Migrant-receiving Countries Research Articles

The moral challenges of health care providers brain drain phenomenon

The migration of health-care professionals has often produced morally charged discussions among ethicists, politicians, and policy makers in the migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries because of its devastating effects on the health of those left behind in the countries of origin.This movement of skilled professionals – their decision to leaving their countries of origin in search of better work environments – has created a phenomenon that has been described as brain drain. Although the migration of health workers continue to bring prosperity to millions of people around the world, they have also evoked hopelessness in many more people. Thus, questions of global justice manifest themselves when it comes to the matters of brain drain and the just distribution of health and healthcare professionals.

The Remigration of Afghan Immigrants from Russia

AbstractRussia is one of the world’s largest migrant-receiving countries. The recession of recent years, changes in labor market and immigration policies, and an increase in anti-foreign sentiment have directly affected immigrants’ lives in Russia. This has been reflected not only in how immigrants find employment and housing in the country but also in how they perceive Russia as a country in which to work and live. This article analyzes remigration as a coping strategy of Afghan immigrants in Russia. These immigrants face severe everyday difficulties as irregular migrants and suffer discrimination and uncertainty. Despite their low status and vulnerability, we argue that Afghan immigrants still have agency, evident in how they interpret and live in the Russian anti-immigrant atmosphere. The article is based on stories narrated by Afghan immigrants in Russia and a qualitative content analysis of the asylum application protocols of Afghan asylum seekers in Finland that was produced by the Finnish Border Guard, Police, and the Finnish Immigration Service. A total of 632 Afghan citizens applied for asylum after entering Finland from the Russian Federation along the “Arctic route” between 2015 and 2016.

Интеграция мигрантов второго поколения в возрасте 18-35 лет в России: результаты исследовательского проекта (Second Generation Migrants Aged 18–35 in Russia: Research Project Results)

Russian Abstract: В статье представлены результаты двухлетнего исследовательского проекта, посвященного интеграционным характеристикам мигрантов второго поколения в молодом взрослом возрасте (18—35 лет) из Закавказья и Средней Азии в России. Исследовательский проект включал интернет-опрос, осуществленный посредством таргетирования в социальных сетях (N=12524), и серию интервью (N=401) в десяти регионах России. Основываясь на немецкой традиции изучения интеграции мигрантов, авторы выделяют четыре аспекта интеграции: структурный, социальный, культурный и идентификационный, — каждому из которых посвящен раздел статьи. Авторы приходят к выводу, что в части доходов мигранты второго поколения из Закавказья и Средней Азии не отличаются от сопоставимых сверстников, в то время как в части образовательных траекторий эти группы существенно различаются, при этом высшее образование чаще всех получают закавказские мигранты второго поколения, затем — местные, затем — мигранты второго поколения из Средней Азии. Круги общения мигрантов второго поколения инклюзивны и в них доминируют представители «прочих» этнических категорий, жениться же они предпочитают на представителях «своей» категории, однако существует значительная группа мигрантов второго поколения, придерживающаяся «либеральных» установок и практик в части гендерных отношений, более того, хотя мигранты второго поколения в целом консервативнее местных, этот разрыв невелик. Идентификация мигрантов второго поколения со «своей» этнической категорией сильна, но это не мешает им чувствовать себя своими в России и идентифицировать себя с тем населенным пунктом и регионом, где они выросли. Если сравнивать положение российских мигрантов второго поколения с положением сопоставимых групп в прочих принимающих обществах, можно говорить, что в России интеграция этой группы мигрантов протекает успешно, наравне с такими принимающими обществами, как Канада и Австралия. Связано это, однако, в первую очередь не со взвешенной миграционной политикой, как в указанных странах, а с разнообразными факторами «советского наследия», в частности, с общим в недавнем прошлом культурным пространством, а также с эгалитарной городской средой — именно эти факторы имеют первостепенное значение для понимания миграционной системы, в центре которой находится Россия. English Abstract: The article presents the results of a two-year research project devoted to the integration of second generation migrants in the young adult age range (18-35 years old) from the regions of Transcaucasia and Central Asia currently living in Russia. The project includes an online survey where respondents were recruited using a targeting procedure on social networking sites (N = 12524) and a series of interviews (N = 401) in 10 regions of Russia. The article contains four parts — each dealing with one of the four migrant integration dimensions — which have been delineated based on the German tradition in migrant integration studies: structural, social, cultural, and identificational integration. The authors show that second generation migrants from Transcaucasia and Central Asia do not differ from their local peers in terms of their earnings, but there are significant variations in their educational level: higher education characterizes first of all second-generation migrants from Transcaucasia to a lesser extent local youth, even less so — second-generation migrants from Central Asia. Social networks of second-generation migrants are inclusive and dominated by the representatives of “other” ethnic categories; however, their marriages are mostly monoethnic. A considerable share of second-generation migrants have “liberal” attitudes and practices in the realm of gender relations, and although second- generation migrants are generally more conservative than the local youth, the gap is minor. Second-generation migrants have a strong identification with “their own” ethnic categories but that impedes neither their feeling “at home” in Russia nor their belonging in the town or region of Russia where they grew up. A comparison of integration characteristics of second-generation migrants in Russia with situations in other migrant-receiving countries shows that the Russian case is successful, comparable with Canada and Australia. However, the success is explained not with the well-reasoned migration policy as in the latter states, but with the various factors of the Soviet past including a common cultural environment as well as egalitarian urban landscapes that are of paramount importance for the comprehension of the migration system centered around Russia.

