Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Highly skilled immigration'

This thesis project examined underemployment at the state and national levels. Underemployment is the inability of highly skilled migrants with degrees from their home countries to enter the workforce in the receiving country. Pending and enacted legislation was analyzed at the state level to determine in which ways the state of Oregon can implement similar policies to effectively incorporate underemployed immigrants into the state workforce. This project utilized primary data sources at the state and federal level, migrant interviews were used as illustrations of the barriers that exist for underemployed migrants, and secondary data sources from the fields of economics, social sciences, political sciences, and population studies were utilized to provide an understanding of how underemployment is addressed at the national level. Overall, my research found underemployed professional migrants are greatly underutilized, which translates into missed economic opportunities for individual migrants and for the United States as a whole.

L'économie mondiale actuelle est marquée par une forte rivalité entre États. Ces derniers se doivent ainsi d'être le plus compétitifs possible. Dans ce contexte, l'immigration économique a indéniablement un rôle à jouer. Elle peut en effet donner au marché du travail le personnel dont il a besoin, que ce soit en matière de travailleurs hautement qualifiés ou uniquement pour faire face à des pénuries de main-d'œuvre. Par conséquent, l'Union européenne et ses États membres se doivent d'agir afin de se montrer attractifs en matière de recrutement de travailleurs extracommunautaires. À la suite du livre vert de 2005 sur la gestion des migrations économiques, l'Union a fait le choix de se focaliser sur des directives sectorielles relatives à l'admission de certaines catégories de travailleurs extracommunautaires. La directive majeure qui en est ressortie est celle relative à l'admission des travailleurs hautement qualifiés. En agissant de la sorte, l'Union a souhaité rivaliser avec les autres pôles d'attraction de main-d'œuvre que sont notamment les États-Unis. Dans cette perspective, l'Union a-t-elle réussi son pari ? En outre, la question de l'immigration économique renvoie immanquablement au statut des travailleurs extracommunautaires. Ces deux notions sont d'ailleurs étroitement liées. Il ne saurait être question de statut s'il n'y avait pas eu immigration. À l'inverse, il ne pourrait y avoir d'immigration en l'absence d'un statut avantageux pour le migrant. Les États souhaitant développer l'immigration du travail se doivent ainsi de garantir un ensemble de droits protecteurs aux travailleurs extracommunautaires. Le statut revêt en effet une importance capitale dans le choix d'une destination. Partant de là, quel est le statut réservé aux travailleurs extracommunautaires au sein de l'Union ?
The present global economy is characterized by a strong rivalry between States. Therefore they have to be the most competitive they can be. In this context, there is no doubt the economic immigration has a role to play. It can indeed give needed workers to the labour market, whether concerning highly qualified workers or only in order to answer labour shortage. As a result, European Union and its Members States must behave in order to seem attractive regarding the recruitment of extra community workers. After the 2005 green paper on an approach to managing economic migration, the Union chose to focus itself on sectoral directives regarding the admission of some categories of extra community workers. The major directive that came out is the one dealing with the admission of highly skilled workers. By doing so, the Union wished to compete with the other attracting labour poles such as the United States for example. From this point of view, did the Union succeed ? Furthermore, the question of economic immigration inevitably refers to the extra community workers status. In fact, these two notions are highly connected. We would not talk about status if there were no immigration. On the contrary, immigration could not be possible without a favourable status for the migrant. The States which want to encourage economic immigration must guarantee a package of rights protecting extra community workers. This is why the status is really important in choosing a destination. Hence, what is the status reserved for extra community workers within the Union ?

