Skilled Migrants Wanted? Policy Tensions in the Implementation of Shanghai's “New Talent Regime”

Summary Various economies worldwide are keen on recruiting highly skilled or educated migrants, the so-called global talent. These countries often compete for similar types of skilled migrants, such as engineers. These professionals are often perceived as constantly pursuing transnational mobility and working with generous corporate expat packages (e.g., housing). However, the population of highly educated migrants does not necessarily enjoy this privilege; they struggle to access and stay in the host society’s labor market, despite strong interest from the host society. This competition for global talent is prevalent in Asia, while the countries in this region often implement a restrictive migration policy, such as Japan. This migration regime is now regarded as emerging, and Japan has been firmly resistant to the introduction of official migration policies. The government has implemented political measures that are irrelevant to a migration policy but actually introduce foreign workforce into the labor market. Nonetheless, foreign professionals were an exception, and the country officially mentioned its aspiration to attract highly educated migrants through various policy papers. The presence of highly educated migrants in Japan is expanding quantitatively in various sectors of the labor market. Pressured by the accelerated labor shortage, the country has deregulated policies to expand the potential pool of highly skilled migrants, such as foreign-national graduates from Japanese universities. Furthermore, the government continuously shifts the definition of “skill” and launched new visa categories to fulfill the necessary workforce. Despite the availability of different migration entry channels for skilled migrants in Japan, they are constrained from projecting a long-term or permanent stay because of the limited scope of upward career mobility in this non-settlement country.

In the past decade, Australia has developed unprecedented reliance on skilled migrants, a process intensified by a period of sustained economic boom. By 2007, two-thirds were former international students recruited in Australia rather than offshore applicants, exemplifying a transition to what is termed “two-step migration.” How acceptable, however, are such onshore applicants to employers, in a context where Australia's 2006 skilled migration review found less favorable outcomes for former international students than migrants recruited offshore? To address this question, key education enrollment, migration and employment databases were analyzed in-depth. Overall, former international students were found to achieve comparable labor market participation rates to migrants recruited offshore. However, former students qualified in two-year courses and/or in oversubscribed fields performed worse than offshore migrants. Between 2007 and 2010, Australia introduced major policy reforms to improve the outcomes for international students applying under the skilled migration program. In February 2010, the government corrected education sector abuses while significantly changing selection processes. This decade of Australian policy experimentation may be instructive to other countries which have introduced study-migration pathways designed to attract and retain former students as skilled migrants.

Studies of innovation systems and policies have tended to focus on scientific and technological innovation; organisational innovations continue to receive scant attention in many countries. The purpose of this article is to study the front-runner countries in organisational innovation activities, in this case Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as the ways in which they have integrated organisational innovations as a part of broader innovation policies. The evaluation framework consists of four levels: (1) governmental and strategic level; (2) ministerial level; (3) research and development (R&D) programme level; and (4) performance level. This article discusses innovation systems’ similarities and differences from the organisational innovation point of view and suggests future recommendations for policy-makers. Although the results show that the countries studied support organisational innovation R&D projects and programmes, only Finland and Sweden have been able to create broad-based innovation strategies at the governmental level that include organisational innovation. Even so, a stronger political commitment is needed to foster a comprehensive approach to innovation and support the legitimacy of organisational innovation. In the future, it will be necessary to systematically embed an organisational innovation perspective into innovation systems throughout the governmental, ministerial, R&D programme and performance levels. To enhance learning concerning innovation activities in Europe, a concrete tool for a joint learning platform in the field of innovation activities is also presented.

This volume offers new empirical evidence on Indian skilled migrants living in European countries, which have become important destinations in the global competition for talent, and on returnees in India. Making use of an interdisciplinary and multi-level analytical framework, which simultaneously includes diaspora interventions and return migration as its main channels of participation, the studies included in this volume offer original insights into the dynamics of skilled migration from India and its effects. The studies highlight the determining factors required to channel possible contributions towards broad-based development and they suggest policy options for the home and host countries.

