Gender, migration and the global race for talent

Anna Boucher

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781526133748
  9780719099458
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784996512
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The global race for skilled immigrants seeks to attract the best global workers. In the pursuit of these individuals, governments may incidentally discriminate on gender grounds. Existing gendered differences in the global labour market related to life course trajectories, pay gaps and gendered divisions in occupational specialisation are also present in skilled immigration selection policies. Presenting the first book-length account of the global race for talent from a gender perspective, Gender, migration and the global race for talent will be read by graduate students, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of immigration studies, political science, public policy, sociology and gender studies, and Australian and Canadian studies.

Part II

Gendering skilled immigration policy in Australia and Canada, 1988–2013

3

Gendering the policy process: venue shopping and diversity-seeking

Introduction

The previous chapter identified significant variation both across countries and also within states in the attention paid to gender concerns in skilled immigration selection policies. In particular, I found that Canada ranked higher than Australia for the gender awareness of its skilled immigration policy, although Canada’s ranking has been dropping in recent years. Australia, while always ranking lower than Canada, has also fallen in its gender ranking over time (see Table 2.3, last chapter). In the remaining chapters of this book, I develop a theoretical explanation for this variation in policies across Australia and Canada over a twenty-five-year period. I explore this issue through four case studies that also map the major developments in skilled immigration policy over this quarter century. This venue shopping approach proposes that a broad range of interest groups are relevant in shaping the gender awareness of skilled immigration policies. In particular, feminist organisations and immigrant associations (‘diversity-seeking groups’) can inform policy debates and in some instances policy outputs, when they relate to gender concerns. However, groups must also enjoy the capacity to ‘shop’ for participation across the key venues of democratic deliberation, in particular parliamentary committees and courts. This chapter focuses on this theoretical account, while also considering several alternate theories: explanations based in broader macroeconomic theory, corporatist interest group accounts and partisan explanations. While I do not deny that these alternate factors play an important role in skilled immigration policy outputs, when it comes to gender awareness, the engagement of diversity-seeking actors is central. However, access to key institutional sites of power is also pivotal for these groups in achieving their goals. This is especially the case within the Westminster-inspired parliamentary systems under examination, which might otherwise present a fairly closed participatory space for economically marginalised groups. Furthermore, governments’ capacity to exercise bureaucratic control will also shape participation opportunities. This argument poses an extension of the existing venue shopping scholarship to Westminster-inspired parliamentary systems. First, however, I consider alternate economic, interest group and partisan explanations for variation in skilled immigration policies from a gender perspective.

Understanding skilled immigration policy-making: economic explanations

Orthodox neoclassical economic approaches to understanding immigration policies propose that immigration policy is a product of economic supply and demand. Business cycles and unemployment are viewed as key determinants of immigration policy, with expansive immigration policies predicted during boom periods and restrictive immigration policies during periods of recession (Corbett 1957; Green 1976; LeMay 1989; Martin 1980; Togman 2002: 5). However, when examined longitudinally, the proposed relationship between unemployment and immigrant supply does not always hold (Hollifield et al. 2006; Tichenor 2002: 21; Watts 2002: 107). Writing on the Canadian context, Alan Green and David Green (2004: 129) argue that since the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s there has in fact been a growing gap between actual and predicted levels of immigration selection based on macroeconomic criteria. In particular, while these measures may provide predictions for the size of economic flows they are less helpful in explaining more detailed changes in policy.

This is not to suggest that the economic approach does not provide some important insights into understanding immigration policies and their variation. Gender awareness (or unawareness) of immigration policies might be the unintended consequence of broader economic pressures. We might expect that periods of unemployment or recession could correspond with negative gender effects as other policy priorities emerge. However, such a theoretical argument can only be maintained if similar economic conditions result in similar immigration policies across states. Over the period of analysis, but particularly from 1996 onwards, Australia and Canada experienced similar levels of unemployment, employment growth and employment to population ratios (Richardson et al. 2004: 7–10). Yet, future chapters of the book document significant differences in attention paid to gender issues across the two countries, suggesting that economic conditions alone are not central.

Interest group explanations for variation in skilled immigration policies

Interest group approaches focus upon the role of employer associations and trade unions in immigration policy-making. These accounts predominate within the skilled immigration scholarship. I explore two main interest approaches within migration studies – the group politics and the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) explanations. Group politics scholars emphasise the role of interests in shaping immigration policies.¹ The most important proponent of this view is Gary Freeman, who in a series of papers adopts James Q. Wilson’s (1980) theory of group politics. This theory suggests that the political behaviour of interests will depend on the associated costs and benefits of such behaviour. The behaviour can be of an interest group, clientelistic, entrepreneurial or majoritarian quality and policies will accordingly reflect the desires of the relevant group. Gary Freeman (1995) argues that the immigration policy domain is most likely to be characterised by clientelistic behaviour as certain actors have concentrated advantages to gain through political action, while for most the costs of such action are diffuse, and therefore unlikely to provoke a political response. Immigration is predicted to be an area where industry (employers, property developers, industry associations) ‘captures’ the political agenda and seeks policies that reflect pecuniary concerns.

The idea that interest groups inform policy is relevant for the current focus on the gender awareness of immigration selection policy. As I argue later in this chapter, such interests might include non-corporatist players in the immigration field, including diversity-seeking groups, whom I define as feminist and immigrant associations. Yet, while the group politics approach is useful in drawing attention to the role of interests, there are several potential limitations with this explanation. First, such an approach does not provide a solid account of the initial emergence of interests. In focusing only on the successful action of existing groups, the group politics approach can overlook how differential resources aid or abet the development of interest groups and their subsequent levels of mobilisation (Boswell 2007: 78–9). Further, the group politics approach also ignores possible bias on the part of the state towards groups over time. The effects of uneven distribution of state power are particularly important for women’s and immigrant associations who have been historically excluded from the policy-making process (Tichenor 2002: 24). Therefore, paradoxically, while the group politics approach eschews pluralistic assumptions about interest group engagement,² examination of broader historical factors that inform the differential negotiating positions of groups is largely ignored. Below, I argue that the venue shopping approach provides a better narrative space to understand the engagement of marginal groups, including diversity-seeking organisations, than existing interest group approaches.

