Skip to main content
Log in

Globalisation, internal labour markets and the migration of the highly skilled

  • Labour Markets
  • Published:
Intereconomics

Abstract

Over the last decade highly skilled migration has been gaining relative importance in European migration flows. Following the goods and factor markets the market for highly skilled labour has thus also started to globalise. How are the globalisation processes of the world-wide goods, capital and labour markets interlinked? What role do international enterprises and their internal labour markets play in increasing highly skilled migration? What trends can be expected for the future?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. The concept of internal labour markets has been introduced by P. B. Doeringer and M. J. Piore: Internal Labour Markets and Manpower Analysis, Heath Lexington Books, London 1971.

  2. See e.g. J. M. Malcomson: Work Incentives, Hierarchy, and Internal Labour Markets, in: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 92 (1984), No. 3, pp. 486–507.

  3. See O. E. Williamson: Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications, The Free Press, New York 1975, p. 57 ff.

    Google Scholar 

  4. See G. S. Becker: Human Capital, 2nd edn., University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1980, who shows that employees generally have to invest themselves in their human capital, and that an employer will only pay for the firm-specific human capital not applicable elsewhere.

    Google Scholar 

  5. According to J. Salt, J. Mervin and S. Shortland: The Cost of International Relocation, in: Relocation News, 1993, No. 26, pp. 4–7, the net overseas costs for a British employer sending one of his employees abroad range from £ 132000 to £ 306100 depending on the working age and destination of the latter.

  6. The terms “ethnocentric” and “geocentric” have been coined by H. V. Perimutter: The Tortuous Evolution of the Multinational Corporation, in: Columbia Journal of World Business, Vol. 4 (1969), No. 1, pp. 9–18.

  7. The relevance of cultural differences between organisations and countries is stressed by G. Hofstede: Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind; Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival, Harper Collins, London 1994.

  8. A. D. Chandler: Strategy and Structure—Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, MIT-Press, Cambridge, Mass., London 1962.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Such a “channels approach” to highly skilled migration was first proposed by A. M. Findlay and L. Garrick: Scottish Emigration in the 1980s: A Migration Channels Approach to the Study of Skilled International Migration, in: Institute of British Geographers: Transactions, Vol. 15 (1990), pp. 177–193.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

For a more detailed version of the present paper see A. Wolter and T. Straubhaar: Europeanisation of Production and the Migration of the Highly Skilled, HWWA discussion paper No. 41, 1997. The authors would like to thank the participants of a joint workshop of the University of the Federal Armed Forces and the HWWA-Institute for Economic Research, Hamburg for their comments on this earlier version.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Straubhaar, T., Wolter, A. Globalisation, internal labour markets and the migration of the highly skilled. Intereconomics 32, 174–180 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02928431

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02928431

Keywords

Navigation