This article examines the temporal dimensions of migration trajectories by focusing on a small number of Indian migrants in Singapore who identify as gay. In particular it does so by examining the way ‘being gay’ factored into their decision to come to Singapore (the past), the way it plays a role in their ongoing trajectories (the present) and the way it gradually starts taking up a more prominent role in their plans for ‘the future’. Drawing upon queer migration studies as well as recent studies with a renewed focus on the temporalities of migration, this article argues that ‘queer temporalities’ need to be understood as doubly layered. On the one hand it relates to the im/possibility of a queer (migrant) future while on the other hand pointing at an issue a growing group of migrants in general are faced with: the way rights, opportunities and ‘futures’ are queered from mainstream society. While so far the attention with reference to this has mainly been focused on low skilled migrants who, as is the case also in Singapore, are often excluded from ever permanently staying on in their host nation, with the increasing fine-tuning of migration programmes, this article argues that we need to expand our attention to other groups of variously skilled migrants as well.

Recent decades have coincided with the rapid globalisation of the nursing profession. Within Australia there has been rising dependence on overseas qualified nurses (OQNs) to compensate for chronic nurse shortages related to the continued exodus of Australian nurses overseas and to emerging opportunities in other professions. Between 1983/4 and 1994/5, 30 544 OQNs entered Australia on either a permanent or temporary basis, counter-balancing the departure overseas of 23 613 locally trained and 6519 migrant nurses (producing a net gain of just 412 nurses in all). The period 1995/6--1999/2000 saw an additional 11 757 permanent or long-term OQN arrivals, with nursing currently ranked third target profession in Australia's skill migration program, in the context of continuing attrition among local nurses. This pattern of reliance on OQNs is a phenomenon simultaneously occurring in the UK, the US, Canada and the Middle East --- the globalisation of nursing reflecting not merely Western demand but the growing agency and participation of women in skilled migration, their desire for improved quality of life, enhanced professional opportunity and remuneration, family reunion and adventure.

Influencing public policy through advocacy is an essential strategy used by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) to achieve its health impact goals and programmatic objectives, which include helping all Americans lead healthier lives and reducing the incidence and consequences of cardiovascular disease and stroke. This advocacy work involves and engages the association's national officers, researchers, volunteer advocates, staff, and the general public and is a core strategy and key work process of the AHA/ASA. The organization's strategic approach to influencing public policy and leveraging its science and evidence base is not well known. This article provides the historical context of AHA advocacy, the organizational and legal structure under which these activities are carried out, the process used to develop the association's public policy positions and goals, the approaches used to achieve these goals, and the methods that have been developed to evaluate progress. This statement also examines the various tools and tactics that advocacy organizations use to influence public policy and specifically how the AHA/ASA conducts policy research, legislative and regulatory lobbying, coalition building and grassroots mobilization, and media advocacy. Finally, the ways that AHA/ASA evaluates the impact of its advocacy efforts are discussed, highlighting specific case studies and a brief summary of the association's 2010 to 2013 public policy agenda. The AHA's efforts to translate the science of cardiovascular disease and stroke into meaningful public policy began in earnest in the early 1980s. The association established a full-time office in Washington, DC, in early 1981 that was initially focused on increasing federal research funding administered by the National Institutes of Health.1 Other early policy priorities included tobacco control and support for programs that increased access to automated external defibrillators (AEDs), new clinical preventive benefits in the Medicare program, and nutrition policy. The commitment and involvement of …

Achieving long‐term sustainability in emerging economies requires future‐oriented strategies that integrate financial systems, entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and regulatory policies. This study examines the dynamic interplay between financial development (FD), investment in green technology (INV), and environmental policy stringency (EPS) in driving sustainability outcomes across the E7 countries (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey) from 2000 to 2022. Using the load capacity factor (LCF) as a comprehensive measure of ecological sustainability and applying the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR), the analysis captures heterogeneous effects across different levels of sustainability performance. The findings reveal that FD and INV significantly enhance sustainability, particularly in economies with weaker baseline performance, while EPS exerts a nonlinear influence, initially constraining but ultimately reinforcing sustainability once a regulatory threshold is surpassed. Moreover, interaction effects confirm that FD amplifies the benefits of green innovation and transition policies when aligned with regulatory frameworks. These results highlight the need for integrated policy designs that simultaneously strengthen financial markets, incentivize innovation, and enforce effective regulation. By offering novel empirical insights, this study contributes to the global discourse on future‐proofing sustainability and provides actionable guidance for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7 and 13 in emerging economies.