Political economy approaches

Related but distinctive from the group politics approach are the political economy explanations for variation in skilled immigration policies. The VoC approach is situated within this school. It focuses on the importance of economic configurations and employer interests in informing policy (Hall and Soskice 2001) and has been applied to the skilled immigration field (Bucken-Knapp 2007; Cerna 2007, 2009, 2014; Menz 2007, 2008; Wright 2012). The VoC scholarship proposes that business in liberal market economies such as Australia and Canada will have a heightened interest in deregulation through skilled immigration policies, reflecting a broader neoliberal economic production regime (Thelen 2002: 286).

Other political economy approaches focus on the role of trade union and business relations in informing immigration policy outputs, without particular reference to the VoC scholarship. Giovanni Facchini and his collaborators (2007) disaggregate along policy sectors and identify correlative relationships between levels of trade union/employer group engagement and immigrant stock size. Yet, the simplifying assumptions of this model are not always empirically grounded; for instance, trade unions are erroneously assumed to always oppose increased immigration when in fact in recent years they have often supported it (Haus 2002; Watts 2002). In any case, binary characterisations of immigration regimes, as either ‘open’ or ‘closed’, or of interest groups as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ skilled immigration policy, are limiting. Such a characterisation overlooks vital qualitative differences within open immigration regimes, such as in the balance between skilled and family reunion immigration or the accommodation of gender concerns within selection mechanisms. In addition, the very focus on materialist interests within this approach conceals the importance of non-materialist considerations.

Partisan explanations for immigration policy outputs

Partisan political alignment has sometimes been used to explain variation in immigration policies (Breunig and Luedtke 2008: 128–9; Ireland 2004; Lahav 2004: 133). Under this approach, political positioning of government on the left-right spectrum is a key explanation for differences in immigration policies across states. Yet scholars in settler states rarely advance partisan explanations. In fact, in both Australia and Canada, theorists have frequently assumed bipartisanship in party positions on immigration policy. This is related to the conflict that can arise over immigration issues in ethnically diverse settings like Australia and Canada. The argument follows that as conflict threatens incumbency – through causing splits in voting – it is not in the interest of either side of politics to engage in such behaviour (see Betts 1999: 193–223; Freeman 1995: 884; Hardcastle et al. 1994: 112–13; McAllister 1993). Bipartisanship notwithstanding, it is possible that differences in the entire political landscape in Australia and Canada in turn inform policy differences across time in immigration policies. An expert survey carried out by Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver in 2002–3 measured party positions on immigration on a scale from 1 to 20, with a higher score suggesting a more closed party position towards immigration and greater support for restrictions on immigration. According to this survey, the Canadian Liberal Party had a party position of 5.05 on immigration compared with 6.92 for the Australian Labor Party in 2001. The right-leaning Progressive Conservative Party in Canada had a score of 9.31, compared with 12.0 for the right-leaning Liberal Party in Australia in 2001 (Benoit and Laver 2006).

Benoit and Laver’s survey does indeed suggest that the entire Australian political system is positioned more towards a closed position on immigration when compared with that in Canada. Yet, even if we accept that the level of ‘openness’ or ‘closedness’ of an immigration regime can be measured on a twenty-point scale using two variables (Benoit and Laver 2006: 228), it is unclear how these broad brushstroke differences in turn affect the gender awareness of skilled immigration policies. Partisan accounts fail to explain qualitative differences in policies. As the analysis in this book suggests, it is also possible to have very high levels of immigration admission and at the same time a selective immigration regime from a gender perspective.

Party ideology might shape government views on gender-aware policy-making. There is a wealth of feminist research, which considers the relationship between party position and gender-aware policies. Although multi-directional, various feminist scholars point to the correlation between gender-aware policies and left-leaning governments.³ Louise Chappell (2002: 63–4) for instance views the Australian Labor Party (ALP) incumbency from 1983 to 1996 as central to feminist successes over that period. In contrast, the election of the Liberal-National Coalition government in Australia from 1996 until 2007 is said to have resulted in reduced attention to diversity issues (Sawer 2008). In Canada, the two parties closest in their ideological positions to feminist concerns, the National Democratic Party (NDP) and Bloc Québécois, have not held national government. Yet, the Canadian Liberals, who held power from 1993 to 2006, were more progressive on gender issues than the Australian Liberal Party, which was elected in Australia in 1996, although potentially no more so than the ALP that held federal office until 1996. I explore variation across incumbent political parties, across time and across immigration policies in the following chapters.

The venue shopping explanation for gender-aware immigration policies

Despite their important contributions, existing approaches face theoretical and empirical limitations. In particular, these approaches largely overlook the importance of gender, both as an object of policy and as an integral factor within policy processes. I propose an alternate venue shopping explanation that draws upon both neo-institutional and interest group explanations for understanding policy variation. ‘Venue shopping’ refers to the strategy of policy actors moving between different institutional venues in order to further their political goals. While the focus is generally on the activity of non-state actors, such moves can also be undertaken by government bureaucrats in order to limit the scope of political contestation, or to achieve quicker realisation of policy goals (e.g. Bulmer 2011; Guiraudon 1997)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• I The global race for talent: global context
• II Gendering skilled immigration policy in Australia and Canada, 1988–2013
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index