India Migration Report 2018: Migrants in Europe [1 ed.] 9781138498167, 9780429434556

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India Migration Report 2018

India Migration Report 2018 looks at Indian migrants in Europe and their lived experiences. It looks at how over the last few decades, the European Union has emerged as the preferred destination for Indian migrants surpassing the United States of America – and is home to Indian students and high-skilled professionals ranging from engineers to medical graduates, contributing to the economy and society both at the countries of origin and destination. The chapters in the volume look at a host of themes and issues, including agreements India has signed with the EU, the Blue Card, the impact of Brexit and the plight of unskilled workers. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, sociology and social anthropology and migration studies. S. Irudaya Rajan is Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. With more than three decades of research experience in Kerala, he has coordinated seven major migration surveys (1998, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2016) in Kerala (with Professor K. C. Zachariah), led the migration surveys in Goa (2008) and Tamil Nadu (2015), and provided technical support to the Gujarat Migration Survey (2010) and Punjab Migration Survey (2011). He has published extensively in national and international journals on demographic, social, economic, political and psychological implications of international migration. Professor Rajan is currently engaged in several projects on international migration with the New York University, UAE Exchange Centre, India Centre for Migration of the Ministry of External Affairs, International Labour Migration and World Bank. He worked closely with the erstwhile Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India, Department of Non-Resident Keralite Affairs (NORKA), Government of Kerala and Kerala State Planning Board. He is currently co-chairing the working group on NORKA for the 13th five-year plan (2017–2022) of Kerala State Planning Board, Government of Kerala and is initiating the Kerala Migration Survey 2018, funded by the Department of NORKA, Government of Kerala. He is editor of the two Routledge series India Migration Report (annual) since 2010 and South Asia Migration Report (biennial) since 2017 and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Migration and Development.

India Migration Report Editor: S. Irudaya Rajan

Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

This annual series strives to bring together international networks of migration scholars and policy-makers to document and discuss research on various facets of migration. It encourages interdisciplinary commentaries on diverse aspects of the migration experience and continues to focus on the economic, social, cultural, ethical, security, and policy ramifications of international movements of people. India Migration Report 2013 Social Costs of Migration India Migration Report 2014 Diaspora and Development India Migration Report 2015 Gender and Migration India Migration Report 2016 Gulf Migration India Migration Report 2017 Forced Migration India Migration Report 2018 Migrants in Europe India Migration Report 2019 Diaspora in Europe For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

India Migration Report 2018 Migrants in Europe Edited by S. Irudaya Rajan

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, S. Irudaya Rajan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of S. Irudaya Rajan to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-49816-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43455-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Dedicated to the memory of my teachers at International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai Professor Malini Karkal Professor Asha Bhende Professor Tara Kanitkar

Contents

List of figuresx List of tablesxiii Notes on contributorsxvi Prefacexix Acknowledgementsxxiv   1 The European Union as a preferred destination for Indian migrants? Prospects, patterns, policies and challenges

1

ALI MEHDI, DIVYA CHAUDHRY, PALLAVI JOSHI AND PRIYANKA TOMAR

  2 Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice: evidence from India’s SSA with countries in Europe

31

ATUL KUMAR TIWARI, DHANANJAY GHEI AND PRERNA GOEL

  3 “Blue Card”: a comment on the EU’s preferential immigration visa for attracting human capital vis-àvis its own multilateral conundrum

56

BINOD KHADRIA

  4 Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals in the European Union

62

S. IRUDAYA RAJAN

  5 Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe: loss or win situation in case of return? PAULINE MELIN

73

viii  Contents   6 Challenges and opportunities for the Indian migrants in the EU: in the context of EU enlargement and Brexit

87

PUJA GUHA

  7 Migration of Indian health professionals to the European Union: an analysis of policies and patterns

108

AYONA BHATTACHARJEE

  8 Brexit: did a perceived threat of immigrants divide a country?

128

S. IRUDAYA RAJAN AND NIKHIL PANICKER

  9 The new student migration regime: enhanced opportunities for Indian nationals seeking to study in the European Union?

160

ALEXANDER HOOGENBOOM

10 Have the “London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end?

175

BASANT POTNURU AND BINOD KHADRIA

11 Indians in Italy

192

BARBARA BERTOLANI

12 Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy

209

MARCO OMIZZOLO AND PINA SODANO

13 Skilled migration and the IT sector: a gendered analysis

229

GUNJAN SONDHI, PARVATI RAGHURAM, CLEM HERMAN AND ESTHER RUIZ BEN

14 “Being Indian” in the city of Oxford

249

SHAHANA PURVEEN

15 Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK

260

TILOTAMA PRADHAN

16 When international migration is a failure: Panjabi undocumented migrants in France CHRISTINE MOLINER

275

Contents ix 17 All about my skills, not me or mine: vignettes of precarity among skilled Indian professionals in the UK

280

SHOBA ARUN

18 Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf

294

S. IRUDAYA RAJAN, CHITRA RANGANATHAN AND SREELAKSHMI RAMACHANDRAN

19 Impact of migration on contemporary demographic transformation in Kerala

304

S. IRUDAYA RAJAN AND K. C. ZACHARIAH

20 Out-migration and its economic impact on households in Tamil Nadu

314

S. AMUTHAN

Index331

Figures

1.1 India–EU trade flows and balance (USD millions), 1990–20162 1.2 Prime workforce (25–49 years), in thousands (n) and as percentage of total population (%), EU-28 and India, 1950–2040 3 1.3 Remittances received by India from major source countries, 2016 4 1.4 Indian migrants by region of destination, 2015 6 1.5 Top five EU countries with the highest stock of Indian migrants, 2015 6 1.6 First permits (12 months or over) issued to Indian citizens by EU-28 8 1.7 Employment growth (%) in the EU by sectors, 2015–202510 1.8 Flow of tertiary level students from India to major destination countries, 2014–2015 19 2.1 India’s total trade with Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland versus CoCs issued 38 2.2 CoCs issued to different age groups 44 2.3 CoCs issued according to their validity duration 45 2.4 CoCs issued in various regions of India 45 2.5 Percentage of emigrants with CoCs 46 6.1 Phases of abolition of labour mobility restrictions by EU-15 countries 90 6.2 Change in the immigration inflow of Indian migrants to selected EU-15 countries, 1996–2009 96 6.3 Year-to-year growth in the inflows of India migrants to EU-15 countries (%) 97 7.1 Distribution of physicians by age groups in the EU (2015 or nearest year) 109

