Mature Skill Formation Regimes: New Challenges and the Impact of Increased International Mobility

Abstract

Taking a comparative political economy perspective, this panel is devoted to examining new socio-economic challenges in the reform of mature national skill formation regimes in comparative political economy scholarship with a special focus on the implications of increased mobility of workers and capital on institutional change in the field of vocational education and training (VET). More specifically, the papers of the panel address how political agency and structural change combine in shaping the political reactions to new challenges that emerge from the nexus of migration and skill formation. Emmenegger and Seitzl advance the theory on institutional change in skill formation regimes by placing a special focus on agency and show how business associations became a dominant actor in the reform of Swiss commercial training, thereby initiating a new pathway in Swiss VET. Unterweger’s contribution points to the role of big multinational companies in shaping skill formation by way of a cantonal comparison within Switzerland, thereby shedding light on the implications of capital mobility on VET. Graf’s paper analyzes the case of transnational training institutions in the cross-border region of Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany and shows how actors make use of the specific configuration when national political-administrative units do not overlap with the functional needs of employers and (future) employees. Haakestadt scrutinizes the impact of increased migration on the skill formation system of Norway and shows how occupational closure can be an important factor in determining how much new patterns of worker mobility have detrimental effects on traditional VET and wage setting institutions. Last, but not least, the contribution of Sauer and Mayn adresses the question how patterns of migration and mobility of Kosovars to Germany have led to spill-over effects in various policy fields and led to the emergence of German dual apprenticeship on the Kosovar education policy agenda. Taken togehter, the papers present theoretical advances for pressing questions of skill formation scholars and show how a focus on the transnational dimension of mobility can enrich the research agenda of migration and political economy scholars alike.