MOVING PICTURES: RAISING AWARENESS OF DEMENTIA IN CALD COMMUNITIES THROUGH MULTIMEDIA

Limited awareness of dementia in people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds often results in delayed diagnosis, poorer prognosis, and a higher burden of care on families and health systems. Given the rapidly ageing and multicultural populations in migrant-receiving countries such as Australia and the United States, this disparity needs to be addressed urgently. This project aimed to inform and educate people from five linguistically diverse backgrounds – Hindi, Tamil, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Arabic – about dementia. A mixed methods, multimedia design comprising video-interviews with 76 participants including carers from the five language groups and key service providers was employed. Data were gathered nationally across Australia in 2018 and thematically analysed. Data were used to co-produce 15 short films, comics, and a mobile-optimised website from which data analytics were measured. The films and comics focused on dementia detection and timely diagnosis, how to navigate the aged care system, and the importance of self-care. Analytics data is currently being collected online and via community forums. In conclusion, co-production methods in tandem with digital multimedia are fundamental to developing culturally salient interventions to address dementia disparities in CALD populations in Australia and internationally.

Women in the Crossfire: Understanding and Ending Honor Killing by Robert Paul Churchill

Reviewed by: Women in the Crossfire: Understanding and Ending Honor Killing by Robert Paul Churchill Sital Kalantry (bio) Robert Paul Churchill, Women in the Crossfire: Understanding and Ending Honor Killing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ISBN 978-0-190-46856-9, 334 pages. Women in the Crossfire, a book by philosopher Robert Paul Churchill, is a significant contribution to efforts to understand honor killing. Too many works speak generally about gender-based violence. By focusing just on one type of gender-based violence, Professor Churchill is able to give us a number of insights into the crime than would otherwise be possible. True to his philosopher roots, he spends significant time in defining honor killings and distinguishing them from other crimes, such as crimes of passion, domestic violence, and politically-motivated violence. Defining honor killings allows him to better investigate its history, scope, causes, and solutions. Churchill explores honor killing from an empirical, cultural, psychological, and historical perspective. There is a dearth of existing empirical quantitative studies on honor killing. Churchill and his colleague set out to fill this gap by scouring a wide variety of materials to find reported cases of honor killings. They examine (among other things) scholarly books, journal articles, newspapers, wire service reports, and online databases. With this data, Churchill does an exhaustive analysis to identify common characteristics of reported honor killings, such as motives, the relationship between the perpetrator-victim, and the ages of victims and perpetrators. Perpetrators are typically fathers and brothers of the victim and the most significant motive for the crime is when a girl or woman chooses a husband or boyfriend that is unacceptable to the family. Churchill's historical analysis suggests that honor killings are responses to mate guarding and costly signaling. Churchill argues that honor killing occurs within what he calls "honor-shame communities." In these communities, a group of people acknowledge the same, usually unwritten honor code. The honor code is used to control female bodies and women's sexuality. When a woman transgresses this honor code, she is killed as a way to restore the honor the family has lost because of the transgression. Thus, honor killing is a social practice, it cannot be separated from the community in which it occurs. Churchill's data set includes a disproportionate number of honor killings in immigrant communities. He is careful to point out that this does not necessarily mean there are more honor killings among immigrant communities, but that those cases are easier to find because they garner greater media attention. The media in which those murders are reported is also probably more accessible to his researchers. Churchill does not present us with a contextual analysis that would consider the differences between honor-shame communities in migrant-receiving countries and in countries where the practice has historically occurred. In a small village in Pakistan, a family's dishonor by the act of a female relative is visible to them every day through the multiple interactions they have with neighbors, shop owners, and other relatives. That heightened sense of dishonor may not exist in immigrant communities. Immigrants live among people who do not share the same honor code and thus, do not share the same notions of dishonor. Of course, sometimes immigrants live in close proximity with other people who emigrated from the same country and region they have come from. In those cases, there may be a shared honor code. Moreover, immigrants [End Page 1015] often maintain relationships with people from their country of origin, which is increasingly possible as Churchill notes through text messages, phone, and social media. Yet, a more nuanced perspective would recognize that honor killings that occur among immigrant communities in countries where the majority group does not share the same notions of honor or dishonor must be understood differently than honor killings in places where they have historically occurred. The last several chapters focus on providing solutions. Churchill provides an overview and shortcomings of existing proposals such as hotlines, smart phone apps, shelters, and training initiatives. Heighted criminal penalties and better prosecution are often included in the reform proposals, but they have limited gains as time has shown. The most intriguing solution...