Figures xi 7.2 Percentage stock of foreign-trained doctors and nurses in 2016 (or nearest year) 111 7.3 Remuneration of salaried and self-employed general practitioners (in 1,000 USD PPP) during 2015 (nearest year) 117 7.4 Remuneration (in 1,000 USD PPP) of salaried specialists (Panel A) and salaried hospital nurses (Panel B) 118 7.5 Composition of the stock of foreign-trained doctors in UK in 2015 and 2016 120 7.6 Composition of the stock of foreign-trained nurses in UK in 2015 and 2016 120 7.7 Annual inflow of doctors and nurses in the UK from India 121 8.1 Long-term international migration to and from the UK, 1964–2016 133 8.2 Long-term international migration to and from the UK, Dec 2007–June 2017 134 8.3 EU net migration to the UK by citizenship, Dec 2007–June 2017 136 8.4 EU immigrants by nationality, UK, 2015 139 8.5 Estimates of the non-UK-born resident population of the UK by country of birth, 2005–2016 140 8.6 Immigration to the UK by main reason for migration, 2009–2017 142 8.7 Long term non-EU international immigration for study, UK, 1991–2016 150 8.8 Immigration for study and emigration of former student immigrants, non-EU nationals, UK, 1991–2016 151 8.9 Student migrants entering the UK by nationality, 1991–2016152 8.10 Nationality of students and their dependents entering the UK by world region, 2004–2015 152 8.11 Shares of student migrants entering the UK by sex, 1991–2015154 8.12 Visas granted to Indian students, UK, 2006–2017 156 10.1 Registered doctors (stock) in the UK by primary medical qualification, 1980–2014 177 10.2 Top-10 countries’ doctors registered in the UK, 1996–2014179 10.3 FMGs stock from top-10 countries in the NHS, 1997–2016180

xii  Figures 10.4 Top-10 countries’ annual inflow of doctors to the UK, 2000–2016 184 11.1 Percentage distribution of Indian residents in Italian regions at 31 December 2015 195 19.1 Age-specific marital fertility rate of currently married women among migrant and non-migrant households, 2013–2014308 19.2 Currently married women who have one or two children and were sterilised by household type 308

Tables

1.1 Top five EU-28 countries which issued first permits (12 months or over) to Indian citizens for education and remunerated activities 9 1.2 EU legislations facilitaing labour mobility 11 1.3 Student mobility agreements between India and select EU MS 17 2.1 Social security savings 36 2.2 Countries having SSAs with India 40 2.3 Provisions in Indian SSAs 42 2.A Social security schemes covered under SSAs 51 4.1 Number of Indian emigrants in European Union countries 64 4.2 Citizenship granted to Indians as first residence permit in the EU-28 and main EU member states by reasons, 201565 4.3 Citizenships granted to Indians in EU countries, 2015 67 6.1 Change in the inflow of migrants from NMS in selected EU-15 countries pre- and post-enlargement, 1995–2009 (in thousands) 91 6.2 Inflow of population with Indian citizenship in the EU-15 countries (in thousands) 94 6.3 Top-10 migrant sending countries, based on the National Insurance Number in UK, 2002–2007 (in thousands)98 6.4 Immigrants from NMS and India to selected EU countries, by education 99 6.5 Immigrants from NMS and India to selected EU countries, by sector of employment 100 6.6 Quarterly job vacancy rate in the UK 102 6.7 Entry visa and residence certificates granted to Indian and Polish nationality 103

xiv  Tables 6.8 Inflow of population with Indian citizenship in the new member states 7.1 Annual inflow of the number of India-trained doctors in some EU countries 7.2 Annual inflow of the number of India-trained nurses in the EU 8.1 Change in net migration to the UK, YE June 2016 to YE June 2017 8.2 EU and non-EU migration to the UK, June 2016– 2017 (in thousands) 8.3 Share of immigrants in the UK by countries of birth and citizenship, 2016 8.4 Work-related visa grants by category, UK, YE September 2016 and YE September 2017 8.5 UK and non-UK employment, unemployment and economic inactivity estimates from the Labour Force Survey, July to September 2017 8.6 Education and immigrant status (working-age population), UK, 2015 8.7 Employment, unemployment, students and economic inactivity by immigrant status (working-age population), UK, 2015 8.8 Study-related visas granted, excluding short-term students, September 2016–2017 9.1 Review of articles on student migration envisaged in the European Union directives 11.1 Percentage distribution of Indian residents in Italian regions at 31 December 2015 11.2 Percentage of Indian residents on total foreigners in 2015 11.3 Percentage distribution of Indian residents in principal Italian regions in 2002 and 2015 11.4 Percentage increase of Indian residents in some Italian regions in 2010 and 2015 11.5 Indian residents in 2010 and 2015: percentage distribution of men and women in some Italian regions 13.1 Age groupings of Indian migrants residing in the UK 13.2 Marital status 13.3 Indian migrants residing in the UK with children 13.4 Parents’ university educational attainment 13.5 Mothers’ university educational attainment 13.6 Parents’ occupation

105 119 119 135 137 141 143 145 145 145 153 166 193 194 194 195 196 234 235 236 237 237 237

Tables xv 3.7 1 13.8 13.9 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 13.15 5.1 1 19.1 9.2a 1 19.2b 20.1 0.2 2 20.3 20.4 0.4.1 2 20.4.2 0.4.3 2 20.5 20.5.1

Career level of Indian migrants residing in the UK 238 Professional motivations to work abroad 239 Personal motivations to work abroad 239 Previous migration experience 240 Job roles on international assignment 241 Most common purpose for travel for work 242 Duration of international assignment for women 242 Duration of international assignment for men 243 Impact of international mobility on professional and personal development 243 Number of Indian students in the UK 2009–2016 265 Number of currently married women who have male children only or female children only and had completed their fertility 310 Pearson correlation: migrant households 311 Pearson correlation: non-migrant households 311 Total migrants in Tamil Nadu and percentage of total migrants to total population from 1991 to 2011 census 315 Selected demographic profile of migrants 318 Migrants’ remittances 320 Descriptive statistics of skilled and income of first migrants321 ANOVA for skilled and income of first migrants 322 Post hoc multiple comparisons of skilled and 323 income for first migrants Homogeneous subsets of skilled and income level 324 Evaluation of mean and standard deviations of standard of living before and after migration by selected variables 325 Paired sample statistics for standard of living of migrants’ households before and after migration 326

Contributors

S. Amuthan is Researcher at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India. Shoba Arun is with the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. Esther Ruiz Ben is Lecturer, Institute of Sociology of Techonology and Innvoation, Techincal University, Berlin. Barbara Bertolani is Adjunct Professor at the University of Molise, Italy. Ayona Bhattacharjee is Assistant Professor in Economics at the International Management Institute, Delhi, India. Divya Chaudhry is Research Associate at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India. Dhananjay Ghei is Researcher with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi, India. Prerna Goel is Researcher with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi, India. Puja Guha is Assistant Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. Clem Herman is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing and Communications, The Open University, United Kingdom. Alexander Hoogenboom is Scientific Coordinator at the Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross-border Cooperation and Mobility (ITEM) and Researcher at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Netherlands. Pallavi Joshi is Research Associate at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India.

