Highly Skilled Migration into the 21st Century
John Salt and Peter Wood on the impacts of recession
Professors John Salt (left) and Peter Wood
On 25th May Professors John Salt and Peter Wood participated in an international conference on Highly Skilled Migration into the 21st Century at Middlesex University. The two-day Conference, funded by the ESRC and convened by Drs Jon Mulholland and Louise Ryan, attracted wide participation from the UK and Europe. There were papers on a many themes related to highly skilled migration, including the value of cultural and mobility capital, gender issues, social networks, identity and belonging, professional and student migration, and policy.
John and Peter’s paper, Recession and international corporate mobility, reported on a 2009 return survey of a sample of UK-based multinational enterprises, originally visited in 2005-6, to enquire about the initial impacts of the recession on their international staff movement. The earlier survey had shown that corporate restructuring and a move to emerging markets were already reshaping ‘mobility portfolios’ in 2005-6. The recession had accelerated these trends, but also allowed companies to cut costs, for example by reducing financial incentives for overseas assignments, in ways that might earlier have been more difficult to achieve.
The paper is forthcoming in Global Networks.