The researcher of this study " Indian Migrants and Self-Initiated Expatriates in the host Countries: the Focus on Social Support" the whole study about the Indian expatriates who are living in the United Kingdom and the main goal of this research is to predict how successful the Indian expatriates in their settling process in the UK and the focus of social supports. The sample includes both Self-initiated expatriates ( SIE's) and Assigned Expatriates(AE's). SIE's expatriates are Indian students who are studying in the UK and the AE's expatriates are the company assigned Indian full-time employees. Social support includes briefly the overall host country support provided for Indian expatriates in the host country. Social support is measured in three broader dimensions pertinent to Waxin cross-cultural adjustment model (2006), likely perceived organizational support, individual self-motivation, and contextual support, includes family support and host country environment. (Navas et al, 2005) classified six relevant contexts of acculturation of expatriates in a foreign country, which emphasize, politics and government, organizational work-related adjustments, economic perspective, family relations; social relations and ideology, which includes religious belief and customs. The structure of the thesis covers extensive theoretical part based on the intense review of literature in the field of expatriation, cross-cultural studies, information on this context about the United Kingdom and India and final part includes practical data analysis, business cases and recommendation for the future research.

For years, corporations in the United States have criticized the native workforce for not having enough qualified workers who are skilled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Changing the immigration system could solve their problem. Current debates about how to best accomplish this task stem from different perceptions of whether high-skill immigrants adapt to the labor market, suffer from labor market disadvantages or meet rapid earnings growth. This study examines the initial wage gap immigrants working in the scientific research, development and testing services industry face upon entry to the United States as well as their income assimilation patterns. Ultimately, this paper provides evidence of a wage gap in this industry for recently arrived immigrants and otherwise similar natives, as well as confirms that the earnings for male immigrants in the industry tend to converge toward native levels the longer they remain in the country. Therefore, these results can provide valuable perspective on present immigration debates about whether to reduce immigration levels or change the skill composition of new immigrants.

The aim of our study is to investigate the effect of immigrants on wages for natives with divergent skill level within one country. Skill level is measured as education level and the purpose is to focus on the level where it according to us is a lack in research, namely the effect on high skilled native-born worker wages. Further, our contribution to the already existing studies may be considered to be a complement. Using panel data, collected from the time period 2000-2008 for the 290 municipalities in Sweden to get regional variation, we investigate and interpret the estimated outcome of how wages for native-born workers in the Swedish labor market respond to immigration into Sweden. The main findings, when controlling for age, unemployment, and differences between year and municipalities in this study are on the short run, in line with the theory. The closer to a substitute the native-born and foreign-born workers are, the greater are the adverse effect on the wage for native-born, given that we assume immigrants as low skilled. The effect on wage for high skilled native workers in short run, when assuming immigrants and natives as complement, is positive, i.e. the wage for high skilled natives increases as the share of immigrants increases. The effect on high skilled native-born wages is positive even in mid-long run and adverse for the low and medium skilled native-workers. This is not an expected outcome since we according to theory predict the wage to be unaffected in mid-long run. This may be the result of errors in the assumption that immigrants are low skilled, or that five years is a too short time to see the expected effect in the long run; the Swedish labor market may need more time to adjust to what we predict the outcome to be.