Contributors xvii Binod Khadria is Professor of Education and Economics at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Ali Mehdi is Senior Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India. Pauline Melin is Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Christine Moliner is Lecturer at the Department of Global Communication at the American University of Paris, France. Marco Omizzolois President of the Tempi Moderni (www.tempimoderni.net)Centre for Studies in Communications and Scientific Research and is Technical Director of In Migrazione and head coordinator of the coop. Prior to this, he was a visiting professor at the Guru Nanak University and the Lovely University, India. Nikhil Panicker is Researcher at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, India. Basant Potnuru is Associate Professor, Economics and Business Policy, FORE School of Management, New Delhi, India. Tilotama Pradhan is Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, United Kingdom. Shahana Purveen is an ICDD doctoral researcher at the School of Social Science, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. As a part of her PhD programme, she visited COMPAS, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Parvati Raghuram is Professor of Geography and Migration at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, The Open University, United Kingdom. S. Irudaya Rajan is Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India. Sreelakshmi Ramachandran is researcher at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India. Chitra Ranganathan is Post-Doctoral Fellow of the Indian Council for Social Science Research at Department of Sociology, University of Kerala, India. Pina Sodano is Professor in the Department of Political Sciences at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.

xviii  Contributors Gunjan Sondhi is research associate with the Department of Geography with the Open University, United Kingdom. Atul Kumar Tiwari is Resident Commissioner of Karnataka Bhavan, Delhi, India. Prior to this, he was Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India. Priyanka Tomar is Research Associate at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India. K. C. Zachariah is Honorary Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, India.

Preface

It is my pleasure to introduce the ninth edition of the India Migration Report, which focuses on migration to Europe. With reference to the European Refugee Crisis and Brexit and other recent international events, this volume also inquires into issues faced by migrants in Europe. The IMR 2018 dwells upon issues such as social security benefits, tracing work permit schemes, policy changes in terms of visa requirements for health and skilled professionals across the globe and linguistic and gender norms within transnational communities. In this context, it evaluates the socio-economic elements that impact migrants and their dependents. The volume further discusses issues revolving around several groups, such as bachelors in the Gulf, Indian students and Tamil labourers, thus elaborating their primary concerns. The IMR 2018 presents itself with the pursuit of rapid economic growth, discussing advances in the discourse of migration. Before I provide more details about the IMR 2018, let me briefly review the earlier IMRs for the benefit of the readers. The first volume of the India Migration Report (2010) analysed concepts of migration based on international movement of labour. The IMR 2010 maps different types of labour migration among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries along with the unscrupulous nature of immigration agents, highlighting the significance of prevailing labour laws and its violations. This introductory report provided a glimpse on the dire situation in India and it stated reasons for the improvement of migration practices. The next IMR published in 2011, which pointed at identity and conflict of migration. It dealt with issues of discord caused due to various aspects such as recruitment, networks and gender norms as identified through their lifestyle and work conditions, and the association between migration and poverty.

xx  Preface In the background of the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2012 Report studied data collected from South Asia and regions of the Gulf to disprove the possibility of large-scale return migration and decline in remittances in the immediate future. It specifically brought up Uttar Pradesh as the principal state of origin of Indian migration to the Gulf. The India Migration Report 2013 was on the social cost of migration. It categorised the main affected parties – namely women, children, and the elderly to assess psychological impacts faced due to separation and weighed them with monetary and other physical gains through migration. The volume highlighted the importance of understanding the social and psychological aspects faced by migrants and dependants for more efficient policymaking. Based on various case studies, the India Migration Report 2014 described diaspora as a philanthropic formulation, as it contributed dramatically to fundamental institutional developments among the local population. Moreover, the result of a paradigm shift wherein student migrants return to the homeland after being appropriately skilled emphasised the concept of “brain gain” as opposed to the perception of “brain drain”. The report also drew attention to the central functioning of diaspora in its pragmatic sense, signifying the positive aspects that lead to the development of the home country. The India Migration Report 2015 investigated challenges faced by women migrants in an apparently monolithic history of patriarchal policy environment. The report engaged in empirical and theoretical issues in the labour recruitment policies of India and other GCC countries. Overall, the report reveals the plight of women as subordinate in the context of migration. The India Migration Report 2016 discussed migration to the Persian Gulf region. This volume looked at contemporary labour recruitment and policy, both in India and in the GCC countries. Additionally, it explored gender issues in migration to the Gulf countries and brought together the latest field data on migrants across states in India and Gulf. The India Migration Report 2017 built on the concept of “forced migration” as a scourge. The report asserted the facade of urbanisation which displaced numerous people from their homes. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report supplemented the critical theory, with over 1.5 million people displaced due to development each year since 2000. The ninth volume, IMR 2018 is organised into 20 chapters. The first chapter is led by Ali Mehdi, Divya Chaudhry, Pallavi Joshi and Priyanka Tomar. The chapter identifies European Union (EU) as a favoured destination for the Indian population, largely focusing on

Preface xxi historic trends and further analysing the policies or challenges of movement within students and labour communities to migrate from India to the EU. Atul Kumar Tiwari, Dhananjay Ghei and Prerna Goel explore major social security agreements in practice, making an extensive assessment of bilateral treaties in order to identify security benefits and its totalisation of insurance periods which stands to avert dual contribution towards the homeland and destination. The chapter further inquires the key policies and highlights key outcomes, especially identifying the policies of circular migration of the skilled set of labourers willing to migrate to other countries. Binod Khadria draws upon modelling of Blue Card scheme in Europe, and as to how it complements other immigration policies across the globe, attracting highly skilled workers from countries like India over the decade since its first pronouncement. S. Irudaya Rajan develops the theme of short-term travel visas. The chapter illustrates how emigrants and temporary visitors expand the scope of economy in terms of bilateral relations. Furthermore, the chapter devotes to analyse the dire situation of revising visa facilitation programmes and abetments that partly enable a collective bilateral relation, both in India and the EU. Pauline Melin synthesises the social security rights of Indian migrants in Europe, scrutinising the characteristically oriented perspectives of the UK and Belgium. This chapter examines social security coordination between countries such as the UK and Belgium and the Indian social security system as they migrate to the UK or Belgium. Puja Guha, in Chapter 6, explicates the enlargement of the EU and Brexit as two major events that occurred in the European Union. The chapter analyses competition faced by Indian migrants in Europe by showing the patterns of Indian migration pre- and post-enlargement of the EU. The chapter also views migration pattern pre- and post-Brexit and particularly elaborates on labour migration from Gujarat to the UK. Ayona Bhattacharjee points to the demand put forth by the European commission and examine the current patterns in health professional mobility from India to the EU. The chapter also provides insights on frequent career choices of doctors and nurses preferring to move to the European market. The succeeding explorations help to understand the shift in the economic and political state of affairs as initiated by Brexit calls for revisiting the issue of labour mobility in healthcare. S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker, view in retrospect, the impact on the UK economy due to Brexit and calls attention to decreasing net

