Gender, migration and the global race for talent

Gender, migration and the global race for talent

Gender, migration and the global race for talent

Anna Boucher

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Anna Boucher 2016

The right of Anna Boucher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

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ISBN 978 0 7190 9945 8 hardback

First published 2016

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This book is dedicated to Hermina Sapera

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

I The global race for talent: global context

1 Skill and gender: navigating the theoretical terrain

2 Gender awareness of skilled immigration policies across the OECD: presenting the GenderImmi data set

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

3 Gendering the policy process: venue shopping and diversity-seeking

4 Changing the mix, 1988–2003: the shift from family to skilled immigration

5 New selection grids: points tests and gender effects, 1993–2003

6 Targeting skills during the global financial crisis, 2007–13: gendered winners and losers?

7 Mining booms and Nanny-Gate: the gendered terrain of temporary economic immigration, 2007–13

8 Activist mobilising, state sponsorship and venue shopping capabilities

Appendices

1 Elite interviews conducted with relevant Australians

2 Elite interviews conducted with relevant Canadians

3 Methodological appendix

Bibliography

Index

Figures

1.1 Relationship between gender, labour market and skilled immigration policy

4.1 Permanent entrants to Australia across all streams, 1987–2003

4.2 Permanent entrants to Canada across all streams, 1987–2003

Tables

2.1 Variation in skilled immigration selection methods across twelve OECD countries

2.2 Wage distribution amounts in different countries in Euros

2.3 Gender-awareness index of skilled immigration policies

4.1 Permanent entrants to Australia, economic and family streams, 1987–2003

4.2 Permanent entrants to Canada, economy and family streams, 1987–2003

4.3 Skilled stream principal entrants to Australia, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.4 Skilled principal applicants to Canada, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.5 Family principal entrants to Australia, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.6 Family principal entrants to Canada, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.7 Skilled stream, secondary applicants to Australia, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.8 Skilled stream secondary applicants to Canada, gender disaggregated, 1996–2011

4.9 Planned immigration levels for the family reunification and skilled streams, Australia, 1989–2003

4.10 Planned immigration levels for the family reunification and skilled immigration streams, Canada, 1989–2003

5.1 The Australian points test for skilled immigrants, before and after the 1999 reforms

5.2 Canadian Federal Skilled Immigrant points test, before and after the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (‘IRPA’) (2002) reforms

6.1 Changes in top occupations for male and female principal skilled independent applicants across time in Canada

6.2 Changes in top occupations for male and female principal skilled independent applicants across time in Australia

7.1 Grants to principal 457 visa holders in Australia, gender disaggregated, 2008–9 through to 2011–12

7.2 Grants to principal high-skilled temporary foreign workers in Canada, gender disaggregated, 2008–9 through to 2011–12

7.3 Grants to principal low-skilled temporary foreign workers in Canada, gender disaggregated, 2008–9 through to 2011–12

8.1 Relevant diversity-seeking groups in Australia, 1988–2013, organisation type and sources of funding over time

8.2 Relevant diversity-seeking groups in Canada, 1988–2013, organisation type and sources of funding over time

8.3 Gender awareness of immigration selection policies in Australia and Canada, 1988–2013

Acknowledgements

I have read works by Monica Boyd, Catherine Dauvergne, Christina Gabriel, Lesleyanne Hawthorne, Eleonore Kofman, Audrey Macklin and Parvati Raghuram in the gender and immigration policy fields. Focusing not only on the economic but also the emotional and human side of immigration policies, particularly their effect on female immigrants, these scholars have inspired me in my research on the gender dimensions of contemporary immigration selection.

Like much work on immigration, the research for this book involved a significant amount of travel. There are many people to thank, in several different countries. During my first stay in Canada in 2008, I was provided an office in the Gender Studies Department at Carleton University and was a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. The senior archivists at the National Archives Canada and the National Women’s Archives at the University of Ottawa were extremely helpful in assisting me in accessing relevant closed files. During my second stay in Canada in 2013, I was provided with a lovely office in the School of Political Science at the University of Ottawa and the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Christina Gabriel, Randall Hansen and Larry LeDuc assisted in arranging these positions. Thanks to Prue D’homme of the Standing Committee of Citizenship and Immigration who provided full access to briefs presented before the Committee in its 2009 Inquiry into Temporary Foreign Workers. Judy Bernstein and Carol English provided housing in Ottawa in 2008.