Second Generation Migrants Aged 18–35 in Russia: Research Project Results

The article presents the results of a two-year research project devoted to the integration of second generation migrants in the young adult age range (18-35 years old) from the regions of Transcaucasia and Central Asia currently living in Russia. The project includes an online survey where respondents were recruited using a targeting procedure on social networking sites (N=12524) and a series of interviews (N=401) in 10 regions of Russia. The article contains four parts — each dealing with one of the four migrant integration dimensions — which have been delineated based on the German tradition in migrant integration studies: structural, social, cultural, and identificational integration. The authors show that second generation migrants from Transcaucasia and Central Asia do not differ from their local peers in terms of their earnings, but there are significant variations in their educational level: higher education characterizes first of all second-generation migrants from Transcaucasia to a lesser extent local youth, even less so — second-generation migrants from Central Asia. Social networks of second-generation migrants are inclusive and dominated by the representatives of “other” ethnic categories; however, their marriages are mostly monoethnic. A considerable share of second-generation migrants have “liberal” attitudes and practices in the realm of gender relations, and although second-generation migrants are generally more conservative than the local youth, the gap is minor. Second-generation migrants have a strong identification with “their own” ethnic categories but that impedes neither their feeling “at home” in Russia nor their belonging in the town or region of Russia where they grew up. A comparison of integration characteristics of second-generation migrants in Russia with situations in other migrant-receiving countries shows that the Russian case is successful, comparable with Canada and Australia. However, the success is explained not with the well-reasoned migration policy as in the latter states, but with the various factors of the Soviet past including a common cultural environment as well as egalitarian urban landscapes that are of paramount importance for the comprehension of the migration system centered around Russia.

Indigenous Places and the Making of Undocumented Status in Mexico-US Migration

The uneven distribution of economic and social resources across communities often falls along ethno-racial dimensions. Few demographers have considered whether such axes of place stratification in a migrant-sending country relate to individuals’ access to economic and social resources in a migrant-receiving country. Taking Mexico-US migration flows as our focus, we examine if having origins in an indigenous place, a primary axis of stratification in Mexico, is associated with migrants’ documentation status when crossing the border, a primary dimension of stratification in the United States. We rely on individual-level data from the Mexican Migration Project merged with municipal-level data from the Mexican Census. Using multilevel models, we find that migrants from communities in indigenous municipalities in Mexico are more likely to migrate undocumented than documented to the United States compared with those from communities in non-indigenous municipalities, net of the economic and social resources identified in prior work as useful for international movement. We discuss why indigenous places — marked by a set of correlated conditions of economic and social disadvantage — disproportionately channel migrants into an undocumented status. This study contributes to understandings of stratification processes in cross-border contexts and has implications for the production of inequality in the United States.