xxii  Preface immigration after Brexit. The chapter explains the results of empirical analyses on multiple points of impact and also narrates the labour and international student migration. Finally, this chapter gives a view of Indian student migration to the UK. Alexander Hoogenboom studies the growth of English language programmes across Europe wherein Brexit and immigration policies in the US stand liable to the substantial growth of the same. The chapter combines legalities of education in the EU for international students in the light of these developments. Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria explore the themes of shift of healthcare workers from developing countries to developed countries due to ageing populations and decline in indigenous workforce, which strengthen international migration in the healthcare sector. Despite these factors, developed countries confine the inflow of foreign workers through stringent immigration and visa regulations. The chapter studies this contrast and analyses migration trends with respect to this anomaly. In Chapter 11, Barbara Bertolani theorises major distinctive features of Indian migration to Italy. In particular, the essay elaborates numbers, places of settlement, and productive sectors of Indians, in order to determine the depth of economic integration. Further, it shows the trajectory of migration from India to Italy, identifying its origins since the late 1970s and subsequent arrivals, along with familial reunions since the late 1980s. Later, the chapter discusses the effects of severe economic crisis in Italy that led to the shift of families to India and also, their migration to other English-speaking nations. Simultaneously, it focuses upon the dynamics of progressive rooting, acquisition of visibility and religious institutionalisation on Italian territory of Sikhs, Hindus, Ravidasias and other minorities. Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano document international trafficking of Sikhs from Punjab to the province of Latina (Italy). The chapter further examines relations of international trafficking among humans and the exploitation of migrants in the workforce and illegal labour brokerage in particular. The authors offer chief elements of international trafficking with reference to the Punjabi workforce and other related social and economic plights. Gunjan Sondhi, Parvati Raghuram, Clem Herman and Esther Ruiz Ben identify various trajectories of highly skilled Indian female migrants employed amid the male-dominated IT sectors, both in India and the UK. The paper scrutinises gender norms within workplaces in both the UK and India and particularly focus upon feminist aspects based in IT sectors in the UK.

Preface xxiii Shahana Purveen explores issues of identity and “Indianness” among migrants of Indian origin in the tightly knit university town of Oxford. Using interviews and observation methods, the author develops the idea of being Indian when abroad and shows how language, caste and religious differences that are pronounced in India tend to fade away among migrant communities. Tilotama Pradhan, in Chapter 15, demarcates transnational attachments as an autonomous subject, the developing of conscious or unconscious minds that signify personal experiences of student migrants with a sense of cultural orientation. The author also reflects upon what may be understood as “home culture”. Christine Moliner highlights how current migration policies of Europe affect labour migration from India. It further analyses varied aspects of how migrants are affected in terms of social mobility and economic integration, along with their health and wellbeing. Shoba Arun discusses the unpredictable nature of the lives of skilled migrant workers when it comes to job security and worker-citizen relationships. The author investigates the widening between labour market and work practices that is fostered by a burgeoning anti-immigration climate in the UK. Irudaya Rajan, Chitra Ranganathan and Sreelakshmi Ramachandran using data on 300 male migrants from Tamil Nadu who reside in the UAE monitor aspects of employment, livelihood, and wellbeing. The authors report on topics such as mental trauma, social life and economic mobility. This chapter investigates how Tamilians are pushed towards what may be considered the lowest stratum of the Gulf’s social structure. S. Irudaya Rajan and K. C. Zachariah assess the impact of migration on fertility of Kerala. The authors comment that migrant households have early child-bearing behaviour and an over-representation of girl children. Finally, the authors emphasise the fact that migration alone cannot determine demographic transformation and other proximate determinants such as religion, age, education and employment are also factors in fertility. S Amuthan, in the concluding chapter, provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of the impact on the Tamil Nadu economy due to out-migration from households. The IMR 2019 will focus on Indian diaspora in Europe. The IMR 2020 will examine refugees in India, while the IMR 2021 will address issues on the health of migrants. S. Irudaya Rajan

Acknowledgements

Over the past nine years, the India Migration Reports (IMR) have received overwhelming support and global recognition from readers that include development practitioners, policymakers, researchers as well as activists, and have emerged as prime reference works in the field. I take this opportunity to thank all contributors who have helped make every report in the series a must-read. In particular, I thank all the contributors who have made IMR 2018 a stimulating and thought-provoking collection of articles on European immigration. The series was conceived in 2008 and commenced in 2010, after the erstwhile Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) established the Research Unit on International Migration (RUIM) at the Centre for Development Studies in 2006. I express my gratitude to all the secretaries at the MOIA, and in particular, to S. Krishna Kumar, K. Mohandas and Dr A. Didar Singh for their backing and guidance throughout the life of RUIM at CDS between 2006 and 2016. At CDS, I thank K.M. Chandrasekhar, Chairman; Sunil Mani, Director; Suresh Kumar, Registrar; V. Sriram, Librarian; and S. Suresh, Finance Officer, along with my colleagues, students, administrative and library staff for their encouragement and wishes in all my academic endeavours. Over the span of the last eight reports, the earlier directors K.N. Nair, Pulapre Balakrishnan and Amit Shovon Ray; and Chairpersons N. R. Madhava Menon and Bimal Jalan have provided all necessary academic support to make the series a success. I also thank my own research team members – S. Sunitha, K. S. Sreeja, Nikhil Panicker, Sidharth Rony, Sayed Migdad and Sreelakshmi Ramachandran – who were indispensable in putting this report together.

