“If you smile, they smile”: Explaining highly educated migrants' feelings of being welcome in the Euregio Meuse‐Rhine

Abstract

Creating a welcoming environment is high on policy makers' agendas to attract highly educated migrants. It is unclear, however, which factors contribute to migrants' feelings of being welcome in the host country. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by exploring the factors influencing highly educated migrants' feelings of being welcome in the host country. We develop a conceptual framework that differentiates between the host country's institutional (e.g., public services for migrants) and societal (e.g., tolerance, friendliness) incorporation capacity and the migrants' personal incorporation capacity (e.g., personality traits). The study follows a mixed methods research design using survey data (n = 391) and serial interviews (wave1: n = 67; wave2: n = 49) with highly educated migrants in the Euregio Meuse‐Rhine, a cross‐border region between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The quantitative and qualitative findings indicate that all three indicators of the incorporation capacity framework contribute to migrants' feelings of being welcome in the host country. The societal incorporation capacity emerges as most important in the analysis. Lastly, interview findings emphasise the importance of language across all incorporation capacity dimensions. The paper contributes to the literature on high‐skilled migration, and particularly on high‐skilled migrants' experiences in the host country.

When expectations backfire: A longitudinal analysis on unmet migration expectations and destination attachment of recent immigrants to Switzerland

“…Obtained privileges, accustomed high living standards and social recognition set a high bar for life abroad, which can be difficult to meet because of differences in language and culture, experiences of discrimination or social distance, the limited transferability of human capital or the non-recognition of certificates (e.g. Lancee & Bol, 2017;Reinold et al, 2024). Although highly qualified immigrants may occupy good positions in the local labour market and get on comparably well in adapting to the mainstream way of life, they may experience their situation particularly negative because they have expected something different and feel that their investments and resources have not been rewarded adequately.…”