How Valuable is “Two-Step Migration”? Labor Market Outcomes for International Student Migrants to Australia

Abstract

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.

Childcare, Mobility Decisions and ‘Staggered’ Migration

“…While we acknowledge that culture often played an important role in care decisions, and discuss this in relation to individual participants where relevant, it is beyond the scope of the paper to provide detailed discussion of socio-cultural conditions in all the countries of origin. Hawthorne (2010) has referred to the increasing capacity for migrants in AusMigration, Mobility & Displacement, Summer, 2017 tralia to transition while onshore from temporary visas (such as student or temporary worker visas) to permanent visas as 'two-step' or 'try before you buy' migration. Under increasingly neoliberal immigration policies, these pathways are seen as a way to gain value from temporary labour and select the 'best and brightest' permanent migrants.…”

Transnational mobilities of Australia-educated and domiciled professional migrants from Vietnam

“…However, many studies in demography and international education policy, as well as government-commissioned reports often associate two-step migration as a linear process from international education to skilled immigration in which migration policies influence international students' choices of study programs and decisions to migrate (e.g. Birrell, Hawthorne, & Richardson, 2006;Birrell & Perry, 2009;Cully, 2011;Hawthorne, 2005Hawthorne, & 2010. Transnational mobilities are treated as disembodied in homogeneous 'brain flows' from home to host societies.…”

“…Although two-step migrants are usually referred to as former international students who obtain permanent residency visas in the country where they have studied (see also Hawthorne, 2005Hawthorne, & 2010Iredale, 2000), this concept has a somewhat narrower focus in this study. The participants in this study include Vietnamese former students at Australian universities who were either sponsored or privately funded, and who have successfully applied for PR either onshore or offshore since 21 1999, the time when the points test system for Australian PR was made effective.…”

“…For example, research has shown that transnational mobilities are affected by migration infrastructure in host countries, such as migration policies and influences of other actors such as migration brokers on recruitment and documentation (e.g. Biao, 2005Biao, & 2007Collins, 2008;Hawthorne, 2005Hawthorne, & 2010Lindquist, Biao, & Yeoh, 2012), social and cultural norms (e.g. Biao, 2005Biao, & 2007Singh, Robertson, & Cabraal, 2012;Yeoh et al, 2013), and political ideologies (e.g.…”

“…In Australia, for example, skilled migration policies with an emphasis on qualifications offered by onshore institutions are known to have significant impact on students-turned-migrants' initial choices of study programs and decisions to migrate (e.g. Baas, 2014;Birrell & Perry, 2009;Gribble, 2011;Hawthorne, 2005Hawthorne, & 2010Rizvi, 2005a & b;Tran & Nyland, 2011;Ziguras & Law, 2006). Many international students are reported to consume Australian international education as an "investment" or "ticket" for subsequent skilled migration (Rizvi, 2005b, p. 177).…”