Mobilities of the Highly Skilled towards Switzerland : The Role of Intermediaries in Defining “Wanted Immigrants”
This book analyses the strategies of migration intermediaries from the public and private sectors in Switzerland to select, attract, and retain highly skilled migrants who represent value to them. It reveals how state and economic actors define “wanted immigrants” and provide them with privileged access to the Swiss territory and labour market. This book thus shifts the focus from an approach that takes the category of highly skilled migrant for granted to one that regards context as crucial for structuring migrants’ characteristics, trajectories, and experiences. Beyond consideration of professional qualifications, the ways decision-makers perceive candidates and shape their resource environments are crucial for constructing them as skilled or unskilled, wanted or unwanted, welcome or unwelcome.
Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Integration in European Labour Markets : A Comparative Approach on Legal Barriers and Enablers
This book discusses how, and to what extent, the legal and institutional regimes and the socio-cultural environments of a range of European countries (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK), in the framework of EU laws and policies, have a beneficial or negative impact on the effective capacity of these countries to integrate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into their labour markets.
Migrants and Expats : The Swiss Migration and Mobility Nexus
This book provides insight on current patterns of migration in Switzerland, which fall along a continuum from long-term and permanent to more temporary and fluid. These patterns are shaped by the interplay of legal norms, economic drivers and societal factors. The various dimensions of this Migration-Mobility Nexus are investigated by means of newly collected survey data: the Migration-Mobility Survey. The book covers different aspects of life in the host country, including the family dimension, the labour market and political participation as well as social integration. The book also takes into account the chronological dimension of migration by considering the migrants’ arrival, their stay, and their expectations regarding return.
Institutional Reform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship : An Agenda for Europe
The authors of this book advise the economies of the European Union to become more entrepreneurial in promoting innovation and economic growth. The authors propose a reform strategy with respect to several aspects to achieve this goal. Starting with the rule of law and the protection of property rights; the tax system; the authors deal with regulations governing savings, capital and finance, and the organization of labor markets and social insurance systems. Framework strategies related to the regulations governing goods and service markets, bankruptcy and insolvency are also put forward. A core understanding and future path is also provided towards R&D, commercialization and knowledge spillovers; human capital investments; and informal institutions.
Immigration Policy and the Labor Market : The German Experience and Lessons for Europe
German and European immigration policies have only recently begun to cope with the inevitable: growing labor demand in the face of high unemployment and a shrinking labor force due to demographic change. Despite the implementation of Germany's first immigration act and several European initiatives towards legal harmonization at the EU level, an actively controlling immigration policy, which would be needed to master the challenges ahead, is not yet in sight. Against this background, the book draws conclusions from the German history of immigration policy. It analyzes the country's future demand for immigration and develops an economic model for the effective selection and integration of labor migrants that could provide the foundation for a joint European immigration strategy.
Globalization and Regional Economic Modeling
Globalization is affecting regional economies in a broad spectrum of aspects, from labor market conditions and development policies to climate change. To understand better how this works, we need both conceptual and methodological contributions. We need new schemes to organize our thinking, direct our attention, and frame thought experiments on the basis of which guidance may be offered. And we need methodological innovations that enable us to carry out studies and thought experiments at levels of spatial and temporal resolution and formal complexity adequate to capture and account for the phenomena that characterize globalization. The chapters of this volume, written by an international cast of eminent regional scientists, represent contributions of both types, in many cases introducing and demonstrating the use of new tools for analyzing and understanding enormous changes underway in regional economies around the world.
Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda
Some social sciences contend that marriage is the solution to many of the problems associated with single-parent families. Other experts believe that government programs designed to raise marriage rates may cause more problems than they solve,The proposed volume will explore issues related to fragile families from many different perspectives on the causes and consequences of this issue. This book is divided up into sections covering legal and theoretical perspectives, causes and consequences of offspring wellbeing, and the aspect of father’s importance to the "fragile families".
