In 2012, the company Blueseed announced a plan that would enable foreign-born entrepreneurs to work in the United States without a work visa. The entrepreneurs would live and work on a converted cruise ship, docked in international waters twelve nautical miles off the California coast. The residents would be transported to land in small ferries with easy access to Silicon Valley. The entrepreneurs could travel up to 180 days a year on a temporary business or tourist visa (B1/B2), but could not earn money on the US mainland. This solution was Blueseedâs answer to the shortage of H-1B temporary work visas for skilled migrants in the United States. In the year 2012, the cap of 85,000 H-1B visas was reached within ten weeks, compared to thirty-three weeks in 2011. Over 1,500 entrepreneurs have expressed interest, and Blueseed is currently trying to raise US$31 million to launch the project (Blueseed; Gustin 2012). While critics have derided the Blueseed plan as a publicity stunt, it raises interesting questions about the politics and practicalities of international skilled migration.
The Blueseed plan illustrates key roles of place and spatial relations in international skilled migration. The cruise shipâs location in international waters is beyond the jurisdiction of US immigration law, enabling the foreign-born entrepreneurs to work on American projects offshore. The residents abide by the regulations of US law as long as they do not perform paid work onshore and hold a valid business or tourist visa (which are easier to obtain than H-1B permits). Interestingly, the âseastead,â or floating city, would have authority to create its own labor, migration, and taxation laws. At the same time, the close proximity to Silicon Valley would enable the entrepreneurs to meet face-to-face with venture capitalists and build a network with US-based workers. Geographical proximity to and the place attractiveness of Silicon Valley are key factors in the appeal of the Blueseed project, because the physical co-presence (Ryan and Mulholland 2014) of information technology specialists can facilitate knowledge transfer and innovation.
Discussions about the Blueseed project seemingly centered on the shortcomings of the H-1B visa program. However, they reflect larger concerns about the uneven spatial relations between high-, middle-, and low-income countries. These concerns have sparked larger debates about the ethics of international talent recruitment, the objectives of skilled migration policies, and the effects on migrants themselves, the companies, and migrant sending and receiving places. The flexibility in residence and employment of the Blueseed entrepreneurs also reflects the increasingly fluid and transient nature of international migration, prompting King (2002) to argue that it is more accurate to label todayâs international flows as mobilities rather than migration. Although merely a thought experiment at this point, the Blueseed project raises key questions about the roles of space and place in international skilled migration. In particular, it problematizes traditional conceptualizations of sending and receiving countries, understandings of (national) belonging and inclusion, and the objectives and outcomes of skilled migration laws.
Aim and Scope
To more fully understand the entire process of international skilled migration, this book investigates international student migration, the experiences of skilled migrants in cities and regions, and the transnational experiences of returned migrants. It aims to rethink international skilled migration theories and perspectives from a place-based and spatial perspective. Traditional migration theories, which have predominantly focused on low-skilled migrants and refugees, do not fully explain international skilled migration processes and outcomes. While scholars have made important contributions to understandings of skilled migration, a coherent theoretical framework is missing to study the spatial dimension and place-embeddedness of this process. This book contributes to theory development in international skilled migration through a wide variety of empirical cases, examining how policymaking practices, migrant experiences, international recruitment, and uneven spatial relationships between sending and receiving countries shape international skilled migration at various geographical scales.
Within Geography, economic geographers have predominantly studied the global knowledge economy from company, regional, or (inter)national economic perspectives. However, these studies have not paid sufficient attention to the social actors of the global knowledge economyânamely, the migrants who make migration and settlement decisions based on individual, household, and institutional factors in sending and receiving states. Significant gaps of knowledge still exist with regard to the experiences of skilled migrants and their place-based behaviors: How have international skilled migratory flows been formed, sustained, and transformed over multiple spaces and scales? How have these processes affected cities and regions? And how have multiple stakeholders responded to these processes? These are the questions to be addressed in this book.