Thesis advisor: Eve E. Spangler
Thesis advisor: C. Shawn C. McGuffey
My dissertation, “Race, Religion, and Class at the Intersection of High-Skilled Immigration,” takes a comprehensive approach to understanding the contemporary contexts of U.S. immigration underlined by Islamophobia and neo-liberal conditions of the U.S. economy. Methodologically, the data for my dissertation comes from the lived experiences of first-generation South-Asian Muslim immigrants arriving as young adults in search of their American dream, pursuing their graduate education in the fields of liberal arts, and science and technology, finding job prospects as high-skilled labor, growing into families, and emerging as American citizens. I study their acculturation and integration experiences, using two distinct groups of high-skilled migrants, i.e., short-term (international students) and long-term (permanent-residents), for which I conducted a total of 68 life-history interviews across the two categories. These ethno-racial and religiously othered identities located at the confluence of their Asian American and South Asian identities, model minority stereotypes, and racialized Muslim constructs present a unique window in examining the social and cultural processes of high-skilled immigration underlined by the political contexts of the War on Terror (WOT) era, and the recent Muslim ban. I study these intersectional identities using the case of Pakistani migrants, who continue to be the largest Muslim immigrant group by national origins in the U.S. Moreover, they also have higher skill levels than the native population (MPI 2015), making the non-white, Pakistani Muslim immigrant experience in the U.S. ideal for the study of high-skilled immigration.The first chapter, titled “Double Consciousness: How Pakistani Graduate Students Navigate Their Contested Identities in American Universities,” contributes to the knowledge of contemporary contexts of Islamophobia. It presents a global and transnational frame to DuBoisian theories of double consciousness, illustrating how Pakistani graduate students perceive their religious and national identities as threatening within the Western political constructs of Islamic terrorism. They experience a sense of twoness as they pursue their academic lives in the United States. While they see their religion as an extension of their cultural selves, they battle with the social constructions of terrorism imposed on their Muslim and Pakistani identities by the American political rhetoric on WOT. Thus, continuously challenging the stereotypes surrounding their contested identities as global Muslim migrants. The research has been published alongside educational policy practitioners and academics in a Springer publication titled International Students from Asia: The Two-Way Street of Learning and Living Globalization. The second chapter, titled “Gendered acculturation: Pakistani international graduate students navigating U.S. culture,” is a publication in the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and presents new ways of thinking about the acculturation of non-white migrants as a gendered process. I demonstrate that the interplay of their intersectional identities underlines their acculturative strategies. Moreover, their gender identity emerges as a master status, shaping how they interact with different aspects of American culture distinct from their home cultural settings. The third article, titled “From 9/11 to Travel Bans: The Contemporary Ethno-Racial, High-Skilled Muslim American experience,” focused on the experiences of long-term immigrants, examines how South Asian Muslim Americans come to terms with the outburst of Islamophobia surrounding their ethno-racial and religious identities. The study theoretically contributes to understanding the intersectional relationships of upwardly mobile classed, gendered, and racialized immigrant identities that conflate the issues of race and religion. Bringing together racialization theory, intersectionality theory, and the concept of master status, I demonstrate how high-skilled Muslim immigrants present their understandings of the Islamophobic contexts of the American mainstream. I show that while their religious identity serves as a master status to their racialized experiences, the intersectional dimensions of their complex identities are crucial to how they experience overt and covert forms of Islamophobia in their personal and professional lives
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Sociology

The Sweden Democrats have gained considerable political success in recent years, as have many other right-wing populist parties in the West. We theorize that the economically weakest and least educated parts of native society are the ones who experience, real or imagined, the most pressure and competition from immigration. Skill level is divided into three different categories, depending on education. These are "low-skill", "medium-skill" and "high-skill". We expect that immigration should make the low-skilled and medium-skilled more prone to vote for the SD, when compared to the high-skilled natives. We use survey data from the SOM institute of Gothenburg University, as well as municipal data from Statistics Sweden, to test the hypothesis. Our results seem to show that the support for the SD among low-skilled natives increases when immigration increases, compared to high-skilled natives. No such effect is observed for the medium-skilled natives.

With the recent influx of foreign-born individuals migrating to Sweden, this study aims to answer the question, “do high skilled foreign-born individuals relate positively to average wages in Sweden?”. We specifically observe high skilled foreign-born individuals and their contribution to the average wage across different municipalities in Sweden between the years 2011 and 2018. The method carried out in this study consisted of an empirical analysis where the significance of economic factors was interpreted in order to understand the variation in wages. The data was extracted from Statistics Sweden. The relationship of the share of highly educated foreign-born individuals has proved to be insignificant with respect to average wages in Sweden. Different theories are discussed in this paper in order to identify the key labour market outcomes due to the labour supply shock. Our findings disclose that differences in wages are present, meaning that natives and foreign-born individuals are complements in the short run

