Emigration, Immigration, and the Quality of Membership: On the Political Economy of Highly Skilled Immigration Politics

Abstract

Immigration has been one of the most heavily disputed political topics in many OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) states for a long time. Being a topic that still serves as a popular tool to mobilize alleged political supporters before elections, immigration politics in many OECD-states nevertheless have been exposed to a fundamental change. Recent debates about migration are no longer centred on the basic question of whether immigration should be allowed or not. The core of the current immigration discussion instead revolves around what kind of migration should be allowed, who should become a new member, and how the admission process should be organized. At present there is no industrialized country that still pursues a policy of general open borders.¹ The era of minimum state intervention into immigration processes — the “liberal moment in the history of international migration” (Zolberg, 1992, p. 322) — ended in the nineteenth century (Moch, 1992, p. 107). States neither accept nor reject immigrants as a rule and even countries such as Germany, which have been described as “undeclared” (Thränhardt, 1992) or “reluctant” (Martin, 1992) countries of immigration, now openly confirm their new status as immigration countries. In light of this, the central thrust of current debates on immigration in most OECD countries is not the question as to whether or not there should be any immigration. Instead, debates focus on technical questions such as the kind of migration that should be allowed, the characteristics of potential members that are considered desirable, or the management of the admissions process. A common denominator of immigration politics in the OECD world over the last decades would be that access for medium- or low-skilled workers has been restricted while the level of competition for highly skilled migrants has been increasing. As a general trend this implies the “end of the easy solutions” in the way that neither pursuing a policy of open borders nor the other extreme, the categorical denial of entrance to outsiders, seem to be realistic options for Western liberal democracies.