While addressing these questions through studies of various professions across different states and regions, we particularly emphasize how actors and institutions in international skilled migration are embedded in places, transforming and being transformed through spatial interactions. In the following sections we discuss such interactions at various stages of migration and at multiple scales, as expressed through daily lives in the city and region.
The Roles of Place and Space in International Skilled Migration
Delineating the factors and forces from the decision-making stage to settlement and possible onward or return migration is fundamental to understanding the relationship between place, space, and international migration. We address four aspects of these stages in the following sections. First, we discuss the individual characteristics and factors that inform the decision-making for migration and the post-migration experiences of skilled migrants. Second, we address the interactions between individuals and place, examining how the socioeconomic, cultural, and political environment in cities and regions shape the experiences of skilled migrants, and how migrants shape places through their interaction (Glick Schiller and ĂaÄlar 2009, 2011). Third, we examine the national and international policy regimes that have fundamental impacts on international skilled migration flows. Fourth, we shortly discuss the spatial and place-based aspects of the âbrain drain,â âbrain gain,â and âbrain circulationâ debate in the skilled migration literature.
Personal Experiences of Skilled Migrants
While this book foregrounds the roles of place and space in international skilled migration, it is still important to pay attention to the factors at the individual and household level that shape the migration experience. These factors inform the decision to migrate, coping strategies after arrival, experiences in the workplace, and the decision to stay, return, or move to another destination. In addition, migrantsâ personal characteristics influence the hiring decisions of employers and the valuation of skills, which we discuss in more detail below.
The traditional neoclassical economic perspectives explicitly view international migration as a result from individual cost-benefit analyses to maximize expected income through movement across country borders. Since the rate of return of human capital differs between the high- and low-skilled labor force, the high-skilled respond to wage differences differently from the low-skilled, and thus, have different flow patterns (Lewis 1954; Borjas 1990). In making the decision whether to migrate or not, and when and where to migrate, personal characteristics, human capital, social conditions, personal preferences, a migrantâs stage in the life course, and availability of technologies have all played significant roles (Massey et al. 1993).
Migrants in relationships additionally take household considerations into account, such as professional opportunities for a spouse, the quality of local schools, healthcare, and the general well-being of the family (Silvanto and Ryan 2014). Some parents decide to return to the home country because they want their children to grow up in the country of origin, or when they have to care for aging parents (Favell, Feldblum, and Smith 2006). In fact, the ânew economics of migrationâ perspective has long argued that migration is a collective decision made in a family, household, or âother culturally defined units of production and consumptionâ to minimize risk to income or to maximize expected benefits (Massey et al. 1993, 439; see also Stark and Bloom 1985).
Employers, recruitment agents, and other actors also shape the personal experiences of skilled migrants through their valuation of migrantsâ skills and expertise. These actors often have stereotypical assumptions about the educational qualifications from a migrantâs country of origin, which can determine the starting salary, assignment of tasks, and opportunities for promotion (van Riemsdijk 2013; for low-skilled migrants, see Pratt 2004; Findlay et al. 2013), and result in the underemployment of skilled migrants (Bauder 2003). The valuation of skill is time- and place-specific (Kuvik 2012), and depends on the actor, location, and sociocultural and political context within which a migrantâs skills and competencies are evaluated (van Riemsdijk 2013). The negative outcomes of the devaluation of skills are likely to diminish over time as migrants accumulate place-specific social and cultural capital.
A related aspect of the uneven geography of international skilled migration is a lack of language proficiency and knowledge of cultural codes in the place of destination. For example, Batalova, Fix, and Creticos (2008) find that high-skilled immigrants who have limited English proficiency are twice more likely to work in low-skilled jobs than those who speak English fluently. Chiswick and Taengnoi (2007) also argue that highly educated immigrants who do not speak English fluently tend to concentrate in social service occupations that often require little English proficiency. Accordingly, Wang and Lysenko (2014) find that the foreign-born labor force, particularly the highly educated, are more likely to be underemployed than US-born workers when other conditions are held constant. Other factors, such as job-searching strategies, immigrantsâ unfamiliarity with host country labor regulations, nontransferable education credentials, and other economic and cultural differences between source and destination countries have all contributed to the imperfect transferability of human capital across borders (Boyd and Thomas 2001; Piracha and Vadean 2012).
