Who Liberalizes Highly-Skilled Migration Policy and When?

This article investigates the timing and determinants of HSI policy change in European democracies. In the context of domestic pressures due to demographic decline, skill shortfalls, and increasing social expenditures, European policymakers are assumed to have a strong incentive to liberalize migration policy to attract economically and fiscally beneficial highly-skilled immigrants. However, European states vary not only in the extent to which they have liberalized HSI policy, but also in their timing: While the UK and Denmark were the first to implement HSI specific programs that liberalized admission and/or rights in 2001, Austria was among the latest in 2011. While existing scholarship so far has investigated the origins and relative restrictiveness of HSI policy across countries, it has not been able to adequately explain the timing of liberalizing skilled migration. In light of converging public and fiscal preferences for highly-skilled immigrants, explaining why some states have liberalized later and to a lesser extent, however, can reveal patterns of domestic constraints that run counter to prevailing functionalist and economically determined narratives of highly-skilled immigration policy-making. Employing the DEMIG policy database, this article applies event history analysis to small and large policy changes targeted toward highly-skilled immigrants in 18 OECD democracies from 1995-2011. Modeling the likely repeated nature of policy adjustment via a PWP specification of the Cox model, the author tests whether political determinants such as partisanship and institutional constraints, or economic determinants such as macro-economic performance and social expenditure contribute to explaining the timing and extent of HSI policy change. Preliminary findings suggest that economic determinants such as budget deficit and labor market institutions are on average more important than political variables. However, left-wing governments and generous welfare states tend delay HSI policy change while increasing social expenditure and changes in the cabinet’s party composition lead to earlier policy adjustments.