Migration Advisory Committee Research Articles

ОСОБАЯ РОЛЬ РЫНКА ТРУДА КАК УНИВЕРСАЛЬНОГО ФАКТОРА ПРОИЗВОДСТВА\

In modern conditions of the economy, unstable financial and political processes, the labor market is undergoing serious changes on a global scale. The article discusses the demand and supply of labor, the impact of migration processes, unemployment rates, the dynamics of the domestic and international markets, both at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. A study of the labor market as an economic system is given, taking into account the indicators of GDP and GNI. The ratio of supply and demand in the labor market in macroeconomic theory is considered, the dependence of wages on working hours is given. Attention is focused on the analysis of the relationship between the labor market and the unemployment rate. The data on the unemployment rate for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, indicators of the impact of the minimum wage and migration (immigration) on the labor market, the results of economic data on migration in the labor markets of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) are provided.

Migrant Maths Teachers: Deficit, Translanguaging, and Growing Authority

This article draws from a longitudinal case study of trainee (the term used in official documentation related to Initial Teacher Training (ITT) in England and with some reservations throughout this paper) and early-career teachers (ECT) of mathematics. The sample represents migrant teachers that the Immigration Act of 2020 seeks to attract to the UK to address national shortages identified by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). The analysis examines how multimodal semiotic repertoires of language, bodies and pedagogical practices are entangled in classroom encounters. It shows how the ideology of Standard English can create an uncomfortable sense of different deficits amongst multilingual professionals and evidences how these can be addressed through a model of authority in which teachers get the right mix of mathematical subject knowledge (epistemic authority), the use of school practices and expectations (practical authority), and individual biography (personal authority). It uses translanguaging spaces to examine how teachers use communicative repertoires to orchestrate semiotic resources and manage their identity positions in ways that promote intercultural competencies during the daily encounters of teachers and their pupils.

Pharmacists added to government's list of occupations facing national shortage

Pharmacists have been added to the Home Office’s shortage occupation list, following a recommendation from the department’s Migration Advisory Committee. The inclusion of pharmacists in the shortage occupation list from 4 March 2021 makes it easier for staff from abroad to successfully apply for a skilled worker visa through the UK’s immigration system. This comes […]

Oral healthcare workforce planning in post-Brexit Britain.

The terms of the United Kingdom's (UK's) departure from the European Union (EU) are currently being negotiated. It is therefore uncertain exactly what effect they will have on planning the UK's oral healthcare workforce. Nevertheless, as 16% of dentists currently registered with the Genral Dental Council (GDC) have migrated to the UK from EU countries, this factor must be taken into consideration by workforce planners. However, it is far from being the only factor. This opinion piece therefore describes the current numbers of non-UK EU dentists and DCPs registered with the GDC and poses the question 'will they remain in the UK in the future'? It then comments on the current legislation on recognition of non-UK dental qualifications. It goes on to consider the Migration Advisory Committee's recommendation for dental practitioners, the oral healthcare needs of the population of the UK, who could address them and the implications for the Advancing Dental Care project

Campaigning pays off with Shortage Occupation List recommendation

In welcome news for the profession, the Migration Advisory Committee has recommended to the Home Office that vets should be restored to the Shortage Occupation List. This is the culmination of years of campaigning by BVA, in collaboration with the RCVS, Defra, Food Standards Agency, Major Employers Group, SPVS and others.

Immigration Policy from Post-War to Post-Brexit: How New Immigration Policy can Reconcile Public Attitudes and Employer Preferences

As Britain prepares to leave the EU immigration policy has come to the top of the policy agenda. The Brexit vote was seen as a vote against free movement and new policies are aimed at introducing more restrictive controls. The report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in September 2018 recommended little new provision for low-skilled migration post-Brexit (MAC, 2018). This was then adopted by the Home Office in its Immigration White Paper, published in November 2018 (Home Affairs Committee, 2018). The White Paper explicitly references public concerns that migrant labour reduces opportunities for British workers and undermines their pay and conditions. Yet employers have argued that they need to be able to continue to recruit lower, as well as highly skilled labour because the supply of British workers is insufficient. The paper explores the likely impact of proposed restrictions on immigration post-Brexit, using data from NIESR studies of employers and of the general public. It combines an assessment of what is needed to meet the needs of employers, the economy and to address public concerns, finding that there is more consensus than there is often considered to be.