In Canberra, particular thanks to David Smith and his colleagues of the Statistics Unit within the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) who compiled and provided me with gender-disaggregated admissions data and other unpublished statistics. The librarians at the DIAC library were also extremely helpful in locating old statistical reports during my first stay in Canberra in 2009. Over this period, I was gratefully a visiting fellow at the National Europe Centre at the Australian National University in 2008 and in the Research School of Political Science in 2013. Alice and Michael Kingsland provided friendly and affordable accommodation in Canberra in 2009.

I have been fortunate to receive funding for this project from the following sources: The Commonwealth Fellowship, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the International Council of Canadian Studies, the University of London Central Research Fund, the Zeit-Ebelin Bucerius Scholarship in Migration Studies, the National Europe Centre at the Australian National University, the Institute of Public Administration and the University of Canberra’s Public Administration Trust Fund Grant, and the Faculty Support Research Scheme and Special Study Period Support from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Science. A particular thanks goes to the Zeit-Ebelin Bucerius Scholarship. In addition to the financial support this fund provided, it has allowed me to gain insights from both established migration scholars, as well as emerging researchers in the field, including Hamutal Bernstein, Anne Hartung and Abigail Williamson.

At the LSE where I completed my doctorate, thanks to Michael Bruter, Justin Gest, Simon Hix, Jane Lewis, Sarah McLaughlin, Edward Page, Julia Pomares, Mike Seiferling, Matt Skellern, Eiko Thielemann, Nick Vivyan, Markus Wagner and the LSE Interlibrary Loans team. Australian colleagues have offered useful insights on methodology and argument in particular: Susan Banki, Betsi Beem, Deborah Brennan, Terry Carney, Louise Chappell, Charlotte Epstein, Graeme Gill, Dimitria Groutis, Megan MacKenzie, Allan McConnell, John Mikler, Pippa Norris, Stuart Rosewarne, Simon Tormey, Di Van DenBroek, Ariadne Vromen, Chris Warhurst, Colin White and Chris Wright. Skilled migration experts Lucie Cerna and Lesleyanne Hawthorne provided useful expert feedback on several chapters. Excellent research assistance was provided by Emma Franklin, Daniel Ghezelbash, Max Grömping, Aaron Roper and Catrina Yu. The chapters of this book benefited from feedback in presentations and seminars in the Departments of Sociology and Work and Organizational Studies at the University of Sydney and from comments from colleagues at the European Conference on Politics and Gender in Belfast in 2009 and in Budapest in 2011, the American Political Science Association General Meeting in Chicago in 2013, the Australian National University Research School of Politics and International Relations Seminar Series in Canberra in 2013, the International Organization for Migration meeting on skilled immigration and gender in Geneva in 2014 and the Institute for International Migration workshop on skilled immigration at Oxford University, also in 2014.

Thanks to Tony Mason of Manchester University Press for helpful advice and guidance through the review process.

To the 128 anonymous elite interviewees in both Australia and Canada who participated in the production of this book by giving their time and knowledge, thank you. Without your help, many of the events analysed in this book would not be covered and my understanding of immigration policy in Australia and Canada would be greatly diminished.

Chapter 3 republishes some parts of Anna Boucher (2013) ‘Bureaucratic Control and Policy Change: A Comparative Venue Shopping Approach to Skilled Immigration Policies in Australia and Canada’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 15 (4): 349–67.

To my husband Kåre Martens and to my parents, Robert and Tessa Boucher, for all the love and support you have given me over the years, I am very grateful.

Abbreviations

Introduction

The global economy is changing as the economic power base moves from West to East. Post-industrial societies are ageing. No longer possessing a competitive advantage in manufacturing and production, governments in these states face pressure to diversify their economies, to invest in technology and to develop human capital in order to stay ahead. Future economic success depends upon having a smart and skilled economy to promote growth. Within this context, the immigration of skilled workers facilitates the buoyancy of Western economies and alleviates some of the structural challenges represented by population ageing. In fact, skilled immigration not only offsets the decline in the domestic workforce: in many countries, it is becoming the key source of labour market growth (e.g. External Reference Group 2008: 21). Some commentators go so far as to claim that ‘[s]‌killed immigration will define the landscape of the global labour market over the longer term’ (Alexander et al. 2012: 5).

Within this changing economic context, states aggressively compete over skilled immigrants in what has been referred to alternately as the ‘global race for talent’ (Shachar 2006) or the search for ‘the best and the brightest’ (Thompson 2001). Once a discrete tool peculiar to the settler states of the United States, Canada and Australia, many countries are now adopting skilled immigration policies. Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland have all developed skilled immigration programmes in recent years. Meanwhile the development of the European Union (EU) Blue Card for Skilled Immigrants in 2009 has influenced the proliferation of skilled immigration policies across the European continent. Governments increasingly view skilled immigration not only as a panacea for labour shortages but also – due to the frequently high educational and employment outcomes of skilled immigrants – as a way to avoid the social and economic integration issues that have bedevilled European immigration in the past (Symons 2006). During a period where domestic population ageing contributes to ballooning welfare costs, immigration scholars have advocated the benefits of economically efficient immigration to offset these trends (Beach et al. 2007; Borjas 1989, 1999; Koser and Salt 1997: 294).

