Numbers versus rights for business migrants? An analysis of the MITA database

The existence of a migration policy trade-off between numbers and rights has been widely debated in the immigration literature. This trade-off suggests that labor immigration flows are negatively associated with the social and economic rights granted to these immigrants. However, existing studies have focused almost exclusively on immigration towards low-skilled jobs. As a consequence, we know little about the policy considerations and trade-offs regarding highly skilled immigration. A particularly salient case in this regard is business migrants moving for temporary assignments as intra-corporate transferees, contractual service providers, business visitors or other. Provision facilitating the mobility and stay of such business migrants have increasingly been included in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In this study, using data from the Database on Migration Provisions in Trade Agreements (MITA), we contrast the degree of mobility facilitated by such agreements with the social and economic rights granted to immigrant workers from 1960 to 2020. We show that there is a weak but positive relationship between them, suggesting that trade agreements that are more ambitious in terms of facilitating mobility are also the ones that provide immigrants with more social and economic rights. We further investigate the relationship by looking at differences related to skill levels and to the type of immigrant; and by exploring regional and country-level differences. By showing under which conditions mobility provisions in PTAs are associated with rights, the findings enhance our understanding of both the numbers / rights trade-off and the links between trade and immigration policy objectives.