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Skilled migration is an important strategy in developed economies seeking to address skills shortages and population ageing. Research on the labour market outcomes of skilled migrants tends to focus on employers' devaluation of skills without considering the role of immigration policy in the migration process. Moreover, there is little understanding of whether efforts to meet employer demands for local qualifications improve labour market outcomes. Drawing on a study on skilled migrants sponsored under the State‐Specific and Regional Migration Scheme in the regional state of South Australia, we explore the shaping of skills and skills recognition in the migration journey, particularly migrants' strategy of reskilling in response to employer demands for local qualifications. Our logistic regressions on the association between the acquisition of Australian qualifications and labour market outcomes reveal only marginal returns to these efforts. We argue that Australia should consider developing a more coherent skilled migration process to better harness the human capital of skilled migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the labour market and human capital investment behaviour of immigrant couples in Australia. The family investment hypothesis (FIH) states that immigrant husbands, whom the FIH assumes to be the primary earners in the family, will invest more in their human capital than immigrant wives, whom the FIH assumes to be secondary earners. Using longitudinal data from Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) for the period 2001 to 2014, we do not find support for the FIH. Instead, we find that foreign‐born husbands and wives share similar labour market assimilation patterns with respect to hours of work and wages. Our estimates suggest that immigrant wives' labour market behaviour can be better explained by their own long‐term career progression and labour market assimilation, than through supporting their husbands' labour market assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to find out why immigrants intend to stay in or leave their initial destination. The insight into such factors could help develop policy measures to deal with potential out-migration, especially from the regions that view international migration as a solution to their demographic and economic difficulties. The study uses multinomial logistic regression to estimate the strength of association between migrants' intention to move and immigration category, human capital, economic and social factors. The data come from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia. The findings show that different groups of migrants have different propensities to move or stay in their initial destination. Employer-sponsored migrants are even less likely to intend to relocate than family class. Highly educated and skilled migrants tend to be more likely to express the intention to move or have doubts. Satisfactory employment has a positive impact on retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By virtue of its island geography and isolation, Australia is able to control the scale and composition of immigration more than most nations. Accordingly, it has one of the most highly managed migration programs and intakes. Skill selection has been the major focus of both permanent and temporary migration programs in Australia over the last two decades. Government has continually modified the Permanent Migration Program so that not only are a higher proportion of settlers coming to Australia under the Skilled Migration Program but the skill selection is tied increasingly to skill shortages in the labor market. Increasingly, permanent settlers are selected from student migrants and skilled temporary migrants because they have Australian qualifications and experience. The article analyzes the increasingly complex nexus between temporary and permanent skilled migration in Australia, and discusses the changing scale and composition of skilled migration to Australia. One particular feature of Australian immigration has been the continual shifts in the process of selection of skilled temporary and permanent immigrants on the basis of empirical evidence to achieve better economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to tackle persistent labour and skill shortages, a number of developed countries have implemented visa programmes and development plans to enhance the attraction and retention of domestically educated overseas graduates. While prior work has principally focused on exploring their migratory flows between countries, few studies have empirically examined the career and migration trajectories of overseas graduates within the country of study. This paper redresses this gap by investigating the spatial choices of overseas graduates from Australian Higher Education Institutions for employment after graduation. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of graduates, our analysis focuses on examining the individual characteristics that lead to the settlement of overseas graduates in non-metropolitan locations across Australia given the pronounced labour and skill shortages experienced outside the country's urban centres. Results highlight the importance of possessing education or health qualifications and having previously studied and lived in non-metropolitan areas as the key factors underlying the selection of such locales as post-graduation employment destinations. Age, gender, salary, and an English-speaking background were not found to be significant factors in the decision to locate outside of metropolitan areas. These findings are of significant value for future policy development aimed at attracting and retaining overseas graduates to locales with the greatest labour needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, 2005–2006, to examine the housing tenure experience of skilled immigrants to Australia 6 and 18 months after arrival for relationships with ethnic capital (cultural background), visa category streams, aspects of human capital, demographics, social capital and discrimination. Homeownership experience is used to indicate integration into Australia's dominantly middle-class society. Multinomial regression analysis identifies visa entry category as the most important independent group of variables accounting for immigrants' short-term dwelling tenure, followed by aspects of human capital, family status, and the importance of ethnic capital for immigrants of both English-speaking and non-English-speaking backgrounds, and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few studies have investigated contemporary professional migrant women from mainland China to developed economies like Australia to understand their motives of migration and the strategy they may adopt to advance their careers. This paper fills part of this