In addition to the purported economic benefits of skilled immigration, this approach to immigration selection is seen as fairer, more meritocratic and more transparent than previous approaches – in particular those based upon the race or ethnicity of the selected applicant (Papademetriou et al. 2008: 12). Leaving behind a past characterised by race-based selection, which often excluded Asians, Jews, Africans and other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants, the adoption of skilled immigration has been declared the ‘triumph of economics over discrimination’ (Passaris 1984: 91). Christian Joppke (2005: ix) characterises this shift as one towards ‘toward nonethnic, universalistic immigration policies’. Importantly, Joppke (2005: 2, original emphases) argues that the trend towards universalistic selection policy is particularly strong with regard to economic immigration selection where ‘the state may consider the individual only for what she does, not for what she is’. Echoing these sentiments, debates in the United States over Comprehensive Immigration Reform promoted the introduction of ‘merit-based’ skilled immigration visas for economic immigration (Koslowski 2014, citing United States Senate 2013).

The prevailing orthodoxy emphasises the ascent of economic rationality and the decline of discrimination in skilled immigration selection. Yet, this status quo reading of skilled immigration overlooks the key ways in which discrimination can continue indirectly. This book considers this central issue of discrimination and focuses in particular upon the question of gender. Feminist scholars have long argued that equality between men and women should be considered both in formal and substantive terms. ‘Formal equality’ denotes equal treatment on the face of policy or law. For instance, in the case of gender equality, this would require that ‘women and men are treated exactly the same in all circumstances’ (ALRC 1994, cited in Graycar and Morgan 2002: 28–9). However, advocates of ‘substantive equality’ suggest that formal equality is insufficient when it leads to different outcomes. Substantive approaches acknowledge that there are ‘important, immutable differences between women and men’. Men, for instance, cannot become pregnant, nor do they nurse young children. These ‘immutable differences’, according to proponents of substantive equality, have implications for the ways in which policy is designed and the differing effects of policy upon the sexes.

Once we move beyond the simple question of whether skilled immigration policies exercise formal inequality between men and women towards more complex questions of substantive inequality, the global race for talent raises a myriad of discriminatory issues that must be unravelled, examined and debated. In this book I ask: ‘Do highly skilled women face obstacles to entry as skilled immigrants to a greater degree than their male counterparts?’ I find this to be the case and argue that gendered obstacles come into skilled immigration policy at a variety of stages of the policy cycle. They arise in the political discussions through which immigration policies are negotiated and designed in ways that often advantage male applicants and disadvantage female applicants. They also come into the selection stage when immigrants choose to apply as skilled immigrants, based upon assessment of selection criteria. Policy design often overlooks the different life course experiences of women and men, for instance whether part-time work or career breaks are acknowledged within skilled immigration design. Skilled immigration policies frequently perpetuate a stereotypical divide between an autonomous male breadwinner and an accompanying (implicitly female) spouse. Joint worker-carer models are absent from policy design. Finally, as regards actual immigration outcomes, women disproportionately enter as accompanying family members of skilled immigrants rather than as principal skilled immigrants in their own right.

Yet, this book demonstrates that gendered immigration policies are not inevitable. Immigration ministries have the capacity to alter their immigration laws to ensure that women applicants are considered on equal terms with men. Certainly, selecting governments design their policies against a backdrop of global gender inequalities in labour market opportunities. Notwithstanding this reality, I argue that governments possess the scope to develop policies that are attentive to differences between men and women immigrants, which I refer to as ‘gender awareness’ in policy design. I demonstrate the importance of state intervention through a detailed comparison of Australian and Canadian skilled immigration policies over a quarter century. I argue that gender issues emerge in different ways depending upon the mechanisms of skilled immigration selection; whether governments design points test models or use salary thresholds, if the focus is on general human capital or specific sectoral skills, or instead when employers wield powers over selection through ‘demand driven selection models’.