Acknowledgements xxv Likewise, I am grateful for the emotional support, patience and understanding I have received from my wife Hema and our three children – Rahul, Rohit and Mary Catharine. Last but not least, I would like to put on record my appreciation for the hard work of the editorial and sales teams of Routledge in bringing this report out on time. S. Irudaya Rajan

1 The European Union as a preferred destination for Indian migrants? Prospects, patterns, policies and challenges Ali Mehdi, Divya Chaudhry, Pallavi Joshi and Priyanka Tomar The European Union (EU) has been of special economic significance for India. Trade between the two sides grew exponentially since 2002 and peaked in 2011, with the balance of trade occasionally being in India’s favour, repeatedly since 2013 (Figure 1.1). In 2016, while India was EU’s ninth largest trading partner and source of imports – accounting for 2.2 percent and 2.3 percent of EU’s total trade and imports respectively – the EU has been India’s largest trading partner – accounting for 14 percent of India’s total trade and 18 percent of its exports. Given the scope of this chapter, we cannot delve into the details of their trade further, but there is another aspect – movement of people – in which these partners stand to economically complement each other, and which also holds the potential to boost trade between them. This chapter reviews patterns, policies and some of the major challenges related to India to EU mobility in general, that of labour and students in particular. Since this chapter is part of India Migration Report 2018, it focuses only on India to EU mobility, and not vice versa. Since a number of major policies/agreements are either recent or under discussion, we do not yet know well what their impacts will be – we have tried our best to highlight certain areas of concern. India’s National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015 talks about identifying countries with skilled labour shortages and developing Human Resource Mobility Partnerships with them to address their shortages with the surplus Indian labour force. The EU is one such region, and the two sides endorsed a Common Agenda for Migration and Mobility (CAMM) at EU-India Summit on 30 March 2016. Figure 1.2 shows that India gained an early advantage over the EU in terms of the size of the prime workforce

Balance of trade

Source: Direction of Trade Statistics (DoTS), International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Figure 1.1 India–EU trade flows and balance (USD millions), 1990–2016

0

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EU-28 (n)

1990 India (n)

2010 EU (%)

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0

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Source: World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision (medium variant), United Nations Population Division (UN 2017). Note: EU-28 nations include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Figure 1.2 Prime workforce (25–49 years), in thousands (n) and as percentage of total population (%), EU-28 and India, 1950–2040

0

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Source: Bilateral remittance estimates for 2016 (Oct 2017 revision), The World Bank.

Figure 1.3 Remittances received by India from major source countries, 2016

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2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

0

5

10

15

20

25

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 5 (25–49 years), while its prime workforce as a percentage of its total population surpassed that of the EU in 2015, with the EU’s situation poised to worsen and that of India improve over the decades. While ‘high-skill immigration from India to mainland Europe is a rather recent phenomenon’ (Tejada et al. 2014), the future could be bright if both sides are able to develop mutually beneficial collaborative and governance mechanisms relating to mobility and migration. From India’s perspective, improved labour migration to the EU will not only mean a highly lucrative and attractive source of jobs for the highly aspirational and skilled Indian labour force – which is a major concern for Indian policymakers given the state of job creation within the country – but also improved trade with the EU and higher remittances to support its growth and development. India is already the world’s largest recipient of international remittances, but the EU has so far not played a prominent role as a source (Figure 1.3). However, with EU’s need of highly skilled labour migration, the prospect of qualitatively higher inflows from the EU vis-à-vis Gulf countries – where it’s largely the un- and semi-skilled migrants from India going – is too alluring to be neglected. Labour as well as student mobility is the other aspect where the EU holds special economic significance for India and Indian policymakers should work proactively for it, especially with crises in the Gulf and the US.

Patterns of India–EU migration According to the International Migration Report 2015, Indian diaspora was the largest in the world, at 16 million in 2015 (UN 2016). Unlike other countries with large diasporas, it is fairly dispersed, as evident from Figure 1.4. The share of EU-28 was the fourth highest, but only 8 percent, indicating the scope for more Indian migrants in that part of the world, especially the highly skilled, and also as a destination for Indian students aspiring for international higher education and skills. However, it also needs to be mentioned that the stock of Indian migrants in EU-28 has gone up by 136 percent over a quarter of a century – from 504,856 in 1990 to 1,193,148 in 2015 (UN 2016; UNDP 2015). Figure 1.5 tells us how they are distributed in the EU-28. For historical (colonial past), linguistic (English) as well as other reasons, the United Kingdom has a disproportionately higher percentage of migrants from India. However, while the number of Indian migrants in the UK continuously increased, from 399,526 in 1990 to 776,603 in 2015, its share of Indian migrants as a percentage of Indian migrants in the EU-28 was also continuously on the decline,

West Asia 53%

North America 17%

Other regions 3% Australia and New Zealand 3%

South Asia 16% EU-28 8%

Figure 1.4 Indian migrants by region of destination, 2015 Source: United Nations Population Division: The 2015 revision (UN 2016; UNDP 2015).

Germany 6%

France 4%

Spain 3%

Italy 11%

Others 11%

UK 65%

Figure 1.5 Top five EU countries with the highest stock of Indian migrants, 2015 Source: UN (2016).

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 7 from 79 percent in 1990 to 65 percent in 2015, which means Indian migrants have increasingly gone to other countries in the EU. One such noteworthy case is Italy, where the stock of Indian migrants went up from a mere 3,413 in 1990 to 136,403 in 2015. According to one explanation, this rise is, at least to some degree, due to the regularisation of formerly illegal Indian migrants in Italy, mostly from Punjab, working on agricultural and dairy farms.1 Italy also issued the second highest number of work permits (11,000) to Indians in unskilled and low-skilled foreign labourer category (OECD International Migration Outlook 2013). Between 2008 and 2015, a total of 22,298 Indians were granted citizenship by Italian government (Eurostat). In terms of first permits issued to Indians by EU-28 countries for a duration of 12 months or more, Figure 1.6 shows that permits issued to Indians peaked in 2010, but faltered thereafter. Since the UK was the top issuing country, followed by Italy, changes in their issuing patterns affected the overall EU-28 trends. The UK alone had issued 69.6 percent of the total EU-28 first permits for 12 months or more in 2008, which went up to 80.8 percent in 2011, declining to 54.1 percent in 2014, only to go up to 66.9 percent by 2016. Italy, on the other hand, recorded a downward spiral from 11 percent in 2008 to 4.1 percent in 2012, followed by a rise to 6.8 percent in 2014, but again going down to 2.9 percent in 2016. Italy’s 2016 position is the reason why it does not figure in any list in Table 1.1. Before we move on, it is interesting to note that while the issuance of first permits did not go up much in 2016 vis-à-vis the 2008 figures (merely by 5,187), the percentage of first permits issued for remunerated activities as percentage of total first permits issued to Indian citizens went up from 9 percent to 13 percent, even as comparative figures for education were 9 to 5 percent. In terms of numbers, however, first permits issued for both had declined – from 46,457 to 32,943 and 30,786 to 20,558 for remunerated activities and education respectively between 2008 and 2016. Once again, as we can see in Table 1.1, the UK was the main culprit for this overall decline, while all other EU-28 countries among the top five increased their issuances dramatically in both the categories. In the context of Brexit, the EU’s economic significance for India will be defined by India’s relations with EU-28 minus the UK, and therefore this may appear as an acceptable trend from the perspective of EU and India-EU relations. However, India will have to separately deal with the UK to ensure that the downward spiral is reversed as the UK has been India’s biggest economic partner in Europe, while simultaneously ensuring that the trend of India-EU trade and mobility are strengthened independently.

