The Political Economy of Migration, Skills and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Abstract

Over the last decade scholars of labour migration policies have adopted the perspective of Varieties of Capitalism to explain variable policy designs in an era of newly reactivated foreign labour recruitment. However, the variable interactions between specific skill formation regimes, labour migration policy design, and public opinion on immigration remains under-theorized and under-explored empirically. In particular the political economy of migration policy has so far underestimated how changing legal definitions of skill categories are not straightforwardly related to economic considerations but follow political ideas about desirable types and numbers of migrant workers. Papers in this panel address the political economy of migration, skills and anti-immigrant attitudes from several angles. We start by two contributions on public opinion, one on welfare nationalism in three European countries (Larsen) and another on immigration attitudes in the UK (Karyotis et al.). Both show that ideas about migrant's eligibility to belong, socially speaking, hinge on definitions of 'the right skills' and economic deservingness. The two subsequent papers examine the political economy of skills definitions further. Laudenbach shows that the institutions of skill formation in Germany severely impede the country's attempt to implement a Skills Recognition Act and thus hampers EU mobility on the grounds. Siebers' contribution examines how employers' concepts of soft skills impact - often negatively - the labour market opportunities of immigrant workers in the Netherlands. The panel closes with a paper on migrants' preferences for academic vs. vocational education in Switzerland (Abrassart et al.). This clarifies the explanatory power of generational dynamics in migrant populations and the closeness of fit between the skills formation regimes in their countries of origin and the Swiss model.