Thursday, April 14, 2016: 2:00 PM-3:45 PM
Maestro B (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
This panel explores from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective recent evolutions in the design of skilled migration policies and in the role of these policies in the toolbox of resilient European nation states. Recent literature on skilled migration points to a global ‘race for talent’ involving states in a reciprocal emulation game. This panel presents a more nuanced scenario: states engage skilled migration policies not only to attract desirable migrants but to express a variety of sovereign concerns and to reaffirm different national interests. Skilled migration becomes an outlet to reaffirm a sovereign power to control admissions. This same power is constrained in respect of other migration streams, such as EEA nationals benefiting from free movement, and asylum seekers. Relatedly, through skilled migration states reassure national communities that they stand as protectors of national welfare systems and labor markets: migrants are subject to quotas, labor market tests and economic self-sufficiency requirements. Further, through policies aimed at innovative entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals, states turn from border guards into active recruiters of desirable migrants, deploying new forms of agency and reshaping their sovereign role. The panel illustrates these instances through case studies of different European states and of Australia as a term of comparison and through the lens of both law and political science. The dialogue it engages in raises important questions on the role of migration management for the resilience and revival of national sovereignty and on the changing meaning of community membership in Europe and beyond.
Organizer:
Francesca Strumia
Chair:
Marija Bartl
Discussant :
Marija Bartl
See more of: Session Proposals
