European Union Migration Policies for the Highly Skilled: A Critical Appraisal

Year 2019, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 1 - 20, 31.10.2019

Sahizer Samuk

Abstract

Keywords

highly skilled migrant, EU migration policies

Supporting Institution

n/a

Project Number

n/a

AVRUPA BIRLIĞI’NIN NITELIKLI GÖÇMENLERE YÖNELIK GÖÇ POLITIKALARI: ELEŞTIREL BIR DEĞERLENDIRME

Abstract

There have been many scholarly discussions if
EU can be a global power or not. Global power normatively has to have certain
conditions and properties. Being a great military power would not make a
country become a global power, in contrast with what some scholars argue. A
global power also has the best of the brains, is attractive to researchers,
provides freedom of expression and leaves space for creativity as much as gives
the tools for novelty. All these cases might be provided but access to them
might be limited by the immigration policies. Even though the EU and member
countries in particular have achieved great accomplishments in their migration
policies for the highly skilled, they do not seem to be sufficient and
farsighted. The perspective towards immigration affects the whole approach to
the high skilled: promoting circular migration, difficulty in transitions to
permanent statuses and lack of consideration of skill losses. It is assumed
that the high-skilled migrants automatically integrate and so integration
policies are not devised specifically for them. It is also believed that they
would bring the know-how to their home countries as a result of return
migration but many of them after four or five years, hesitate to turn back to
their homes. They would rather lead transnational lives. These details are not
considered in EU migration policy for the highly skilled. I suggest that the EU
policies on high-skilled migration should be combined with other integration
policy tools. Otherwise, EU will remain behind the traditional brain attracting
countries such as Australia, Canada and the USA and will never be a
full-fledged global power. I tried to answer this question indeed: are the
high-skilled migration policies of the EU sufficient in their design to turn EU
into a global power? The answer is “no” and I explain why in this paper.

Keywords

EU migration policies, highly skilled migrants, high-skilled migration policies, global power, normative power

Project Number

n/a

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