Personnel flux and workplace anxiety: Personal and interpersonal consequences of understaffing in UK ultrasound departments

IntroductionBy 2013, the UK government's Migration Advisory Committee had determined sonography to be a formal shortage speciality, and understaffing remains a key concern for research in the domain. This paper, emergent of a qualitative study funded by Health Education North West, explores unit managers' perspectives on the present state of UK ultrasound. The focus herein falls upon the personal and interpersonal consequences of this circumstance for individuals working in specific understaffed departments. MethodsA thematic analysis informed by a Straussian model of Grounded Theory was utilised; N = 20 extended accounts provided by ultrasound department leads in public (n = 18) and private (n = 2) units were collected and analysed accordingly. ResultsThe global themes addressed herein describe (a) how both inter-departmental movement of senior sonographers and early retirement, within a nationally understaffed picture, impacts upon local knowledge economies, and (b) how such staffing instabilities can undermine the day-to-day confidence of managerial staff and practicing sonographers alike. ConclusionsIt is personnel flux, rather than simple short-staffing, that is reported to cause the greatest social-psychological problems for both managers and sonographers. The issues raised herein require further examination from the perspective of sonographers themselves, in order to corroborate the views of the managers interviewed.

Charting the practical dimensions of understaffing from a managerial perspective: The everyday shape of the UK's sonographer shortage.

Across the last two decades, ultrasound services in many healthcare sectors have become increasingly pressurised as a consequence of upsurging demand and difficulties in recruiting viable clinicians. Indeed by 2013, the UK government's Migration Advisory Committee had listed sonography as an official 'shortage specialty'. Comparatively little research has to date, however, explored the impacts of this situation upon the departments themselves, and the individuals working therein. The core purpose of this study is, thus, to lend qualitative depth to current understandings of the frontline situation in the UK's ultrasound units, many of which are understaffed, from the perspective of their managers. Using a thematic analysis informed by a Straussian model of Grounded Theory, N = 20 extended accounts provided by ultrasound department leads in public (n = 18) and private (n = 2) units were explored. Four global themes emerged from the analysis of which the first two (the broadly sociological matters) are described in this paper. Theme 1 addresses how a lack of staff in the broader ultrasound economy has created a troublesome migratory system in contemporary UK ultrasound. Theme 2 addresses how this economy works chiefly to the advantage of the most junior and the most senior clinicians, often leaving mid-career professionals in the borderline impossible situation of having to concurrently occupy both junior and senior roles. The findings ideally open up debate on some key practical contingencies of the UK's sonographer shortage, and reflect upon literature regarding the nuanced aspects of a shifting healthcare workplace constitution.

Policy-driven evidence: Evaluating the UK government’s approach to immigration policy making

This critique conducts a technical analysis of a UK Home Office report which was a key justification for passing the Immigration Act 2014. The law seeks to reduce non-EU immigration to the UK. The report is based on a 2012 report by the Migration Advisory Committee which used firmly established methods in the field of immigration studies. Despite this, it is concluded that the Home Office report not only excludes several important aspects of analysis, the entrepreneurialism of migrants and student immigration, but also has severe statistical problems. The report’s choice of operationalisations, lack of information regarding confidence intervals, and lack of sufficient model testing and repetition all combine to make it a weak piece of research and substantially undermine its suitability to inform policy. In the final analysis, this critique posits that the Home Office report reflects the Conservative government’s utilisation of ‘policy driven evidence’.

Workforce.