Reflections on Globalized Care Chains and Migrant Women Workers

An analysis of the international division of reproductive labor is incomplete without acknowledging the proliferation of state regulations in migrant-receiving countries, which result in restricting workers’ ability to maintain their own families and to exercise their full range of labor rights. An overview of trends in nations fueling the need for domestic workers and caregivers includes the social conditions for migrants increasingly fill this niche. The transnational circuits of care migration are constructed by the commercial and legal processes used to recruit and transport domestic workers. These are highlighted by analyzing the policies in the USA and United Arab Emirates to demonstrate the restrictions countries place on migrants seeking employment and the limited labor protections offered migrant domestic workers. Two otherwise different countries have adopted similar entry requirements tying migrant domestic workers to employer sponsored jobs in their homes. However, the USA offers fewer visa options to domestic workers and recruitment systems differ. Vulnerabilities faced by migrant domestics receiving visas are linked to these immigration policies.

All You Need Is Time? Discrepancies between the European Court of Human Rights Case Law and Liberal Normative Theory on Long-Term Migrants

This article, departing from Gila Stopler's ‘Rights in Immigration: The Veil as a Test Case’, published in theIsraeli Law Reviewin 2010, reviews how the time spent by a long-term migrant, irrespective of legal status, normatively figures in liberal theories of migration and in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The article detects that in contemporary liberal theories, assigning an independent normative value to time spent by the migrant in the receiving country is a key move in balancing the competing interests of migrants and of the migrant-receiving country, where the right of the country to regulate migration is taken as given: the longer a migrant is present in a country, the stronger her interests become in receiving citizenship status or treatment akin to citizens. The article then surveys the case law of the ECtHR relating to long-term migrants. It finds that time is often one of multiple normative considerations in the balancing exercise, in conjunction with whether a migrant has achieved social integration in the migrant-receiving country and whether the right of the receiving community to regulate migration for reasons of affording citizenship, national security or distributive justice is paramount. The article argues that the lack of an independent normative weight afforded to time in the case law of the ECtHR is not merely a tension between the translation of liberal normative theory to legal policy. It also shows a deeper tension in liberal theories of migration between national liberalism and cosmopolitan liberalism.

Managing tuberculosis among labor migrants: exploring alternative organizational approach

Purpose High volume of international migration calls for the establishment of financial and organizational mechanisms that would ensure provision of treatment for tuberculosis (TB) among migrants. In the case of countries like Russia where budget funding goes for TB treatment, the need is acute as delivering these services is affected by social perception that they should be provided to taxpayers only. While official policies in Russia promote voluntary medical insurance as a way to cover their health care needs, the problem is that neither voluntary medical insurance, nor the National Medical Insurance Plan, extend to cover the treatment of infectious diseases, such as TB making proposal of possible alternatives to these delivery vehicles appropriate. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The analysis includes review of survey results on the extent of medical insurance coverage among migrants as well as legal provisions concerning access to medical care among migrants in Russia and some other migrant-receiving countries. Findings This exercise illuminates the public health risks and economic consequences related to inadequate access to medical help among migrants. Availability of medical insurance even among socially integrated segment of this group is limited. Also of notice is that citizens of Belarus as opposed to others are granted access to the full range of TB services in Russia. Originality/value Using this precedent, the authors propose an alternative mechanism – Inter-State Medical Insurance Fund – to be established by governments of CIS countries, with national allocations covering the provision of medical help to labor migrants from the respective countries in Russia.

Do bilateral social security agreements deliver on the portability of pensions and health care benefits? A summary policy paper on four migration corridors between EU and non-EU member states

This policy paper summarizes four corridor studies on bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) between four European Union (EU) member and two non-member states, draws conclusions on their results, and offers recommendations. BSSAs between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries are seen as the most important instrument to establish portability of social security benefits for internationally mobile workers. Yet, only about 23 percent of international migrants profit from BSSAs and their functioning has been little analyzed and even less assessed. The four corridors studied (Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco) were selected to allow for comparison of both similarities and differences in experiences. The evaluation of these corridors’ BSSAs was undertaken against a methodological framework and three selected criteria: fairness for individuals, fiscal fairness for countries, and bureaucratic effectiveness for countries and migrant workers. The results suggest that the investigated BSSAs work and overall deliver reasonably well on individual fairness. The results on fiscal fairness are clouded by conceptual and empirical gaps. Bureaucratic effectiveness would profit from information and communication technology-based exchanges on both corridors once available.

Russiaas New Concept of the State Migration Policy until 2025: A Reform towards Effective Policies for International Economic Migrants?

