Changing policy regimes: From (stale) migration policies to

(innovative) policy initiatives

Yevgeny KuznetsovMigration Policy Institute

Washington DC February 25

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Policies affecting migration and its effect on development

• Migration policies• Sectoral (labor market, education etc.)Both are often secondary to policy regimes• Policy regime: national growth and institutional

environment. It is very similar to investment climate: every factor that ‘tax’ FDI would affect human capital

Think about reversal of migration fortunes between Argentina and Spain from 2002 to 2012

• Skills and talent flows are particularly affected by changes in the policy regime

Think about Russia between 2012 and 2014

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Dealing with bad policy regimes

Twin challenge of improving policy regimes: •They are all-government and all-society: everywhere and nowhere (with migration agencies having little or no say to change them)•They are often bad: both on the sending end (this is why human capital emigrates) and the receiving end (e.g. suicidal way the US immigration policy treats foreign talent)

A notion of policy initiative as a way to respond to this twin challenge: •A long project which (usually) spans several agencies•A project that can be implemented against many odds •Long-term but with ‘quick wins’ and medium-term impact

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Illustration: Public Global Education Initiatives

• Public funding to facilitate foreign education of master and PhD levels

• Recent proliferation of global education initiatives all over the world as a response to global knowledge economy

• A strategic bet on the future. Example: Kazakhastan Bolashak (‘Future’ ) program initiated in 1993. Returning graduates is a major forces to build competent public adminsitration and higher education

• Reveals heterogeneity of elites. E.g. Russia just launched a major Western education initiative inspite of anti-Western rhetoric.

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Agency designing and implementing migration-related policies

• State capability as endogenous variable: capable of growing rather than given

• Key issue: heterogeneity (internal diversity) of the state. Capabilities can be low in general but some segments are dynamic, creative and problem solving

• Creative state: state designing new ‘out-of-box’ solutions to deal with migration and development challenges (Natasha Iskander’s book on Creative State in Mexico and Morocco)

• A hypothesis (a paradox?): migration-related capabilities tend to be either very low (when immigration is part of security agenda) or unusually high (when policy innovation emerges in response to persistent challenge: Iskander’s Creative State )

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Implications for 2016 OECD Perspectives on Global Development

• Endeavor policy synthesis: include a chapter on new migration-related policy initiatives

• But avoid the ‘best practice’ approach (‘development church’ dispensing the latest wisdom)

• Instead, focus on local policy innovations and how it diffuses. This is policy ‘glocalization’: local innovation informed by global experience

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©Knowledge for Development, WBI

2. What does the policy manage? Migration chains

Traditional migration chains

1. Low skilled migration chains: ‘Birds of Passage’ (M. Piore) in which the success of one villager in a low-skill job abroad attracts first one neighbor or cousin, then the next 2. Internal job ladderswhere high skill employers work and learn by progressing

from one task to a hierarchically more demanding one within a closed corporation

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©Knowledge for Development, WBI

Open Migration chains

In the knowledge economy, one is beginning to see fusion of traditional migration chains and internal job ladders into open migration chains

Open migration chains are sequences of educational or job opportunities which allow a migrant to move to progressively complex educational and job tasks necessary to work in the global environmentEvidence:

-- high skilled mobility (India, Greater China)-- mid-skilled migration

Mid-level skills: tacit skills learnt through experience (e.g. construction Workers) E.g. Progression from manual labor to management

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Skills in the knowledge economy

• Skills are measured by one dimension: years of schooling.Hence high-skilled migrants (whom everyone wants) and low

skilled. • Codifiable skills can be automated (AMT trends, thanks of

drivers) • There is a second crucial dimension of uniqueness of skill:

talent -a knack for problem solving This is because automation and other modern trends • Hence, two new categories: Mid-skilled migrants with tacit skills (whom everyone needs):

nannies, construction workers High achievers: the stars of each profession

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Beyond “low-high” skill dichotomy: Four Skill Types and Distinct Policy Agendas

Education level (by years of schooling)

Uniqueness of skills: low Uniqueness (talent )dimension (problem-solving): high

Low “Birds of passage”: Low skilled migrants

Craft tacit skills: mid-skill migration

High (tertiary education)

Human capital: ‘run of the mill’ skilled migration

High achievers: star performersin science, business, culture, politics

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Questions for Scenarios

• How would migration chains change in each of the scenarios?

E.g. in automation scenario, open migration are pervasive. What are the implications for policy?

• What is the weight of the uniqueness factor in skills? E.g. what is the scope of ‘winner take all’ stars?

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