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LABOUR: ‘Migrants More Likely To Be Overqualified’

Mattias Creffier

PARIS, Feb 20 2008 (IPS) - Rich countries must do more to integrate migrants into their societies and labour markets if they want to reap the economic benefits of skilled migration, says an OECD report released in Paris Wednesday.

In almost all countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 rich nations, migrants are more likely to work in jobs for which their skills are too high, the report says.

Migration and labour market researchers compiled national census data into a Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC). For each of the 30 member states, they characterised migrant populations according to their countries of origin, age and education levels, occupation, and sector of activity.

A migrant was defined as “a person whose place of birth differs from his current country of residence.” Second-generation people of immigrant origin, and the problems they face, fall outside the scope of the report, ‘A Profile of Immigrant Populations in the 21st century’.

The report says that the share of people with tertiary education (usually a form of non-compulsory study after secondary education) in the OECD area is higher for the foreign born (24 percent) than for the native born (19.1 percent). But also, the share of people with no or low educational attainment is higher for immigrants than for the native-born.

More recent migrants tend to be better educated than those in earlier waves. Few of the older Italian, Greek and Portuguese immigrants in the OECD area have tertiary education, whereas the recent migration of highly skilled Chinese and Indians to the U.S. has led to an over-representation of Asians in the IT and science sectors.

In Greece, Spain and Italy, the share of people doing a job for which they are overqualified is twice as high as for native-born workers.

These have only recently become immigration countries. Migrating workers may have problems with the language, and may need a while to overcome legal and administrative obstacles, the report says. They seem willing to accept unskilled jobs, hoping to climb the social ladder later on.

For different reasons, a similar phenomenon is occurring in some Scandinavian countries that take many refugees. These people are often highly skilled but their migration is often unplanned and sudden. They may lack official proof of their qualifications, and not know how long they will stay in the host country.

Belgium is a different story altogether. Since 60 percent of immigrants come from other OECD countries, they have fewer difficulties finding a job that matches their educational level. At the same time Belgium has one of the lowest employment rates for lower skilled female migrants compared to other OECD countries.

“To be prepared for the future, governments need to act now to put proper policies in place to help satisfy labour needs partly through migration, and to enable the integration of migrants,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría told journalists at the launch of the report. “Every OECD country should make this a priority. It is socially, politically, ethically, and morally correct, but it is also an act of sheer economic rationality.”

The OECD recommends that its member states invest more in language training for migrants, and remove obstacles for recognition of foreign qualifications and work experience.

“Effective anti-discrimination efforts are also a must,” said John Martin, director of employment, labour and social affairs at the organisation. “In some countries, having the wrong name considerably reduces your chances on the labour market. Also, the public sector is not being a good employer in hiring highly skilled migrants.”

The so-called brain drain seems to hit mainly small African and Caribbean countries, the report says. Countries such as Jamaica, Mauritius and Fiji have more than 40 percent of their highly skilled people abroad. In Mozambique, Angola, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, or Trinidad and Tobago, expatriation rates of health professionals reach 50 percent.

“Even a good position in a developing country may earn less than an overqualified position in an OECD country,” Gurría said. But at the same time she played down the impact of brain drain.

“The estimated labour shortage in their health sectors is far greater, almost eight times higher, than the number of foreign-born health workers in OECD countries. So stopping the flow, if that were possible, would help a bit, but it would not solve the problem.”

Large developing countries like Brazil, China and India see less than 5 percent of their highly-skilled migrate. According to Gurría, “these countries offer more opportunities.”

Asian migrants appear much more frequently tertiary-educated than migrants from Latin America or Africa, the report says. More than 38 percent of Asian immigrants have tertiary education, while the average is about 24 percent. In the U.S., more than 20 percent of the tertiary-educated Asian-born work as science professionals.

On average, 7.5 percent of the population in OECD countries is foreign-born. The highest percentages were recorded for Luxembourg (32.6 percent), followed by Australia (23 percent) and Switzerland (22.6 percent).

In absolute numbers, the United States is the largest receiving country with 31.4 million migrants aged 15 years or more. The second largest receiving country is Germany (almost eight million foreign-born), followed by France (5.6 million), Canada (5.3 million) and the United Kingdom (4.5 million).

 
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