Highly Skilled Migration

Subtitle:An analysis of how policy and research have yet to play catch up

Highly Skilled Migration "“ an analysis of how policy and research have yet to play catch up In this paper, we will attempt to identify gaps and links between prevalent migration theories and contemporary European policies "“ with a special emphasis on highly skilled immigration. We study recent research across disciplines that highlight the limitations of traditional approaches to migration study. These challenges are analysed alongside policies "such as the EU Blue Card Programme and Germany's Skilled Immigration Act " to question inherent assumptions and gaps. For instance, the premise of labour market and citizenship as the two pillars of mobility of highly qualified people remains largely within a nationalistic gaze. However, migration is no longer a two-point movement as skilled migrants transition from one country to another and may even chose to return to their home country or a fourth, fifth country, thus making them transnationals/ transmigrants rather than immigrants per se. Castles (2007) called for a global sociology of migration in order to better understand these nuances 21st century migratory flows. Attempting to map the changing demographics of London, Vertovec (2007) noted that policy and social science have yet to grapple with the changing social patterns of contemporary society. Massey (2015) argued that research has hitherto failed to study how the state (factors such as bureaucracy and politics) are a major influence on migratory flows. Though some recent policies have been geared towards spouses of migrants, Koffman (2004) noted family-migration has been largely ignored, while female migration remains an understudied aspect of mobility. Through this paper we hope to foreground these gaps in research and their policy implications, thus identifying areas of focus for future academic work.