Female Employment and Gender Gaps in China
This book investigates female employment and the gender gap in the labor market and households during China’s economic transition period. It provides the reader with academic evidence for understanding the mechanism of female labor force participation, the determinants of the gender gap in the labor market, and the impact of policy transformation on women’s wages and employment in China from an economics perspective
Dumbing Down : The Crisis of Quality and Equity in a Once-Great School System—and How to Reverse the Trend
This book examines the challenges and issues caused by a move to a marketized education system in Sweden. Observing the introduction of the school voucher system and a postmodern social constructivist view of knowledge, the move away from objective knowledge is identified as the core reason for Sweden’s current education crisis. The impact of declining education standards on the labor market is also discussed.
Disrupted Development and the Future of Inequality in the Age of Automation
This book examines the future of inequality, work and wages in the age of automation with a focus on developing countries. The authors argue that the rise of a global ‘robot reserve army’ has profound effects on labor markets and economic development, but, rather than causing mass unemployment, new technologies are more likely to lead to stagnant wages and premature deindustrialization.
Demographic Change in Germany : The Economic and Fiscal Consequences
Just as one might be inclined to thinkthat every thing about demographic change has been already said and heard, a new dimension opens up. In fact, this is what makes the topic so fascinating. There is nothing trivial any longer about children, families, age, and care. Europe is undergoing profound demo graphic change. Each generation of children is quantitatively smaller than that of their parents; the propor tion of children and adolescents among the population is becoming smaller and smaller, while that of the elde rlyi s growing inexorably. Fewer and fewer people are marrying; more and more marriages are failing. Manyar eas of our society are affected by this; just think about the challenges faced by the social security systems as a result of demographic ageing. Politi cians and society are forced to adju st todem ographic change. Many people in Europe are concerned about these changes and are looking to politicians and researchers for solutions. Predictions are never easy, especially not about the future.
Jacob Mincer : A Pioneer of Modern Labor Economics
This volume contains essays by or about Jacob Mincer who, along with Gary Becker, is a founding father of modern empirical labor economics. His methodology analyzes the economics of the working world, and his human capital model is a fundamental tool in empirical economics.
Bringing the Jobless into Work? : Experiences with Activation Schemes in Europe and the US
Over the last decade, many industrialized countries shifted from passive unemployment and welfare benefit regimes and traditional active labor market and social policies to activation strategies by making benefit receipt conditional upon accepting job offers or participation in active labor market schemes. But countries differ with regard to the design of activation instruments and their implementation, the definition of target groups and the effects of activation in the national labor market setting. This volume provides an up-to-date overview of activation strategies in unemployment benefit systems and social assistance in selected European countries and the US. A particular focus lies on the development of activation schemes, governance and implementation as well as on the outcomes of activation in terms of labor market and social integration. The volume is the first to address these issues both from a socio-economic and a legal perspective.
Berufliche passagen im lebenslauf : berufsbildungs- und transitionsforschung in der Schweiz = Vocational passages in the CV : Vocational training and transition research in Switzerland
During the transition from school to work, important groundwork is laid that prepares the further course of a person's life. In addition, this volume presents new results from diverse transition research from all over Switzerland, which are based on various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, educational sciences or educational economics. For this purpose, theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for the analysis and control of significant passages in the life course are developed.
Behavioral competencies of digital professionals : Understanding the role of emotional intelligence
Shedding new light on the human side of big data through the lenses of emotional and social intelligence competencies, this book advances the understanding of the requirements of the different professions that deal with big data. It also illustrates the empirical evidence collected through the application of the competency-based methodology to a sample of data scientists and data analysts, the two most in-demand big data jobs in the labor market.
Active labor market policies in Europe : performance and perspectives
Measures of Active Labor Market Policy - such as training, wage subsidies, public employment measures, and job search assistance - are widely used in European countries to combat unemployment.
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Capability in Age and Ageing
This book provides insight on how to interpret capability in ageing – one’s individual ability to perform actions in order to reach goals one has reason to value – from a multidisciplinary approach. the book describes this demographic trends as well as the large global challenges and important societal implications this will have such as a worldwide increase in the number of persons affected with dementia, and in the ratio of retired persons to those still in the labor market. Through contributions from many different research areas, it discussed how capability depends on interactions between the individual (e.g. health, genetics, personality, intellectual capacity), environment (e.g. family, friends, home, work place), and society (e.g. political decisions, ageism, historical period).
