Education (n)

Remunerated activities (n)

EU total (%)

Source: Eurostat.

Figure 1.6 First permits (12 months or over) issued to Indian citizens by EU-28

Total (n)

EU education (%)

EU RA (%)

0

0

2016

2

20,000 2015

4

40,000

2014

6

60,000

2013

8

80,000

2012

10

100,000

2011

12

120,000

2010

14

140,000

2009

16

160,000

2008

18

180,000

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 9 Table 1.1 Top five EU-28 countries which issued first permits (12 months or over) to Indian citizens for education and remunerated activities Education Countries UK Germany France Netherlands Sweden Other EU–28

Remunerated activities 2008 88.2 3.4 1.9 0.0 0.9 5.6

2016 67.0 9.3 8.4 4.0 3.3 8.1

Countries UK Germany Netherlands Sweden Denmark Other EU–28

2008 65.3 5.2 0.0 3.0 4.2 22.3

2016 47.5 9.9 9.9 6.4 4.9 21.4

Source: Eurostat.

Let us now review EU policies as well as specific India-EU agreements for the facilitation of labour and student mobility as well as general and specific challenges, which both sides need to take stock of with an eye on improved mobility and migration for their mutual economic benefit.

Policies facilitating labour mobility between the EU and third countries2 Following the 2008 economic crisis, EU Member States (MS) recognised the need to reorient their economies further from traditional industry-based to stronger knowledge economies. In addition to developing new skills and competences among their own domestic workforces through reforms in national education and training systems, legal migration was seen as one of the potential ways to further strengthen their ‘knowledge society’ (EMN 2011). While working agepopulations have declined in the MS on the one hand, there is high unemployment as well as skills mismatch on the other. At the European level, at high-skill levels, there are shortages of information and communication technology (ICT), science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals as well as for nurses, midwives and teachers. At the intermediate-skill levels, there is need for migrants to works as cooks, welders and truck drivers (CEDEFOP 2016). A reflection of this mismatch can also be seen in employment growth projections in Figure 1.7. Country-/sector-specific shortages are: ICT (France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom), healthcare (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, United Kingdom), academia (Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Spain), financial services (France, Ireland, Malta) and engineering (Austria,

0.90 0.98

Construction

Education

7.63 7.83 7.97

Finance & insurance

Health & social care

ICT services

Source: European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP).

Figure 1.7 Employment growth (%) in the EU by sectors, 2015–2025

Professional services

Administrative services

7.21

5.52

4.07

Arts & recreation

Accommodation & food

Wholesale & retail trade

0.46

-3.92

Transport & storage

-3.92

Public sector & defence

-6.78

-8.90

Manufacturing

Water and waste treatment

Energy supply services

Agriculture, forestry & fishing -15.86

Mining & quarrying -16.68

12.72 16.30

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 11 Germany, Spain, Ireland), as indicated by CEDEFOP (2016). In the wake of the skills mismatch in the domestic workforce as well as declining working age-populations across the MS, satisfying labour demand through migration, both intra-EU and from third countries, is part of the EU’s policy agenda. Indian migrants have a clear advantage in filling skill gaps in ICT as well as healthcare services. In recent years, following the refugee crisis, there have been political concerns towards maintaining balance between attracting migrantswith desired skills and education for addressing economic and labour market needs and ensuring welfare of domestic populations. In this regard, the EU has adopted a more proactive and comprehensive framework combining elements of migration policy, external relations and developmental policy. In 2005, Global Agenda on Migration and Mobility (GAMM) was adopted, which included non-binding bilateral cooperation frameworks: Mobility Partnerships (MPs)3 and Common Agendas for Migration and Mobility (CAMMs). Managing labour mobility has been an important element of both. Further, European Commission has undertaken initiatives in the form of directives that lay down legal bases to facilitate mobility of highly skilled migrants, intra-corporate transferees, seasonal workers, etc. (see Table 1.2). Table 1.2 EU legislations facilitaing labour mobility Legislation

Legal basis

Details

Articles 79 and 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)

Immigration policy

Schegen aquis Regulation (EC) No 539/2001, Regulation (EU) 2016/399, Regulation (EC) No 767/2008, Regulation (EC) No 810/2009

Schengen borders code and visa

Regulation of entry and residence conditions, including long–term residence permits and family–reunification, as well as of the rights of third– country nationals legally resident in the EU Rules governing the movement of persons across borders 

(Continued)

Table 1.2 (Continued) Legislation

Legal basis

Details

Directive 2003/86/EC

Right to family– reunification

Directive 2003/109/EC

Long–term residents

Directive 2009/50/EC

EU Blue Card Scheme

Directive 2009/52/EC

Employer sanctions

Directive 2011/98/EU

Combined work and residence permit

Specific provisions on family unity for the beneficiaries of international protection Directive faciliates grant of long–term resident status. by EU Member States, to non–EU nationals, who have resided legally and continuously within the territory of a Member State for five years Directive provides conditions of entry and residence of third–country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment Directive provides minimum standards on sanctions and measures to be applied in Member States against employers of illegally resident third– country nationals Directive provides single application procedure leading to a combined title encompassing both residence and work permits within a single administrative act will contribute to simplifying and harmonising the rules currently applicable in Member States

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 13 Legislation

Legal basis

Details

Directive 2014/36/EU

Seasonal workers

Directive 2014/66/EU

Intra–corporate transferees

Directive 2014/67/EU

Posted workers

Directive provides conditions of entry and residence for non–EU citizens wishing to work in an EU Member State for short periods – a maximum period of between 5 and 9 months, depending on the Member State – as seasonal workers Directive provides a single application for a combined work and residence permit valid for up to three years, and provides for equal treatment with nationals of the host Member States with regard to social security Directive rights of undertakings to provide services in another Member State, to which they may post their own workers temporarily in order to provide those services there

Source: Authors’ compilation from EU’s website.

