The demand for skilled labor is rising dramatically worldwide to meet the needs of a global economy driven by high-technology goods and services. Advanced industrial societies - the United States, Japan, the countries of Western Europe - are becoming more dependent on foreign scientists, engineers, and computer programmers to propel their economic growth. And emerging economies - such as India, China, and South Africa - are increasingly recognizing the need to stem the outflow of their own domestic professionals. The International Migration of the Highly Skilled examines the scale and significance of these international flows of highly skilled workers. The seventeen contributors (political scientists, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists) bring to the field a broad range of perspectives on the global market for high-skilled labor. They examine the legal history of skilled immigration to the United States and Canada, the ""brain drain"" phenomenon, immigrant entrepreneurship and immigrant niches, and recent changes in immigration policy making. The book includes several case studies analyzing the experiences of both sending and receiving countries. The authors offer a timely foundation for current and future policy discussions concerning high-skill migration. Despite the current economic downturn in the United States and other receiving countries, knowledge-intensive sectors of their economies will continue to grow and will continue to depend on the contributions of skilled migrants.

The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries

Business & Money

Economics

Center for Comparative Immigration

Julie Watts's research has turned conventional wisdom - that organized labor opposes immigration for fear that foreign workers will undercut the wages and working conditions of native workers - on its head. Her examination of labor unions in Italy, Spain, and France reveals that labor leaders actually prefer more open immigration policies. In an era of globalization, restrictive immigration policies that were originally designed to protect native workers can now produce the opposite result. Paradoxically, by forcing immigrants into a precarious legal and economic position, such policies can undercut the improvements in wages and working conditions that native workers were able to achieve as a consequence of shutting out foreign workers. Unions' growing support for more liberalized immigration policies have brought labor leaders into the political arena, where they engage in a variety of activities to influence their nations' policy making on immigration. In some cases, organized labor has also moved to provide essential support services to immigrants that their governments are unwilling or unable to provide. Watts's study has broad implications for labor-importing countries around the world, including the United States, where the labor movement is actively reassessing its positions on immigration control and amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

An Unconventional Brotherhood: Union Support for Liberalized Immigration in Europe

Watts, Julie R.

The dominant nation-state model of citizenship, in which political identity and state territory are congruent, is increasingly unable to resolve the contradictions created by global mass migration. Fitzgerald's careful ethnographic fieldwork in Michoacan, Mexico, and Southern California supports a process-based model of extra-territorial citizenship, in which migrants claim citizenship in their places of origin even when they are physically absent. Fitzgerald explains why many Mexican migrants based in the United States want to be "taken into account" in the politics and development of their home communities. He focuses on the consequences of "transnational" political attitudes and behavior for migrant-sending communities. The analysis has important implications for proposals being discussed in Mexico to extend voting rights in Mexican elections to migrants based abroad and to give them representation in the Mexican Congress. The monograph is written in a highly accessible style and is illustrated with numerous photographs by the author.

Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship: Mexican Migration and the Transnational Politics of Community

Politics & Social Sciences

Fitzerald, David

Social Sciences

Host Societies and the Reception of Immigrants (Ccis Anthologies)

The Transnational Politics Of U.S. Immigration Policy (MONOGRAPH SERIES CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION STUDIES)

Rosenblum, Marc R.

Politics & Government

In order to explore the contested life-worlds created by Westernizing gender roles, religious pluralism, and cultural hybridization, Dietz (anthropology) and El-Shohoumi (intercultural studies, both U. of Granada, Spain) undertake an ethnographic study of the life-worlds, biographical narratives, and organizational accounts of Muslim women in southern Spain. They present their findings under such headings as migration and Islam in Spain, niches and segments of labor market integration, and societal responses and perspectives. They have not indexed their study. Published by the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the U. of California, San Diego; distributed in the US by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Muslim Women In Southern Spain: Stepdaughters Of Al-Andalus (MONOGRAPH SERIES CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION STUDIES)

History

Dietz, Gunther

El-Shohoumi, Nadia

Middle East

In three-year cycles, the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program (U. of California-San Diego) studies in great depth the same set of three migrant-sending communities in rural Mexico and their US urban satellite communities, in order to document and explain changes in migration and settlement behavior, particularly the impact of changes in US immigration law and policy. This second volume in the ongoing series looks at people in and from Tunkás, Yucatán. It is not indexed. Published by the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego, and distributed in the US by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mayan Journeys: U.S.-Bound Migration From A New Sending Community (Center for Comparative Immigration Studies)

Wayne A. Cornelius

David Fitzgerald

and Pedro Lewin Fischer

Americas

Four Generations of Nortenos: New Research from the Cradle of Mexican Migration

Four Generations of Nortenos: New Research from the Cradle of Mexican Migration (Ccis Anthologies)

How has the US economic crisis that erupted in 2007 affected flows of Mexican migrants to and from the United States? In this follow-up to "Mayan Journeys", the authors provide ample evidence that the lack of assured jobs in the US - and not concerns with tougher border enforcement - is driving decisions to postpone (though not permanently forgo) migration. They also show that neither the economic crisis nor workplace raids are inducing migrants already in the US to return home. Drawing on responses to more than 1,000 surveys and some 500 hours of in-depth interviews in both the Yucatan and the US, the authors document the economic coping strategies of migrants and their families, how migrant workers navigate the US job market, and how health, education, and community participation are being shaped by the economic crisis. There is a groundbreaking chapter that explores how a 'youth culture of migration' develops in a migrant sending community. This title explores the impact of the US economic crisis on flows of Mexican migrants to and from the United States.

Mexican Migration and the U.S. Economic Crisis: A Transnational Perspective (Ccis Anthologies)

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Books by Center for Comparative Immigration