European Urban Strategies for Attracting Highly Skilled Migrants

Abstract

In the context of globalization and rapid technological changes, the preservation of human capital and its multiplication are becoming an increasingly important factor of economic growth. These challenges are particularly acute for the European Union and the UK, which have been gradually losing their competitive positions in the world economy over the past decades. In this context it is particularly important to analyze policies aimed at stimulating highly skilled migration carried out at different levels, including the municipal level. Despite their limited competences in the field of migration regulation, municipal administrations are able to influence its dynamics and structure by creating a comfortable urban environment and housing policy, increasing transport accessibility, facilitating employment of local university graduates, supporting return migration, and using other soft measures to attract highly qualified specialists and representatives of the creative class. This process, however, has both winners and losers. Many cities, primarily in the peripheral EU countries, are not able to cope with the competition and handle the ever increasing brain drain problem, which requires comprehensive solutions involving not only municipal administrations but also central authorities and supranational European institutions.