Interestingly, implementing migration policies, granting work permits and transposing the above directives into legislation falls under the competence of individual MS. Therefore, while Schengen visa facilitates short business visits to Schengen region, work permits are as per the legislation of individual MS. Hence, even though the directives streamline the policies to some extent, there may be differences among MS vis-à-vis enforcement strategies governing labour mobility. For instance, as per domestic labour market needs, MS adopt the

14  Ali Mehdi, et al. following mix of approaches that are managed and implemented by institutional bodies, employers and occupational organisations (EMN 2013): 1 drawing up occupation lists where labour shortages exist Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, the UK 2 analysing needs of labour market through employers needs analysis Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden 3 setting up of quotas and limits Austria, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Norway, the UK India-EU labour mobility Since the signing of cooperation agreement of 1994, India-EU relations have expanded to include more areas of cooperation through deliberations at annual summits and meetings at ministerial, senior officials and expert levels. These efforts were further strengthened in 2006 when both partners entered into a strategic partnership for addressing topics of international concern in the context of increasing global interconnectedness. As regards managing migration and mobility, though India-EU mobility is currently concentrated to few MS, complementarities in demographic profiles and skill-sets hold opportunities that can benefit other MS as well. With this view, India-EU “High Level Dialogue on Migration and Mobility” was launched under the framework of GAMM. Since then, with the aim of enhancing the issuance of visas, fair recruitment practices, equal treatment as well as access and portability of benefits for migrant workers, etc., India and the EU MS have signed several bilateral and multilateral agreements inter alia for facilitating labour mobility. These include negotiations on free-trade agreements (broad-based Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement or BTIA), social security agreements, labour mobility partnerships, institutional engagements, etc.4 However, while the policy dialogues have recognised merits of well-managed migration, the movement of people has been largely limited to enhanced cooperation on delivery of consular and visa services (Oliveira and Mayer 2017).

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 15 A reflection of this can be seen in the number of first permits issued to Indian citizens for remunerative activities in EU. There has been a decline in first permits issued to Indian citizens for remunerative activities, as was mentioned above. As stated, this decline is mainly due to reduction in first permits issued by UK and Italy. Particularly in the case of Italy,5 due to high unemployment rates caused by the economic crisis, the government is making efforts to absorb the existing pool of migrant workers before issuing more permits. Also, Italy now provides a preferential quota for third-country nationals (TCNs) from countries, including mostly neighbouring ones like Republic of Moldova, Morocco and Egypt, with which bilateral agreements have been concluded to regulate entry flows for reasons of employment (EMN 2013). As for UK, the complex Tier 2 visa process has been cited as a major reason for the decline in applications and grant of work permits. In order to build a more comprehensive approach of enhancing well-managed migration as a whole, including organised labour mobility, India and EU (and member states) signed the CAMM in 2016. CAMM, however, can only be seen as a roadmap, and India and EU MS will have to engage at a bilateral level. As the way forward, a number of issues related to the movement of both high- and semi-skilled labour need to be addressed to make the ongoing dialogue successful: 1 One of the most important factors in enhancing labour mobility is streamlining and enhancing issuance of work permits. In this regard, a series of legal instruments have been introduced. However, their full impact is yet to be realised due to two reasons: a) some are recently introduced (viz. directives for seasonal workers, intra-corporate transferees and posted workers), b) some involve implementational challenges. For instance, the Blue Card Directive and Single Permit were introduced in 2009 and 2011 respectively in order to facilitate permanent residence and assist in attracting highly skilled workers. However, only a limited number of Blue Cards were issued than expected due to factors such as restrictive admission conditions to the whole European labour market, high salary thresholds, parallel rules and schemes across MS, etc.6 To mitigate this, the European Commission is making efforts to revamp the schemes, with more harmonised conditions, procedures and rights, which is likely to impact future labour mobility from India to EU MS. 2 Second, movement of natural persons under Mode 47 mobility is still a ‘sticky point’ under the negotiations of BTIA. This may be due to the fact that India-EU movement of people has remained

16  Ali Mehdi, et al. more of an immigration issue, with little recognition of its linkages with the trade of services. Additionally, the enforcement of Mode 4 obligations is a prerogative of EU MS, who are conservative as far as duration of stay is concerned. As per Mukherjee and Goyal (2013), India has offered more liberal commitment vis-à-vis the EU with respect to duration of stay to different categories of service suppliers (viz. business visitors, intra-corporate transferees, independent professionals and contractual service suppliers). A more effective visa issuance regimen with long-term validity was also highlighted as one of the recommendations of CAMM. 3 Further, there are differences among MS with respect to recognition of professional qualification for regulated professionals like architects, lawyers, etc. For instance, a primary survey of engineering and architecture Indian and EU companies revealed that the movement of people would increase if there was mutual recognition of engineering and architecture education and qualifications. Due to lack of recognition, Indian designs often have to be signed and vetted by someone based in an EU MS (ibid). While Council Directive 2005/36/EC (Professional Qualifications) lays down the legal basis for the recognition of qualifications for regulated professions and is applicable to EU citizens, TCNs are dependent on other secondary legislations, as listed in Table 1.2 (Lavinia 2016). 4 A more broad-based yet critical issue for India is maintenance and regular publication of labour migration data. This will help strengthen its legal and administrative capacity to monitor labour migration and mobility. Overall, there is a need to strengthen institutional mechanisms to manage labour mobility between India and EU MS with a clear focus on addressing both high-skilled and semi-skilled labour. CAMM, negotiations on BTIA, stronger implementation of Directives and signing of labour mobility partnerships may further strengthen these linkages.

Policies facilitating student mobility between third countries and EU Promoting the mobility of TCNs to the EU has been a crucial part of its education policy since 1994. Major reforms started with the Bologna Process in 1999, an agreement signed between EU MS to ensure student mobility within the EU and promote the attractiveness of education in the EU for non-EU nationals. With the objective of improving the EU’s competitiveness in higher education after the Bologna Process, EU MS tried to promote international student mobility

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 17 (ISM) through a wide range of initiatives, including bilateral agreements between countries involving general policy dialogues, student exchanges, workshops and conferences, research grants and scholarships, joint consortia projects, etc. Admission of non-EU students in EU MS for studies, exchange, unremunerated training and voluntary services is governed by Council Directive 2004/114. However, implementation of these policies is the prerogative of ministries and departments in the individual MS, influenced by their respective policies in education, employment, migration as well as home and foreign affairs. Table 1.3 presents a list of recent Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) and Joint Declarations of Intent (JDIs) between India and select EU MS for student mobility in higher education. The UK’s approaches and policies for international students are significantly different from the rest of the EU.8 The UK has followed more competitive approach for attracting international students, largely focusing upon degree-seeking student circulation (vertical mobility). Historically, the emphasis of other EU MS has been on promoting Table 1.3 Student mobility agreements between India and select EU MS Country

MoUs/JDIs

 Signed

UK

Joint statement between Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS), UK MoU between MHRD and DBIS A framework for UK–India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) (2016–21) MoU between MHRD and Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany for cooperation in the field of higher education JDI between MHRD and the Federal Foreign Office regarding the promotion of German as a Foreign Language in India and promotion of Modern Indian Languages in Germany Exchange Programme between India and France on cooperation in the field of education

New Delhi, 13 Nov2014

Germany

France

Source: MHRD website.

