Framing brain drain: between solidarity and skills in European labor mobility

Abstract

How do crisis perceptions interrelate with the emergence and re-constitution of policy problems? By using a novel combination of interviews with a content and network analysis of hand-coded parliamentary questions, this article maps the emergence of brain drain as a policy problem at the level of the European Union and follows the evolution of the issue over the last four parliamentary periods (from 1999 to 2019). I identify a skills storyline (emphasizing reform of vocational and educational training to address skills mismatches) and a solidarity storyline (emphasizing worker conditions, rights, and wages) as the main contending narratives that define the contours of the debate. The article analyzes how each of these storylines interacted over time with changes in the perception of crisis urgency facing the European Union in ways that run counter to what we would expect. I explain this by examining the capacity of each storyline to problematize or deproblematize the movement of labor, as well as their institutionalization over time. The article contributes to the study of the political economy of labor mobility with an original case study from the EU's Single Market, and challenges conventional wisdom regarding the role of framing during times of crisis.

Leading university internationalisation: The future of Euro‐Chinese academic cooperation

“…Regarding the EU, Hasselbalch (2019) illustrates how the domestic politics regarding brain-drain moved from the internal level of the different nations in Europe to a framework connecting those issues at the EU-level. After analysing intra-EU mobility, he concludes that the official numbers do not adequately capture the politics of brain-drain.…”

Public support for collaborative workspaces: Dispersed help to a place-based phenomenon?

“…During the early years of their operation, EU policy circles failed to address CWS explicitly, promoting instead an understanding of such spaces merely as a form of economic infrastructure. Between 2009 and 2014, CWS became part of supply-side employability policies and structural funds were allocated to ease the transition of youth into labour markets and especially to fight the southern brain drain which was connected to the economic crisis and austerity policies (Hasselbach, 2019). By doing so, CWS gradually enlarged with the support of EU funded programmes such as Creative Europe, COSME, the EIC Accelerator, the Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI), the InvestEU programme and the Digital Europe programme, which have been available to start-ups and individuals working in the fields of creative industries, innovation and entrepreneurship.…”

Exploring subject positions in Greek migrants' discourse on mobility decisions

“…Nevertheless, its effect on contemporary migration rhetoric is still noticeable; the assumptions of linearity and unidirectionality of mobility that constitute its foundations continue to be dominant in a large volume of migration studies (Pratsinakis, Hatziprokopiou, & King, 2017). A rationalistic and linear approach to mobility, for example, characterizes recent research—usually falling under the rubric “brain drain”—which focuses on European migration after the 2008 economic crisis (Docquier & Rapoport, 2009; Hasselbalch, 2019). “Brain drain” is considered to describe the migration of high‐skilled young people from southern to northern Europe (from the poorest to the richest countries, from the “peripheries” to the “core” of Europe, see King, 2018), in order to find better opportunities for work.…”