Is there a competition for talent? : highly skilled migration policy in comparative perspective

Since the early 2000s, a new paradigm in labour migration policy has widespread in Europe, replacing 'zero-immigration' stances: "managed migration". This stresses the positive impact of certain types of migrants in economic, demographic and social terms (Ruhs 2013, Duncan 2012, Chiswick 2011). The new approach entails that the states take an active role in designing labour migration policy, by facilitating the access to certain types of 'wanted' migrants (notably, high-skilled migrants - HS) and restricting access to other types of less wanted migrants (notably, low skilled - LS). Therefore, effectively managing migration means well selecting migrants. A hypothesis that has been put forward in the literature is that, in designing migration policies, the states try to achieve different objectives, i.e. fostering competitiveness on the one hand and ensuring fair distribution and protecting the national identity on the other hand (Ruhs 2013, similarly Boswell 2007). If the first objective would lead to a very liberal migration policy, the second would require more restriction instead. To cope with these diverging demands, states trade off openness of the policy in terms of numbers (i.e. to what extent the access gate for migrants is open) against openness in terms of rights (i.e. to what extent migrants and natives are comparable). However, since HS migrants are expected to be welfare contributors and more incline to integrate, the trade-off is expected to be less apparent for HS migration policy compared to LS. At the same time, states are thought as competitors for the limited supply of HS foreign migrants, and therefore convergence towards attractive policy for highly qualified is expected. So, the hypothesis is that there is convergence among member states in decoupling policies for labour migrants, by providing more open admission routes and more rights to HS than to LS migrants. My research question is i) whether this hypothesis is true and ii) whether competition for highly skilled prevails over national differences, or rather a spillover effect from a policy for one group to a policy for another group of migrants persists in MSs. I will answer these questions by building an 'openness migration policy index', drawing on existing literature (Cerna 2013, Ruhs 2012, Helbling et al. 2014), to analyse existing labour migration programmes. By doing this, I will tackle the question of what does openness mean: on the numbers-side, which is the scope of talent, how general (e.g. education and or salary) or sectorally is defined, which role is reserved for young migrants, which relation talented migrants have with the EU labour force (they compete on equal foot or there is a priority check); on the rights-side, which is the involvement into the community that HS migrants are expected to have (e.g. accessibility to long-term residency and integration clauses). I will present the data collected from 8 (IT, ES, FR, DE, UK, NT, SW, IR) countries in different EU regions and analysed through a principal component analysis, which allows to understand which dimensions prevail. I will measure the difference in terms of openness for HS ans LS and finally I will put forward some preliminary explanatory hypotheses.