14 Sep Three new Working Papers
Three new Working Papers are now available in our «Publications» section:
«Inventory of programs aimed at attracting international students and academics to the EU»
This report aims at examining main political debates and legislations targeting foreign students and academics in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom since 2000.
Several changes in migration policies have occurred these recent years in the UK, France and Spain that affected the conditions of entry and stay of foreign students and academics coming to these countries. While in the UK migration policies became more restrictive since 2010, France adopted a more selective approach with the aim to diversify the geographical origin of students and academics and select more thoroughly those who are allowed to stay in France after the completion of their post-graduates studies. Spain is trying to promote the internationalisation of its higher education and research system with the adoption in 2008 of the “Estrategia Universidad 2015” – which includes measures to attract more foreign students and academics – while coping with the limited resources due to the effects of the economic crisis. These legal reforms and policy efforts to affect the internationalization level of the university system at its lower and higher ranks, from undergrad students to researchers and academic positions, are hard to evaluate in the short term, as it will be shown in Working Paper 3.
«Inventory of programs aimed at attracting High-Skilled migration to the EU»
This report concentrates on four TEMPER country destinations (Italy, France, Spain and the UK) to explore the policies fostering the migration of high skilled immigrants (HSM).
The report succinctly reviews the literature on the benefits of HSM and the policy innovations existing internationally. The country analysis is qualitative and does not refer to demographic dynamics. It shows that while HSM policies are largely developed and sophisticated in the UK than in France and, specially, in Spain and Italy, there is some space for convergence across countries. Despite its evident benefits, HSM policies are not a-cyclical and have suffered a number of adjustments during the economic downturn. The general approach to defining skills based on education has been overcome in all three countries. Only the UK and France have taken a decisive step forward in developing supply driven policy schemes, while Spain and Italy remains strictly attach to an underdeveloped demand driven model.
«Analyses on selectivity and returns to human capital in France, Italy, Spain and the UK using individual level data»
This report contributes to the overall objective of TEMPER High Skilled Migration Research Area, namely to disentangle the role of market conditions and policies as determinants of high skilled migration in four EU destinations countries (France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom). Locating comparable international data is a limitation for the type of research we need to develop here. PIAAC (OECD) and the ESS-cumulative file, represent acceptable alternatives. The report uses ESS data to describe the selectivity of immigration flows into our four destination countries. Secondly, PIAAC data helps us to analyse migrant native differentials in the returns that individuals get to their education. Being able to obtain the most from one’s educational investments is key to describe the market conditions in which high skilled migrants interact with their host societies. The report offers two clear conclusions. The United Kingdom is the single most attractive TEMPER destination for the most educated migrants both because of the profile of migrants attracted and because it minimizes the disadvantage of more educated migrants in terms of risk of unemployment, temporality and over-qualification. France lags rather behind the UK, somewhere close to Italy and Spain.