Russia’s new Concept of the State Migration Policy until 2025 (the CSMP) was approved on 13 June 2012. As the first comprehensive, nationwide document on migration policy in the modern history of Russia, it marks the beginning of a decisive reform of the country’s migration policy by departing from the existing focus on temporary foreign workers. The emphasis of the CSMP is on coordination between new, modernized, and reformed migration policies to help achieve its central goals: sustaining the country’s economic competitiveness, alleviating the negative effects of the country’s demographic decline, combating the deficiencies of the country’s domestic labor market, attracting and retaining talented foreign workers, and facilitating the country’s modernization and innovative development. This article first presents the principal elements of Russia’s migration policy in the post-Soviet period. It explains the reasons for the legacy of problems arising from this policy that have motivated migration reform in Russia. Second, it describes the scope, stages, and policy measures of the new CSMP, with emphasis on its major new aspect – the selective recruitment and facilitated settlement of international economic migrants. Third, it provides recommendations to policy-makers, based on the relevant experience of other migrant-receiving countries. These recommendations are derived from a theoretical model for the important but often overlooked notion of the effectiveness of migration policy. The article entirely relies on a comparative learning method. By answering the question of whether a decision variable may be regarded as supply-led, demand-driven, or both, the recommendations of this analysis are summarized in the following categories: (1) models for selective migration policies; (2) state programs for foreign graduates of local universities; (3) temporary-to-permanent residence programs; (4) migration diasporas and skill-selective migration programs; and (5) labor market tests. The article concludes with a discussion of two points: (1) data quality and availability, and (2) the appropriate research methods for measuring the effectiveness of migration policies for international economic migrants.

Immigration Policies and the Factors of Migration from Developing Countries to South Korea: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impacts of immigration policies adopted by the Korean government, vis-a-vis other economic, social, demographic, and political factors, on labour migration from developing countries to South Korea using a modified gravity model. The model is extended to marriage-related migrants to gain insights on marriage migration. The positive results in three out of the five immigration policies examined affirm that liberal policies are associated with increased migration, especially for preferred groups like ethnic Koreans, marriage migrants, and professionals. The positive effects of “push” factors such as population, unemployment, and inflation are generally similar to their effects on migration to the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK despite its more rapid transition from a migrant-sending into a migrant-receiving country. Political terror's non-significance may be due to South Korea's limited asylum policy. Finally, the results of the extended model imply that marriage migration share plenty of similarities with labour migration.

To Stay or To Return? Return Intentions and Return Migrations of Chinese Students During the Transition Period in the United States

ABSTRACTNowadays, we witness a growing number of skilled migrants being trained away from their home countries. International students, especially those who seek postgraduate degrees, have been viewed as one type of skilled migrants among popular migrant-receiving countries. Since the 1990s, the United States has been hosting increasingly large numbers of foreign students in the higher education sector and accommodating skilled migrants in the job market. These skilled migrants, who have obtained higher educational degrees and skills from U.S. universities, pose different types of migration patterns when they transition from being international students to becoming skilled migrants. Their decision-making processes also involve different factors. This article thus examines the experiences of these migrants in a transition period. By examining the decision-making process of return migration among migrants in the transition period, this article reveals migrants' changing return intentions, return migration plans, and return migration behaviors at different stages of the transition period; distinguishes the underlying factors; and establishes a linkage between two migrant population groups. Its findings can suggest policy implications for understanding the mentality and considerations of this skilled labor force and shed light on the current discussion on international competition for global talent and human capital.

The Effects of Transnational Parenting on the Subjective Health and Well-Being of Ghanaian Migrants in the Netherlands

Migrant parents from the Global South who migrate to the Global North often leave their children in the origin country either by choice or as a result of stringent migration policies in migrant-receiving countries that make family migration impracticable. Small-scale, qualitative studies have indicated that these transnational parents experience emotional and health difficulties due to separation. Few studies have investigated these effects on a larger scale using quantitative data, and no previous studies compared their findings with a control group. The current paper used a survey that was conducted with 303 Ghanaian migrant parents living in the Netherlands to examine the effects of transnational family life on self-reported health and subjective well-being (as measured through satisfaction with life and emotional well-being). The study shows that migrant parents who are separated from their children display worse outcomes than their counterparts who live with their children in the destination country. Importantly, however, these differences were mediated by these parents' lower socioeconomic and undocumented status. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Does Immigration always Promote Innovation? Evidence from Thai Manufacturers

