Lucie Cerna

• DPhil (Oxon)
• Senior Analyst at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Labour market shortages, structural problems and unfavourable demographics have all prompted governments to act, often by focusing on high-skilled immigration. However, policy responses have been very different. Some countries were able to adopt quite open high-skilled immigration policies, while others did not. This article provides a political ec...

Over the last decade, skilled immigration has proliferated as a policy preference among governments.Skilled immigration policies target the supply of new immigrants into labour market gaps that result from economic shifts and structural ageing. At the same time, skilled immigrants are often viewed as less welfare dependent and more labour market re...

To examine the role of regional cooperation in the global race for top foreign talent, we study how the Lisbon Strategy’s implementation contributed to these efforts. Specifically, we analyse the Scientific Visa and the Blue Card, two EU legislations for attracting the ‘best-and-brightest’ from abroad. Official figures tell us that the number of hi...

In May 2009, the European Union (EU) approved the ‘Council Directive on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment’ (the Blue Card Directive). This Directive sought to make the EU internationally more competitive, but Member States were reluctant to cede responsibility for labour...

This paper presents a comparative political economy theoretical framework of high-skilled immigration (HSI) policies in advanced industrial countries. It seeks to explain the differences between countries' policies in terms of HSI openness. I take from the traditional partisanship approach that political parties will pursue policies consistent with...

The “OECD Review of Resourcing Schools to Address Educational Disadvantage in Ireland” provides an independent analysis meant to support Irish authorities in identifying ways to strengthen the resources and supports provided to students at risk of educational disadvantage in both DEIS and non-DEIS schools. The report serves three purposes: i) to pr...

Governments and education policy makers are increasingly concerned with equity and inclusion in education due to several major global trends such as demographic shifts, migration and refugee crises, rising inequalities, and climate change. These developments have contributed to increasing diversity within national populations and flagged some conce...

We compare Germany and Singapore to see how their approaches towards talent migration governance have evolved in the last decade and whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected these developments. Building on the Highly-Skilled Immigration Index (HSII) (Cerna & Chou, 2014), our discussions show Germany becoming very welcoming of high-skilled...

Taking the migration-higher education nexus as an analytical entry point, we address the question: How can we account for different internationalisation outcomes? We focus on three actors involved in the global race to internationalise higher education activities: higher education institutions (HEIs), states, and migrants. We argue that the migrati...

The Review of Inclusive Education in Portugal provides, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues regarding diversity, equity and inclusion in education in Portugal, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. The report serves three purposes: i) to provide insights and advice to Portuguese education...

Education has a fundamental role in promoting the integration of students with an immigrant background in host societies. It can help them acquire skills to participate in the economy, promote their social and emotional well-being and support their participation in the social and civic life of their communities. However, there are challenges in ens...

In many countries, schools and classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse along a variety of dimensions, including migration; ethnic groups, national minorities and Indigenous peoples; gender; gender identity and sexual orientation; special education needs; and giftedness. To navigate this diversity, adopting a multidimensional and intersectional...

How do emerging economies compete for international skilled workers? To explore policies used by non-Western countries to attract or retain high-skilled workers in the context of the ‘race for talent’, this article analyses and compares governmental measures employed in three emerging economies: Brazil, India, and Malaysia. Based on insights from 1...

Taking the case of defining “talent,” a term that has been widely used but its definitions differ by discipline, organization, policy sector, as well as over time, we demonstrate how the basic definition of a policy subject may affect policy design and the assessment of policy outcomes. We review how “talent” is defined in two sets of literature, t...

The global financial crisis highlighted the need for international institutions to change, adapt and learn. The new approaches to economic challenges (NAEC) initiative provides an important example of a strategic response to the crisis by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). NAEC proposes new economic thinking, challeng...

The chapter argues that while Europe needs high-skilled immigrants to fill labour shortages and respond to ageing populations, it continues to struggle recruiting these immigrants due to incre asing political tensions over immigration, which can also affect the highly skilled. These tensions are visible in the varying national policies and Blue Car...

The global financial crisis highlighted the need for international institutions to change, adapt and learn. The New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) initiative provides an important example of a strategic response to the crisis by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). NAEC proposes new economic thinking, challeng...

Sweden used to be one of the most restrictive countries in the Organisation of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) in terms of labour immigration policy. This was drastically changed in 2008 when a very liberal immigration law was passed. Why did one of the most restrictive labour immigration countries suddenly become one of the most libera...

This book examines the variation in high-skilled immigration policies in OECD countries. These countries face economic and social pressures from slowing productivity, ageing populations and pressing labour shortages. To address these inter-related challenges, the potential of the global labour market needs to be harnessed. Countries need to intensi...

The chapter places France’s relatively recent experience with high-skilled immigration within a comparative context and analyses state-interest group relations. Even though interest groups, such as unions and employers’ associations, are consulted, the state has played a prominent role in immigration decision-making. Employers’ associations have ha...

This chapter introduces the topic of high-skilled immigration—in particular how high-skilled immigration can be defined and why it matters for various challenges such as decreasing economic growth, declining productivity, ageing populations, pressing labour shortages and increasing political and social tensions. The chapter explains how the ideas o...

This chapter analyses the impact of lobbying of professional and employers’ associations on high-skilled immigration policies and compares low-centralisation/low-coordination countries, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (USA). The USA has low union density, though it is bit higher in the case of the UK. Nonetheless, the two countries ha...

This chapter explains in detail the main assumptions and hypotheses behind the argument and sets out the political-economy framework for the following chapters. Three actors (native high-skilled labour, native low-skilled labour and capital) that build coalitions to achieve their preferred policy output—more open or more restrictive high-skilled im...