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
In recent years, Brazil has been experiencing frequent influx of foreign professionals seeking work in the country. As a result of Brazil's resilience to the global financial crisis started in 2008, the country has become an increasingly attractive destination for immigrants, constituting a unique opportunity to attract talent in the international market and thus promote the development of the country more effectively. The objective of this dissertation is to study the high-skilled immigration in Brazil in the 21st century. Through survey data obtained from the Ministry of Labour of Brazil (2012) more than 73,000 immigrants arrived in Brazil in the year 2012, which represents an increase of over 50% compared to 2009. Much of this contingent is made up of professionals with higher education and with high technical expertise. They are highly qualified which made them wanted by any transnational company in a globalized world where knowledge is the key requirement to develop a country like Brazil. We intend to analyze these immigrants, their countries of origin, professional activity, in which areas they work in Brazil, gender and level of education. We will start a field research through interviews with immigrants to know about their trajectories, the reasons that brought them to Brazil and their experiences in working in a country so distant and multiethnic. It is therefore an empirical research, exploratory and incorporates bibliographies and surveys of a documentary nature, from which yielded quantitative and qualitative information. The work raises chances that the international economic crisis and social networking were important factors in the decision to migrate to Brazil. Hypotheses that will be confirmed by the search result. Although the phenomenon of skilled immigration is not recent, it is little studied and the dissertation will enrich that study by presenting a single fact in the history of Brazilian immigration with a wealth of amazing data about this new international migratory flow which begins in the 21st century, where high professional qualification requirement determines human mobility on the world stage
O Brasil vem presenciando nos últimos anos um aumento frequente de profissionais estrangeiros que buscam trabalho qualificado no país. Como resultado da resiliência brasileira perante a crise financeira internacional iniciada em 2008, o país se tornou um destino cada vez mais atraente para os imigrantes, o que constitui uma oportunidade única para atrair talentos no mercado internacional que possam contribuir de uma maneira efetiva para o desenvolvimento do país. O objetivo do trabalho é discutir e analisar a imigração qualificada para o Brasil no século XXI. De acordo com dados fornecidos pelo Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego do Brasil, mais de 73.000 imigrantes chegaram ao Brasil no ano de 2012, o que equivale a um aumento de mais de 50% em relação a 2009. Grande parte deste contingente é constituída por profissionais com ensino superior completo e com alta especialização técnica. São profissionais altamente qualificados que os fazem serem requisitados por qualquer empresa transnacional no mundo, mas principalmente no Brasil que ainda não os dispõe em número suficiente para satisfazer as necessidades de crescimento do país. Pretendemos analisar a imigração qualificada no Brasil, identificando estes imigrantes, a partir de critérios como nacionalidade, escolaridade, atividade profissional, em que setores atuam no Brasil, estado civil, gênero. Daremos início a uma pesquisa de campo através de entrevistas com os imigrantes para saber sobre suas trajetórias, os motivos que os trouxeram para o Brasil e suas experiências em trabalhar num país tão distante e multiétnico. Trata-se, portanto, de uma pesquisa empírica, de caráter exploratório e que incorpora levantamento de natureza bibliográfica e documental, a partir do qual se produziram informações quantitativas e qualitativas. O trabalho levanta as hipóteses de que a crise econômica internacional e as redes sociais foram fatores importantes na decisão de imigrar para o Brasil. Hipóteses que se confirmarão com o resultado da pesquisa. Embora o fenômeno da imigração qualificada não seja recente, é pouco estudado e o presente trabalho inovará ao apresentar essa nova face da imigração brasileira e internacional que se inicia no século XXI, onde a exigência de alta qualificação profissional determina a mobilidade humana no cenário mundial

Thesis (MDF)--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.
For many years, people have migrated to other parts of their countries or across national borders. The reasons for the phenomenon of migration are many. People tend to migrate from poorer regions or countries to those that are comparatively better than their places of origin. Migration affects both host and destination countries in many ways. While there is evidence to support positive effects from migrations, mostly in developed countries, there is ongoing debate in most developing countries as to the effect of this phenomenon of migration. Immigrants are often associated with negative effects in destination countries. The purpose of this research is to determine the contribution of skilled professional immigrants to the South African economy. This report will narrow its focus to a case study of the contribution of skilled professionals in the health and higher education sectors but will also take a cursory look at the broad effects of other immigrant categories in South Africa. This research report focused on selected sectors of the South African economy since 1994 and found enough evidence to conclude that immigrants contribute positively to the South African economy. This is contrary to commonly held assumptions that foreign immigrants negatively affect the South African economy. However, this research only focused on the higher education and health sectors. A broader understanding of the effects of immigrants on the South Africa economy therefore requires further investigation.

