Skilled migration in the literature: what we know, what we think we know, and why it matters to know the difference

Elisabetta Gentile

Chapter 2 in Skilled Labor Mobility and Migration, 2019, pp 25-56 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In 2015, 3.3 percent of the world’s population lived outside their country of origin. Yet, many misconceptions about migration persist in both the literature and the policy dialogue: that migrants are less skilled than those who stayed in the source country; that skilled migrants remit less than lower-skilled migrants; that emigration depletes the human capital stock of sending countries; that immigration lowers wages and employment in the native population; and that migrants receive a disproportionate amount of social benefits in host countries. This chapter endeavors to interpret the facts and trends in skilled migration through the lens of the existing academic literature, and in doing so it debunks the many myths that persist. It shows that gains and losses accrue to both sending and receiving countries, and that the net effect can be positive for both sides. This exercise is particularly important given the scarcity of high-quality data on international labor flows. The chapter also discusses opportunities and challenges for true skill mobility, and policy recommendations on how to facilitate skill flows in the ASEAN Economic Community.

Keywords: Asian Studies; Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788116169/9781788116169.00009.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:18164_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().