important research gap by investigating the career rebuilding experience of Chinese professional immigrants in Australia. It examines the motives of their migration, their career aspirations, the strategies they adopt to rebuild their career and the types of career they are rebuilding. It explores how the compounded effect of gender, race, immigration and family commitment may be articulated in the family and social relations, and how these factors affect women's career aspirations and outcomes. This paper concludes that whilst social capital is important for Chinese migrant women professionals who already possess a high level of human capital, to restart their post-migration career, cultural capital is crucial for their managerial career advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governments increasingly seek to implement skilled migration programmes. Yet, the policies that ultimately result differ in important ways, particularly with regard to the human capital assets required of applicants. These differences in policy outputs can be attributed to important variations in the policy-making process, in particular in the extent of bureaucratic control over policy-making, and in the capacity for venue shopping on the part of internal and external actors. This article develops ideas around bureaucratic control and how it interacts with venue shopping in two Westminster-inspired systems of government in the skilled immigration area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration and border protection policies are driven by national interest. However, the national interest can be more broadly and more narrowly conceived, depending in part on the degree to which the future of the individual state is understood to be contingent on a shared global future and on the recognition that the short-term costs of international cooperation may bring long-term collective benefits. Whereas such global interdependence is recognised in international statecraft in the domains of aid, trade and climate change, such recognition does not extend to immigration. Australia's national policies towards human movement from the Global South tend to be driven in large part by exaggerated fears (of unregulated border crossings) or a narrowly instrumental approach to the economic benefits of human capital transfers (migrants filling skills gaps and providing flexibility in the labour market). A broader conception of migration would take into account the potential developmental benefits of human movement for source nations and for migrants themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way immigrant earnings are determined in Australia. It uses the overeducation/required education/undereducation framework and a decomposition of the native-born/foreign-born differential in the payoff to schooling. This decomposition links overeducation to the less-than-perfect international transferability of immigrants' human capital, and undereducation to favorable selection in immigration. Comparisons are offered with findings from analyses for the U.S. and Canada to enable assessment of the relative impacts of favorable selection and the limited international transferability of human capital to the lower payoff to schooling for the foreign born. The sensitivity of the results of the decomposition to several measurement issues is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human migration and geographic mobility of scientific and technical human capital are interwoven phenomena. Twin processes of human capital and social capital network formation through scientific mobility have been important for capacity building in the Asia-Pacific. This paper focuses on a sample of research participants from Australia, illustrating how CVs can enable methodological progress in filtering respondent survey data. In particular, CVs prove to be an effective data source for disentangling migration from scientific mobility, and in developing a stratified sample of forms of mobility for further qualitative data collection in this ongoing research. It is noted that CVs also show potential for appreciating collective processes of capital accumulation in the sciences, along with the durability of collective forms of organization, such as networks, over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asia-Pacific region is a significant source of skilled temporary migration to Australia. The paper provides an overview of recent trends in skilled temporary migration from Asia-Pacific countries to Australia and compares the Asia-Pacific migrants with migrants from other regions to investigate whether the Asia-Pacific migrants are selective of particular demographic and human capital characteristics. Differences are observed between the two groups in some of these characteristics. There are also differences in their reasons for migration, employment situation and return migration/permanent residence intentions. Future trends and implications based on recent policy changes and likely developments in the region are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Globalisation and changes in agriculture have resulted in major social changes in inland Australia. Depopulation of the inland has led many to speculate on the future of rural towns and rural people. This paper will examine population drifts from country towns to cities and from the inland to the coastal regions and, in particular, the outmigration of young people. In doing this, the paper focuses on several small towns in central New South Wales that have been the subject of intensive study during 2000 and 2001. Drawing on analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, in-depth interviews and focus groups with key informants and surveys with young people and their parents in small rural communities the paper will report on the loss of young people and the greater loss of young women from these areas. It is argued that this outmigration of young people is linked to the need to seek higher education and also to the loss of full-time jobs for young people. The loss of these jobs is the result of changes in agricultural production, labour market restructuring and a withdrawal of public and private sector services. It is further argued that current reliance by governments on market based and community self-help solutions is not enough to provide a future for rural communities. Even if economic growth occurs this will not solve the problem of loss of young people, and the greater loss of young women, nor will it address the issue of access to education and training. Rather far greater attention to human capital (access to education, training and employment), institutional capital (government and non-government services and infrastructure) and social capita! (strong networks) is needed if Australia's small rural towns are to survive and flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]