Institutional legitimacy of non-profit innovation facilitators: Strategic postures in regulated environments

The Political Economy of Australian Regulatory Reform

Local policy innovation is considered one of the major drives for China’s rapid economic development, especially during the first 35 years of reform in China. Given the new central policies and constant anti-corruption campaigns under the Xi administration, this article examines a timely question of why and how local officials continue to develop new innovative policies and projects. Based on previous theoretical building, the article analyzes such key institutional factors as new rules of game and their impact on local officials’ competition for survival and career advancement. Selecting cases across all the districts from a typical city in China, this article compares and identifies the changing patterns in local policy innovation. Policy innovations are administrative choices made by local officials in response to new and changing institutional opportunities and constraints. The discussion in this article makes significant contributions both theoretically and empirically to the China studies.

The concept of skill level offers a useful tool to policy-makers and researchers of migration to identify labor market needs, to define the type of migrants needed and to find ways to manage migration. But what this concept entails is often overlooked. This paper problematizes skill level by exploring issues and assumptions associated with its application. Following a review of the UK temporary migration programs, this paper compares the experiences of skilled and low-skilled Filipino migrants in the United Kingdom. The findings indicate that inequality between the two groups can be imposed not just by their job role or circumstances prior to migration but by immigration and social policies of the host country.

Many students have difficulty learning computer programming languages. Programming is a skill that requires a lot of practice, not just theory. Students are required to have the ability to all processes; analyze problems, design algorithms, translate algorithms into program code, and write program code with the correct syntax. The number of time students spend coding is the factor that has the highest impact on their programming skills. A basic programming lab work is implemented to increase students' programming skills with a lot of practice writing a code directly. Providing feedback on programming assignments is an integral part of a class on basic programming and requires substantial effort with personal teaching. It is needed an automatic assessment tool that can help the task of lecturers in evaluating assignments. Performance evaluation is one of the basics to monitor the progress of student performance. Grouping students according to their level of performance makes it easy for lecturers to monitor student performance levels and can provide learning according to the abilities of students in these groups. The clustering is used to group students based on the point of each lab work. The classification method used is K-Means Clustering. The cluster describes groups of students according to their performance. Based on the results of a case study with 31 students, it clusters students into 3 groups: 39% of people are in moderate ability, 45% of people have high abilities, and 16% of people are students whose programming abilities are still lacking system.

This study examines the nature of expressions of value in education. It uses monetary theory to argue that representations like qualifications have the same three functions as money. These functions are as a measure of value, a store of value and a medium of exchange. To explore these issues in a real-life situation, this study uses foreign qualification recognition (FQR) in Australia’s skilled migration program, which is a process used to determine who can migrate to Australia. The study finds that rather than assessing skill, the process recognises the credit relations associated with certain educational experiences.

To probe how Robotics Intervention Strategy (RIS) facilitated the development of students' robotics basic programming skills, this study was conducted. Grades 4 to 12 student-participants (N=26) were taught using RIS module designed by the teachers-researchers using the Response To Intervention (RTI) framework. The RIS module was consisted of Required Robotics Technical Skills (RRTS) Pre-test, Scaffolding, Performance Feedbacking, Periodic Drills, Progress Monitoring, and Required Robotics Technical Skills (RRTS) Post-Test. The RIS module involved the use of mobile learning devices, EV3 Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Core Set 45544, and playing field. An action research design was employed to determine the effectiveness of Robotics Intervention Strategy (RIS) among Robotics Elite Members of the De La Salle Santiago Zobel (DLSZ) School. The effectiveness was determined by students' performance in the RRTS developed by the researchers and teachers. The pretest score (M=2.50; SD=0.76158) implied that before the intervention, the elite team members' robotics technical skills was at the approaching proficiency level. After the intervention, the posttest score (M=4.31; SD=0.73589) suggested that the elite members' robotics technical skills were approaching the expert level. Moreover, Cohen's d value of 2.4046 indicated large effect of the Robotics Intervention Strategy (RIS). Paired t-test (t=-16.255; p=.000) analysis revealed that there was a significant difference in the elite members' pretest (M=2.50) and posttest scores (Mean=4.31) in the practical assessment, with the posttest score (M=4.31: SD=0.73589) significantly higher than the pretest score (M=2.50: SD=0.76158). This indicated that the RIS significantly improved the elite members' performance level. Results of the study supported the importance of intensive interventions because it gave an opportunity for the school's to figure out ways to serve the students better. The RIS facilitated the most specific needs for the students as the approach made modification, made adaptations, and reflected on RRTS performance-based approach so that the kind of intensive intervention the coaches provide was really specific to that student.