To some readers, the relevance of gender in skilled immigration policy will seem initially opaque. Yet, I demonstrate that gender is a central fulcrum that informs all aspects of skilled immigration selection. The interaction of the labour market with skilled immigration selection policy is critical here. Major life course events such as education, training, professional work, child bearing, child rearing and retirement affect women differently from men. For instance, women are more likely than men to take career breaks for child bearing and rearing, leading to less linear career trajectories and delayed realisation of key career goals. Further, the ways in which skilled immigration selection policies are designed interact with and reinforce many of these gendered life course dimensions. These life course trajectories in turn interrelate with domestic definitions of ‘skill’ that in some instances operate to exclude or disqualify the contributions and qualifications of women. Finally, as immigration states become more competitive in the race for talent and as selecting nations place greater emphasis on human capital credentials, language abilities, vocational skills and work experience, the importance of gender is amplified. In short, the global race for talent is gendered, with significant implications for the skill accreditation, labour market outcomes, rights of stay, gendered family dynamics, including freedom from domestic violence and financial independence, of female immigrants.

Given prevailing state sovereignty over immigration selection, some will counter that gendered immigration policies are the prerogative of selecting countries and therefore unimportant as a theoretical or empirical endeavour. As Catherine Dauvergne (2009) argues, the central point of immigration policy is to discriminate. Future immigrants stand outside the nation state and immigration ministers increasingly emphasise their government’s right to select ‘the best and the brightest’ on their own terms. Adopting an aptly Canadian metaphor in 2008, then Immigration Minister Diane Finley compared skilled immigration selection to selection onto a hockey team. If Canada simply took ‘the first 25 people in the line’, she argued, this might ‘seem fair because they lined up in that order’, but ‘you might end up without a goalie’ (Finley 2008: 1605). Following this argument, it is the right of the government to select the best members for ‘Team Canada’.

Yet, when states rejected discriminatory immigration policies in the 1960s and 1970s, with the removal of the White Australia policy in Australia in 1973 and similar policies in Canada in 1962, they also rejected a system of selection that differentiated on the basis of people’s uncontrollable innate characteristics (Joppke 2005: 2). For instance, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s (DIAC) Fact Sheet 1 summarises that country’s multicultural immigration selection policy and states that ‘Australia’s Migration Program does not discriminate on the basis of race or religion. This means that anyone from any country, can apply to migrate, regardless of their ethnic origin, gender or colour, provided that they meet the criteria set out in law’ (DIAC 2009a). Similarly, Canada also places emphasis on diversity in selection, including gender, as evidenced by the inclusion of a requirement for gender analysis in its immigration act (IRPA 2002, s92(f)). With respect to skilled immigration in particular, one of the key objectives of the development of the points tests in Canada in 1967 was to develop a race-blind, non-discriminatory means to select migrants (Green and Green 1999). On this basis I argue that the end of discriminatory selection in these countries in the 1960s and 1970s irrevocably restrained the exercise of state sovereignty by placing an equality check on immigration policies. The non-discriminatory principle imposes some limits upon entry onto the metaphorical hockey team. Normatively, it is not permissible for a country to select a team that comprises only Anglo-Saxon players, or overwhelmingly male hockey players, or that gives more rights to some team members than others, because this runs up against the original commitment to a diverse nation that is a founding feature of non-discriminatory immigration selection. The more complex question is how policies may operate to inadvertently select such a ‘team’, even if this is not the stated or even implicit aim of government. It is this more subtle issue that this book explores through its analysis of the obstacles faced by highly skilled women in skilled immigration selection.

Outline of the book

Part I: the global race for talent

This book is divided into two parts. The first part considers the big picture of skilled immigration policies globally and the particular obstacles faced by women applicants in meeting skilled immigration selection criteria. Chapter 1 draws upon research from scholars of feminist industrial relations, sociology, economics and intersectional feminist studies, to develop a new theoretical framework to assess the gendered dimensions of skilled immigration policy. These theoretical accounts have long identified the particular labour market obstacles which women face due in part to their heightened levels of engagement in reproductive labour (child bearing and rearing) but also due to gendered appreciations of worth on the labour market. Chapter 1 brings the analytical insights of these theories to bear upon the area of skilled immigration.

In Chapter 2, I present a unique international data set (the ‘GenderImmi data set’) that I developed to analyse skilled immigration policies across twelve key OECD countries and thirty-seven visa types. Two multi-lingual coders analysed legal regulations of thirty-seven immigration visas from twelve OECD countries with high rates of net migration.¹ Drawing upon the framework established in Chapter 1, three key areas of ‘gender awareness’ are considered: i) the extent to which gender mainstreaming processes are incorporated into policy-making; ii) the ways in which the different life courses of men and women are acknowledged in skilled immigration policy design; and iii) the (gendered) definitions of ‘skill’ within such policies. This medium-N comparative analysis demonstrates that countries such as Canada and Denmark that undertake gender audits of their immigration laws or admit applicants in female-dominated occupations such as the caring fields perform better in terms of gender awareness than countries like Austria, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland that do not undertake such audits or that focus narrowly on selecting immigrants from male-dominated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professions. This finding is important for the second part of the book that explains the reasons for differences in the gender awareness of Australian and Canadian skilled immigration policies.

Part II: gendering skilled immigration policy in Australia and Canada, 1988–2013

Even if we know how countries vary in terms of their attention to gender within skilled immigration policies, this analysis does not explain why such countries differ. The second part of the book provides a detailed analysis of Australian and Canadian skilled immigration policies over a quarter century (1988–2013) in order to address this explanatory question. In this part of the book, I consider how policy processes might enable, or restrict, the realisation of gender-aware skilled immigration policies. The case selection of Australia and Canada is motivated by a most-similar design that allows key explanatory variables to be isolated (Lipset 1990: xiii, cited in Bloemraad 2006: 12). Against considerable similarities – that I outline briefly below – this second part of the book explains why Canada adopted more gender- aware skilled immigration policies than Australia over the period 1988–2013.

Case selection

Although Australia and Canada are relatively small countries with populations of approximately twenty-three and thirty-five million persons respectively, they are central players in global immigration debates. Australia attracts about 219,500 permanent immigrants per year, and Canada attracts about 248,700. They also admit 125,070 and 213,573 temporary economic immigrants respectively each year (DIAC 2013a: 5; CIC 2013g).² Both countries have very high net immigration rates over the period 2005–10 (11 per cent in Australia and 8 per cent in Canada), ranking them as the top states in the OECD (Chiswick 2013; UNDESA 2012).³

Other countries often hold up Australia and Canada as exemplars of skilled immigration policies, worthy of policy transfer. The British Government adopted an ‘Australian-style points test’ for skilled immigration in 2008, while Denmark in 2010 also developed a points test system for selection (Sparrow 2008; Copenhagen Post 2010), a concept which actually originated in Canada in 1965 (Hawkins 1989: 39). In addition, various versions of the points test were implemented in New Zealand in 1989, the Czech Republic in 2003, Singapore in 2004 and Hong Kong in 2006 (Papademetriou 2008: 7–9). Given their importance as sources of inspiration in the skilled immigration policy field, as well as their relatively advanced policy experience, Australia and Canada provide important cases not only in their own right but also for other countries to consider.

Australia and Canada also both draw on a British colonial history, an Indigenous population and a racialised past of immigration selection, replaced in modern times with multicultural selection policies. Migration scholars refer to them both as ‘settler states’ (Freeman 1995) or ‘classic countries of immigration’ (Cornelius et al. 2004: 12). Institutionally, both countries are also similar with Westminster-inspired arrangements: largely majoritarian electoral systems, a fusion of executive and legislative power and a two-party-dominated model with an increasing role played by minor parties. These two countries are also both federations and share labour market similarities, often being classified as liberal market economies (Hall and Soskice 2001).

Both Australia and Canada have accessible naturalisation, within four years of landing (Australian Citizenship Act (2007) (Cth), s21; Citizenship Act (1985) (Cdn), s5(1)(c)). Both countries have truly multiethnic communities with 24 per cent of Australians foreign born and 20 per cent of Canadians (Hawthorne 2014: 4). Both countries also have similar geographical dispersal of immigrants with the bulk of new immigrants settled in key cities – Sydney and Melbourne in the case of Australia, and Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal in the case of Canada (DIAC 2007a: 14; CIC 2009a). This has resulted in similar geographical concentrations of the costs and arguably also the benefits of immigration. Finally, in recent years, these countries demonstrate important economic similarities in terms of burgeoning resource sector growth, which has seen them weather the global financial crisis well, producing strong demand for skilled labour.

Venue shopping and diversity-seeking: the theoretical approach adopted in this book

Despite these similarities, as Part I of the book demonstrates, there are nonetheless important differences in skilled immigration policies across Australia and Canada, including from a gender perspective. In order to explain this divergence, I draw upon venue shopping theory from American public policy scholarship and historical institutionalism to explore this issue (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Mezey 1979; Pierson 2006; Pralle 2006a, 2006b; 2007; Weaver and Rockman 1991). In particular, these scholars focus on how actor engagement in different institutional venues shapes the perception of a policy problem (the ‘policy image’) and in turn the efficacy of actors’ claims on the state for policy change. Following the argument of these scholars, I propose that the engagement of feminist and immigrant associations (‘diversity-seeking groups’) in key policy venues is essential to ensure gender-aware skilled immigration policies are achieved. In their absence, policies will necessarily exhibit a more economic rationalist character as bureaucracies and immigration ministers exercise considerable control over the policy process (Boucher