Contrary to studies of other migrant-receiving countries, most of which are developed countries, this paper examines impacts of immigrant workers on innovative capacities in Thailand, which is not only a representative of a receiving country that is a developing country but also a country where the majority of its immigrant workers are unskilled. Analysis of firm-level survey data in Thailand finds that employing unskilled and cheap labor from neighboring countries, namely Myanmar, the Lao PDR, and Cambodia, is like adopting a kind of “labor-saving technology” which actually impedes firms’ R&D investment. Contrary to developed countries in which immigrants are found to boost innovation and promote sustainable growth, in Thailand, even though employing unskilled immigrant workers helps firms maintain their cost competitiveness in the short run, its negative impacts on R&D investment tend to hamper improvements in productivity and thus diminish global competitiveness in the long run. Employing skilled or educated migrants, on the other hand, complements technological progress and encourages firms to innovate more quickly. In addition, the paper finds that providing government incentives and promoting access to financing have become effective tools in facilitating Thai firms’ investment in innovation.

Contesting Transnational Mobility among New Zealand’s Chinese Migrants from an Economic Perspective新西兰中国跨国移民的跨界经济活动及成因

New Chinese migrants from the People’s Republic of China to New Zealand are renowned for their transnational mobility. Based on an online survey among this group of migrants, this paper aims to explore how economic factors in Chinese transnational migration play out in a way different from that posited by some conventional conceptions in migration studies. For example, compared with the conventional remittance flow that usually takes place from migrant-receiving countries to migrant-sending countries, this research finds a reverse remittance transaction channel among prc migrants. This reverse remittance flow is a manifestation of China’s economic revitalization, which benefited New Zealand, especially in the recent economic crisis. It was also found that economic reasons were not decisive in an immigrant’s decision to settle in New Zealand. However, economic reasons contributed significantly to their on-going movements after arriving in New Zealand. prc immigrants’ deciding to migrate or re-migrate reflects a layering of priorities that measure the short-term goal of maintaining economic livelihood against the longer-term goal of ensuring one’s family’s overall well-being.

O exilio e a emigración na base da Editorial Galaxia dende a súa creación ata a década dos sesenta. O caso de Arxentina e Uruguai

Argentine and Uruguay helped to set the Editorial Galaxia project as the main migrant-receiving countries from Galician exile. For two decades, they collaborated with financial support as well as spreading published books. The relationship between “inland Galicia” and “Galicia abroad” was strong; therefore it was possible to perform common actions.

Intergenerational heritage language practices: A case study of Spanish-speaking families in Britain

Abstract This paper analyses data from a multiple-method study exploring intergenerational heritage language practices in Spanish-speaking families in Britain. The paper harnesses interdisciplinary perspectives (human geography, childhood studies and socio-linguistics) to explore families' accounts of their intergenerational language practices within the home specifically, due to the dearth of work in this area in Britain. There is an urgent need to examine the multiple intersections between language, home and identity, particularly from intergenerational and/or life course perspectives. Currently, little is known about the ways in which members of migrant families evaluate their heritage language practices socially and linguistically in the home in European contexts, or how their heritage language practices are informed by their identities (often multiple) in European migrant-receiving countries. Specifically, the paper explores: the comparative geographical patterns of Spanish in Britain, using data from Census 2011; how and why children's and parents' heritage language practices differ in the home space (and beyond); and the ways in which these practices are rooted in senses of identity and belonging.

Does Cultural Diversity of Migrant Employees Affect Innovation?

Increasing international labor migration has important effects on the workforce composition of firms in all migrant-receiving countries. The consequences of these changes for firm performance have attracted growing attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus explicitly on the impact of cultural diversity among migrant employees on the innovativeness of firms. We briefly synthesize empirical evidence from a range of contexts across Europe, North America, and New Zealand. We then utilize two unique and harmonized linked employer–employee datasets to provide comparative microeconometric evidence for Germany and the Netherlands. Our panel datasets contain detailed information on the generation of new products and services, determinants of innovation success, and the composition of employment in establishments of firms over the period 1999 to 2006. We find that innovation in both countries is predominantly determined by establishment size and industry. Moreover, obstacles encountered and organizational changes faced by firms drive innovation too. With respect to the composition of employment, the presence of high-skilled staff is most important. Cultural diversity of employees has a positive partial correlation with product innovation. The size and statistical significance of this effect depends on the econometric model specification and the country considered. We conclude from the literature synthesis and the new comparative evidence that cultural diversity of employees can make a positive, but modest and context dependent, contribution to innovation.