Event description:

Highly skilled immigration has proliferated as a policy preference globally. However, the implications of highly skilled immigration policy for gender equality principles are underappreciated. Given prevailing gender differentials in the global labor market, we need to consider whether the pursuit of highly skilled immigration is antagonistic to gender equality goals. The seminar will showcase research from the book Genter, Migration and the Global Race for Talent (Manchester University Press, 2016) that develops new indicators to assess the gender awareness of skilled immigration policies both normatively and empirically. The book produces the GenderImmi dataset that codes highly skilled immigration selection laws across 12 countries and 37 skilled immigration visa classes. Three aspects of “gender awareness” are considered: 1. The extent to which gender auditing is incorporated into policy processes; 2. The ways in which the different life course trajectories of men and women are acknowledged in policy design. 3. How “skill” is defined in policy terms and the gender implications of such definitions.