts in Germany, the UK and the USA. Instead, they relied on home-grown talent and were less concerned about labour shortages than in other countries. France appears to be following a similar path as other labour-immigration countries, but the evidence suggests that labour market actors have remained rather silent and inactive on high-skilled immigration.