The Migration Advisory Committee has spoken. It has - somewhat reluctantly - given the Department of Health what it regards as a 'get out of jail card'.

GP workforce gap should be filled by UK medical graduates rather than overseas doctors, says Migration Advisory Committee

General practice does not need to be added to a list of shortage occupations, as gaps can be filled by UK graduates rather than by doctors from overseas, the Migration Advisory Committee has said. The shortage occupation list is an official list of jobs for which not enough UK workers are available to fill the vacancies. Employers who want to recruit someone from outside the European Economic Area for a job that is on the list can do so without carrying out a resident labour market test. The committee said that general practice was currently 400 trainees short of the …

Radiology, psychiatry, and paediatrics posts are put on national shortage list

Consultant clinical radiologists, psychiatry core trainees, and staff grade paediatricians have all been placed on the national shortage occupation list, the government’s Migration Advisory Committee has said in a review of the list.1 The shortage occupation list is an official list of occupations for which there are not enough UK workers to fill vacancies. Employers wanting to recruit someone from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to fill a vacancy in a job that is on the list can do so without needing to carry out a resident labour market test. In paediatrics the number of staff, associate specialist, and specialty (SAS) doctors fell …

RCN accuses migration authority of misrepresentation

The RCN has accused the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) of ‘significant misrepresention’ after it said adult nursing would not be included on the Home Office Shortage Occupation List.

Independent commissions and labour migration: The British MAC

The independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) was created in 2007 after a decade in which the share of foreign-born workers in the British labour force doubled to 13 per cent. The initial core mandate of the MAC was to provide “independent, evidence-based advice to government on specific skilled occupations in the labour market where shortages exist which can sensibly be filled by migration.” The MAC's answers to these 3-S questions, viz, is the occupation for which employers are requesting foreign workers skilled, are there labour shortages, and is admitting foreign workers a sensible response, have improved the quality of the debate over the “need” for foreign workers in the UK by highlighting some of the important trade-offs inherent in migration policy making. The MAC can clarify migration trade-offs in labour immigration policy, but cannot decide the ultimately political questions about whose interests should be prioritised and how competing policy objectives should be balanced.

Psychiatry and rehabilitation medicine are added to list of occupations in shortage

Psychiatry and rehabilitation medicine posts in non-consultant, non-training medical staff roles should be added to the United Kingdom’s shortage occupation list, the Migration Advisory Committee has said. A further nine medical consultant and staff grade posts should remain on the list for as long as necessary, the committee has said, but 12 consultant and trainee …

Labor Shortages and U.S. Immigration Reform: Promises and Perils of an Independent Commission

Comprehensive U.S. immigration reform proposals have three major elements: improved border and workplace controls, dealing with the 11 million unauthorized foreigners in the U.S., and managing “future flows” of foreign workers requested by U.S. employers. Improved controls and dealing with unauthorized foreigners were discussed extensively in the U.S. Senate in 2006 and 2007. Future flows were not. This article reviews the decisions governments face when employers request migrant workers, Britain's independent Migration Advisory Committee, and the promises and perils of a similar U.S. commission to manage labor migration. We conclude that a U.S. commission could help to clarify the trade-offs involved in migrant labor policy, but cannot replace the need for inherently political choices between competing policy objectives.

Identifying shortage occupations in the UK

This article describes the top-down methodology used by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to identify shortage occupations. Identifying shortage occupations is difficult and few countries have attempted to do this in a systematic way. The methodology developed by the MAC to identify shortage occupations is the first to use a comprehensive range of indicators. The methodology dovetails national level top-down data with bottom-up micro-level data and qualitative information from stakeholders and was used to advise the UK Government on occupations for inclusion on the UK Government’s Shortage Occupation List for use under Tier 2 of the Point Based System for managing migration. This article describes the top-down methodology; it does not present any new data or conclusions. Further information on the methodology can be found in Chapter 7 and Annex B of the MAC’s September 2008 report.