This chapter introduces an index of states’ openness to high-skilled immigrants (HSI Index), discusses its construction and presents the ranking of OECD countries based on the index. Since an explanation of the variation in the openness of countries’ legislative high-skilled immigration policies is sought, a ranking of these policies is required. T...

This chapter considers the impact of political representation on high-skilled immigration policy outputs. It analyses the positions of political parties, as well as the links between labour market actors and political parties. The chapter provides a comparative analysis between the case studies in terms of political representation. The countries di...

Effective multi-level governance of complex education systems is a policy priority. As educational systems have decentralised, countries are increasingly looking for ways to balance responsiveness to local diversity with national attainment goals. The first part of this chapter explores the importance of trust for the governance of complex systems...

The recent economic crisis provided a shock to the system, and led governments to scramble for solutions to problems of falling economic growth, high unemployment and weak job creation. Many European governments responded to protectionist calls by restricting immigration policies, even towards the highly skilled. Yet countries have faced different...

Most European states consider the immigration of foreign workers as an important means to decelerate the decline of national workforces as a consequence of population ageing and have developed strategies and policies to respond to the increasing demand of employers for certain types of skills in short- or long-term shortages. This chapter aims to g...

The chapter summarises the main findings on high-skilled immigration policies from 1990 to mid-2015 and highlights the book’s key contributions. It emphasises some of the opportunities and challenges high-skilled immigration presents for countries. In addition, the chapter discusses several policy implications that flow from the research. For insta...

The focus of this chapter is on the impact of unions and employers’ associations on policy outputs in Germany and Sweden. The two cases were selected because they both have high centralisation/coordination of unions and employers’ associations. Sweden also scores highly on union density, while Germany’s density rate is medium. Because of the high i...

The economic crisis, which began in 2008, caused a global shock, the reverberations of which are still felt today.1 Unemployment has increased, growth remains anaemic and deficits continue to deepen (ILO, 2009a). Governments continue to face pressure to protect jobs and create new opportunities. A crisis of globalization has been building for years...

The education sector is often considered not prone to innovation. However, recent research indicates that education can be as innovative as other sectors, if the right conditions and governance structures are in place. This article examines the governance of innovation in education systems. It traces the role of innovation for education, presents h...

Trust is indispensable for social and economic relations; it is the glue that holds organisations together and appears to work somehow mysteriously. Overall, trust is a ubiquitous ingredient in policymaking and implementation across many governance systems including education, whether it concerns accountability mechanisms, capacity building or stra...

Over the few last decades, the competition for international students has heightened significantly. International students are said to contribute financially and academically, integrate more easily, possess host country’s language skills and thus constitute ideal candidates to retain as labour migrants. While the state plays a key role in migration...

Since the 1990s, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have faced structural problems and unfavourable demographics. For instance, the European Union Commission’s Agenda for new skills and jobs estimates that by 2020 there will be a shortage of about one million professionals in the health sector. By 2015, shortages...

High-skilled immigration (HSI) policies, and their harmonisation across member states, have been an important part of the EU's Lisbon strategy focusing on the knowledge-based economy, and the subsequent ‘Europe 2020’ which emphasises economic recovery. Intra-EU mobility of high-skilled workers is quite low, and member states have targeted high-skil...

div> The pieces in this volume offer fresh approaches to a variety of debates over migration policy. The authors of these essays explore migration policymaking in ten European countries, looking at the way social scientists and politicians form and implement these policies. Migration Policymaking in Europe contains original insights and in-depth co...

This chapter examines the global governance of high-skilled labour migration. Firstly, it argues that global governance in this area is predominantly characterized by unilateralism and bilateralism, and that the institutional framework that exists at the multilateral level (in the form of the WTO's GATS Mode 4 and the Global Forum on Migration and...

The recent economic crisis accentuated a globalization backlash bringing anti-globalization sentiments to the surface. The spectre of the crisis lingers on with low growth and high unemployment across the OECD countries. Tensions there have been building for years, partly due to the distributional consequences of globalization and the ways these ar...

In May 2009, the European Union approved a Blue Card on the conditions of entry for high-skilled third-country nationals. The directive sought to make the EU internationally more competitive. But member states were reluctant to cede responsibility for labour market access regulation -immigration remains a sensitive area. They have differing demogra...

This paper examines changes in Swedish labour immigration policy from early 2000s, but particular attention is paid to recent changes. The new Immigration Law of 2008 liberalised immigration policy and made it more employer-driven. These changes are called by some as ‘slight revolution’. The paper analyses the preferences of three main actors (nati...

This paper examines the potential implementation of the proposed European Union (EU) Blue Card by the European Commission in October 2007. The Commission will be voting on a directive on the conditions of entry and residence for high-skilled third-country nationals in 2008. Delegation to the EU-level may provide a coherent and centralised framework...

The paper examines differences in countries' high-s killed immigration policies (HSI), both cross-nationally and over time. It provides a political economy explanation for when a change in HSI policy can take place. Prefere nces of actors remain constant and institutions hardly change. However, coalitions between actors (i.e. high-skilled native la...

Abstract will be provided by author.

With the recent increase in bilateral, regional an d global agreements, the question of a shift towards the global governance o f migration has been widely debated among the academic and policy community. This paper will particularly discuss high-skilled labour migration (HSLM), i.e. migrants with university degree or equivalent skills/ training. S...

The paper presents a comparative political economy theoretical framework of high-skilled immigration (HSI thereafter) policies in advanced industrial countries and seeks to explain differences in countries’ policies in terms of HSI openness. I take from the traditional partisanship approach that political parties will pursue policies consistent wit...