Two new datasets on south-north migration by occupational category
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to break down south-north migration along both the skill and the occupational dimension and thus to distinguish and compare several types of south-north migration and brain drain.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents south-north migration rates by occupational category at two distinct levels of disaggregation according to International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 (ISCO-88). The data sets combine information about the labor market outcomes of immigrants in Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries around the year 2000 provided by the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries by the OECD with employment data for the developing migrant-sending countries from the International Labour Organization.
Findings
The incidence of south-north migration was highest among Professionals, one of the two occupational categories generally requiring tertiary education, and among clerks and legislators, senior officials and managers. At the more disaggregated level, physical, mathematical and engineering science (associate) professionals, life science and health (associate) professionals, as well as other (associate) professionals exhibited significantly larger brain drain rates than teaching (associate) professionals. The data also suggest non-negligible occupation-education mismatches due to the imperfect transferability of skills acquired through formal education because south-north migrants with a university degree worked more often in occupational categories requiring less than tertiary education compared to OECD natives. The employment shares of most types of professionals and technicians and associate professionals, as well as of clerks and corporate managers were significantly smaller in the migrant-sending countries compared to the receiving countries.
Originality/value
The constructed data sets constitute the first comprehensive data sets on south-north migration by ISCO-88 major and sub-major occupational category for cross-sections of, respectively, 91 and 17 developing countries of emigration.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
JEL Classifications — F22, J24, O15
This paper is a revised version of a chapter of the author's dissertation, which the author had written while she was working at the University of Tübingen (see Neubecker, 2013). An earlier version of this chapter has been published as a discussion paper under the author's former name (see Heuer, 2010). The author also want to thank Wilhelm Kohler, Udo Kreickemeier, Markus Niedergesäß, and the participants of the Brown Bag Seminar at the University of Tübingen and of the Workshop “Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen” at the Universtity of Göttingen in 2010 for helpful comments and discussion as well as Miriam Kohl, Michael Kölle, and Thomas Störk for excellent research assistance.
Citation
Neubecker, N. (2014), "Two new datasets on south-north migration by occupational category", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 35 No. 6, pp. 834-872. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-10-2013-0231
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited