Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume ITable 6.4 Number of students from AMCs enrolled in tertiary educationin 2003 in 26 OECD countriesRate of emigrationAlgeria 2,028Egypt 5,875Jordan 5,261Lebanon 9,318Morocco 53,631Palestine 929Syria 4,908Tunisia 12,259Source: Dumont (2006)6.2 Prospect to migrate and labour forceWhile there is limited direct evidence with respect to the impact of the prospect to migrate on humancapital formation in AMCs, some indirect evidence can be gained by observing the pattern ofmigration by skill levels. The theoretical arguments depicted in section 1.2. reveal that a necessarycondition for the occurrence of a beneficial brain drain is represented by an increase in the expectedreturn to education once migration prospects open up, and this means that better-educated individualshave either a higher incentive to migrate because of prevailing wage distribution at destination, or abetter ability to do so, because of skill-selective immigration policies. Table 6.1 provided a firstsnapshot of emigration, broken down by skill levels, out of AMCs in the year 2000. This adverse staticeffect could be offset by the contribution that the prospect to migrate provides by way of humancapital formation in these countries. 94Still, what we observe in Table 6.1 need not be driven by a higher incentive or better ability tomigrate – because of the pattern of out-selection determined by immigration policies – for bettereducated individuals, as the skill premium in wage distribution tends to fall with higher levels ofincome (see Figure 1.1). Mattoo et al. (2008) provide evidence of so-called brain waste in the USlabour market from a survey which also provides data on Egyptian immigrants. 95 The possibilitythat the emigration rates across educational groups reported in Table 6.1 are influenced by theadoption of skill-selective immigration policies seems uncertain as well, as migrants to OECDcountries from the Maghreb countries – such as Morocco and Tunisia – tend to move to Europe(see figures from Ratha and Shaw, 2007). Although things may change with the eventualintroduction of the European Blue Card, EU member countries have not so far been the most activecontenders in the global contest to attract “the best and the brightest”, where traditionalimmigration countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and – to a lesser extent – the UnitedStates have prevailed, with the adoption of tight skill-selective immigration policies. Migration toEurope occurs mostly through family reunification provisions or through irregular routes, which donot induce a skill-selective pattern of migration. Clearly, this need not apply to the countries of theMashreq – such as Egypt and Lebanon – whose migrants tend to move predominantly towards theGulf countries and the United States, as these countries are characterized by higher wage dispersion94 Fargues (2008b) states that migrants from AMCs “may also have an increasing propensity to invest in their own educationand to accumulate human capital in addition to financial capital”.95 Mattoo et al. (2008) shows that workers from the MENA region are more likely to obtain a qualified job if they hold aprofessional degree; the probability of obtaining a qualified job with a master degree is only 49 percent for an Egyptianmigrant, compared to 80 percent for an Indian.132