These obstacles show that skilled migrants do not seamlessly integrate into the host society. This warrants more attention in both research and practice. First, highly skilled migrants are not homogeneously âprivileged.â Important differences exist among skilled migrants in terms of country of origin, marital status, age, race/ethnicity, and other personal characteristics that intersect in various ways. Some of these differences have been highlighted in critiques of the study of âeliteââpredominantly maleâmigrants (Kofman 2000; Raghuram 2000; Conradson and Latham 2005) and the identity politics of skilled migrants (Nagel 2005; Scott 2006). More research is needed to understand how these personal characteristics shape the experiences of skilled migrants and their migration outcomes. Second, in practice, immigrant integration initiatives have been focused on low-skilled migrants and refugees. Although some cities have developed programs to recruit and welcome skilled migrants, there remains a lack of attention to their long-term integration. This oversight may reflect the assumption that these âprivilegedâ migrants will easily adapt to their new environment. The personal and institutional integration difficulties highlighted above, however, indicate a need for more study to better understand this process.
Interactions between Place and Individuals at the Local Scale
The demand and supply in the local labor markets directly influence the opportunity structure and quality of jobs for highly skilled migrants. For example, previous studies have found that unemployment rate, economic structure, income level, and the resource base are all relevant for the labor market experiences of highly skilled migrants (Stiles and Galbraith 2004; Storper and Scott 2009). In addition to economic factors, place-based amenities, diversity, and tolerance have an especially potent effect on the migration patterns of individuals endowed with high levels of human capital (Florida 2005; Glaeser and Gottlieb 2006).
Public attitudes and local migration policies can also influence the experiences of skilled migrants. For example, the classic visibility-discrimination hypothesis argues that increases in the number of visible minorities will heighten the perceived economic and political threat posed to the majority. This threat may provoke discrimination by the latter, contributing to a greater earnings gap between the two groups (Cohen 1998; Huffman and Cohen 2004; Wang 2010). When job markets tighten, anti-immigration sentiment may increase. For instance, economic recessions generally spark nativist concerns about the local economy and the welfare state, which can negatively affect skilled migrants as well (Hainmueller and Hiscox 2010).
Cities are shaped by the international migration of the highly skilled. Talents (those endowed with high level of human capital) can significantly contribute to knowledge creation, innovation, and regional economic development (Florida 2005; Glaeser and Gottlieb 2006; Storper and Scott 2009). Further, skilled immigrants can enhance the prestige of a city through their employment contributions and transnational connections with institutions, colleagues, and friends. And, thus, international migration of the highly skilled can help improve the position of a city in international and global hierarchies through the linking of migration pathways, global restructuring processes, and place (Glick Schiller and ĂaÄlar 2009, 2011). Indeed, the majority of scholarship in international skilled migration has studied global cities, immigrant gateways, and regions of innovation as they have drawn the majority of highly skilled migrants. Migrants in these places have established businesses (Saxenian 2002), recruited colleagues and friends through their transnational professional networks (Brettell 2005), and have contributed to knowledge exchange and innovative practices in the cities and regions in which they live and work (Williams and BalĂĄĆŸ 2008).
It is not surprising that many cities and regions profile themselves as attractive destinations for skilled migrants, showcasing their amenities and professional opportunities. They also try to attract domestic and international skilled migrants through city branding and welcome initiatives. For example, the German cities Bonn, Cologne and Aachen created a âwelcome cultureâ to attract skilled migrants with English-language websites, television commercials, and attractive housing and cultural amenities (Föbker, Temme, and Wiegandt 2014). These policy initiatives and practices reflect the increasing importance of international skilled migration for urban and regional economic development.
Reflecting upon the existing literature, we i...