碩士
淡江大學
歐洲研究所碩士班
100
In recent years, due to population structural changes in European Union (EU), there has been labour shortage and also shortage of highly skilled workers. Additionally, development of “knowledge-based economy” has also forced EU and member states to face its labour shortage of highly skilled workers. Due Oil Crisis and restricted immigration regulation in past years, immigrants from non-EU members are relatively lower percentage of highly skilled workers. Until recent years, Germany has carried reformation on its immigration policy and created attraction to highly skilled workers to Germany. Germany’s pathway is from conservatism to liberalization also similar to EU’s development of immigration affairs. After Treaty of Amsterdam, Treaty of Lisbon, EU already acquires jurisdiction to development "common immigration policy", moreover, regarding "legal migration" are clearly defined in section 79 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). In order to attract more highly skilled workers and developing common immigration policy, EU passed "EU Blue Card" in 2009, Member States shall transpose its provision into national law by June, 2011. It symbolized EU''s ambition to attract highly skilled workers and also the first step to build common immigration policy in EU.

This master thesis is dedicated to the understanding of the challenges that both the immigrant Social Workers and the Finnish welfare state face when they meet each other. To assess the challenges of the Finnish welfare state, native Social Workers were interviewed, because they are seen as the most visible face of a welfare state. But in order to accomplish this, a vast theoretical background is provided about the Finnish state, the Finnish welfare state, and the migrations in Finland before the presentation of the empirical results. The results were obtained after the realization of deep ethno biographical interviews to get to know the life trajectories of four individuals (two immigrants and two Finnish nationals) that have at least completed the bachelor’s degree in Social Work in Finland or abroad. Its objective is to try to understand how the Finnish welfare state can better integrate the immigrant Social Workers that are needed into the Finnish Welfare State of nowadays that is struggling with the worsening of the dependency ratio mainly due to the ageing population and the low fertility rate. The focus of this work is predominantly transdisciplinar. The immigrant Social Workers went to Finland due to motives related to studies, and they have stayed, although without chances to by now work permanently as Social Workers, mainly because of the language barriers. Regarding the Finnish Social Workers, the cultural shocks with the service users call for the promotion of more and better intercultural dialogue.
Esta dissertação de mestrado é dedicada à compreensão dos desafios que tanto os Assistentes Sociais imigrantes como o Estado de Bem-estar finlandês encontram quando se cruzam. Para compreender os desafios para o Estado de Bem-Estar finlandês foram entrevistados Assistentes Sociais Finlandeses, pois estes são vistos como a face mais visível do Estado de Bem-Estar. Mas para atingir isto, uma vasta fundamentação teórica é proporcionada acerca do Estado finlandês, o Estado de Bem-Estar finlandês e as migracões na Finlândia antes da apresentação dos resultados empíricos. Estes resultados foram obtidos na sequência da realização de entrevistas etnobiográficas aprofundadas procurando conhecer os trajetos de vida de quatro indivíduos (dois imigrantes e dois nacionais da Finlândia) que tenham pelo menos completado a licenciatura em Serviço Social na Finlândia ou no estrangeiro. O objetivo passa por tentar compreender como o Estado de Bem-Estar finlandês pode integrar melhor os Assistentes Sociais imigrantes que são necessários no Estado de Bem-Estar finlandês de hoje em dia, e que enfrenta um agravamento do índice de dependência principalmente devido ao envelhecimento da população e à baixa taxa de fertilidade. O foco deste trabalho é predominantemente transdisciplinar. Os Assistentes Sociais imigrantes vieram para a Finlândia devido a motivos relacionados com os estudos, e acabaram por ficar, apesar de para já não terem hipóteses de trabalhar permanentemente como Assistentes Sociais, principalmente devido a barreiras linguisticas. Quanto aos Assistentes Sociais finlandeses, os choques culturais com os utentes parecem pedir a promoção de mais e melhor diálogo intercultural.