New Delhi and London, 7 Apr and 18 Mar 2015 Berlin, 11 Apr 2013

New Delhi, 5 Oct 2015

New Delhi, 15 Feb 2007

18  Ali Mehdi, et al. subsidised programs – enhancing student exchange and credit mobility (short-term horizontal mobility) (Wit 2012). Additionally, countries like the UK, France and Germany have also benefitted because of their historical and colonial ties with the rest of the world. With Europe’s declining working-age population, internationalisation of higher education is also perceived as part of their broader economic and labour market reforms. Member states are increasingly focusing on incentivising international students for higher education in the EU, with an objective of assimilating them into their labour markets subsequently. What better way to fill their skill gaps by absorbing people in their labour markets educated and trained in their own universities and well-familiar with their cultures and working styles? This has not been one of the central focus of EU MS vis-à-vis attracting foreign students, but should be considered by them. In other words, there has to be greater convergence between their labour and student mobility facilitation strategies. Trends and factors affecting student mobility between India and the EU Promoting student mobility is a win-win situation for both India and the EU. According to OECD estimates, India, accounting for 9 percent of all mobile masters and doctoral students, is the second most important source country of internationally mobile students after China, which accounted for 22 percent of all mobile masters and doctoral students in 2014.9 Data on ISM for tertiary education shows that the US alone hosted 44 percent of Indian mobile students abroad, followed by Australia (15 percent), the UK (8 percent), New Zealand (6 percent) and Canada (5 percent) (Figure 1.8). The EU needs to do more to attract Indian students, because major EU countries like the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands together only have 14 percent of Indian mobile students abroad (UNESCO 2014–15). However, unavailability of a comprehensive annual database at international level, and complete lack of any sort of database in India on ISM makes it a daunting task to further analyse trends of student mobility between India and other countries. In order to further promote student mobility between India and EU as part of CAMM, it becomes extremely crucial to identify and address some of the major factors that hinder well-managed mobility/ exchange of students and researchers between the two regions.

Number of Indian students abroad

as % mobile Indian students abroad

Source: UNESCO.

Figure 1.8 Flow of tertiary level students from India to major destination countries, 2014–2015

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

20  Ali Mehdi, et al. 1 Cost of education and availability of scholarships are major factors that influence student mobility across the globe. Mobility is a central component in the EU’s Erasmus Mundus programs – 10each joint degree programme is offered by a consortium of at least three higher educational institutions and students are expected to live in at least two countries. India is the largest beneficiary of Erasmus Mundus scholarships – approximately 5,000 Indian students have received the scholarship between 2004 and 2016, which however is not a big number in absolute terms.11 In 2016, India, with 63 scholarships, became the second largest recipient of these scholarships. Apart from the Erasmus Programme, individual universities also offer scholarships to cover tuition fee, living expenses, health insurance, etc. Given the extensive network of public funded/state sponsored universities in Germany and Nordic countries, including Norway (which is not part of EU-28), either non-EU/-Schengen students have to pay minimal tuition fee or none at all. However, they are increasingly under pressure to raise their own revenue. For instance, a recent policy change suggests that non-EU students will have to pay a fee of 1,500 euros per semester at Baden-Württemberg universities in Germany from autumn 2017–18, a trend that might be soon followed by other universities in Germany as well. 2 Availability of programmes taught in English is one of the major factors that Indian students consider while seeking education abroad which becomes a major disadvantage for pursuing education in most EU MS vis-à-vis English-speaking countries like the UK, the US, Australia and Canada. However, in recent years, English-taught programs have significantly increased in Netherlands (12 universities in the top 1,000 offering 1,034 Englishtaught degrees), Germany (58 universities in the top 1,000 offering 835 English-taught degrees), Sweden (12 universities, 550 English-taught degrees), Denmark (7 universities, 482 English-taught degrees) and Spain (42 universities, 404 English-taught degrees).12 3 Apart from linguistic disadvantages, mobility of Indian students to EU is hindered by stringent visa policies and residence permit issues which are found to be more lengthy, cumbersome and at times issued for much shorter durations vis-a-vis other countries. Even within the EU, MS differ in terms of rules for issuing visas/ residence permits.13 A survey conducted by Erasmus Mundus Network (EMN) observed that average price for obtaining a visa is 30 percent higher for non-EU/-Schengen citizens vis-à-vis EU/ Schengen citizens. In terms of process, document requirements are much stricter and waiting time for obtaining visa much higher for

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 21 the former category.14 Moreover, average fee for a residence permit is found to be more than three times higher for non-EU/-Schengen citizens vis-à-vis EU/Schengen citizens.15 4 Another crucial factor that affects Indian student mobility is access to labour market during and after the study period. In accordance with Article 24 of the EU’s Directive 2016/801, every MS shall determine maximum duration (hours per week/days or months/year) for which students can work, although it should not be less than 15 hours per week (or equivalent in days/months) taking into account labour market situation of MS. In countries like Czech Republic and Sweden, access to labour market is not restricted at all (EMN 2012). In countries like Lithuania, while students are allowed to work for up to 20 hours per week, getting a work permit is difficult as the employer willing to hire a third-country international student needs to establish that they could not find their own/EU national with similar level of skills for the position (ibid.). In general, EU nationals are given priority over international students. On the other hand, Germany and France have liberalised policies for international students who are seeking employment there after studies. For instance, Germany introduced a legislation in 2012 which allows international students to stay back and look for jobs after their graduation for 18 months. But this is more on paper than in practice. France introduced two-year post-study work permit for Indian students in 2016,16 but it needs to be seen how it will actually work out.

The challenge of migrant integration in the EU Such challenges, as highlighted above, have made migrant integration in the EU difficult, leaving many migrants, including second-generation, in a confused state of mind, which is neither helpful economically or socially and culturally for the host EU MS. Migrant integration is a major determinant of labour and student mobility between origin and host countries. Willingness of the host society to accommodate migrants and migrants’ commitment to the receiving country are fundamental aspects of integration policies that seems to affect the nature (temporary/permanent) as well as level of migrant flows between countries. As challenges associated with migrant integration are somewhat similar for TCNs, this section outlines discussion of broader policies and issues confronting migrants in the EU, without going into specific integration experiences of Indians in EU MS, which is similar, though not always identical.

22  Ali Mehdi, et al. In 2015, the OECD reported that challenges related to integration of TCNs are far more serious than integration of migrants from within the EU. This is because in addition to complex legal barriers, TCN migrants face difficulties in getting their home-country educational qualifications recognised in EU labour markets. Although there is an increasing recognition of the fact that migrant workers are needed to offset challenges posed by an ageing population, and that fundamental rights of migrants must be valued, surveys and official findings demonstrate an alarming prevalence of discrimination, xenophobia and hate crimes against migrants across the EU (FRA 2016; Beutin et al. 2006; Eurobarometer Opinion Poll 1997). The level of perceived discrimination is particularly higher among TCNs, especially in Greece and Austria (OECD/EU 2015). It is however important to highlight that perceptions about being discriminated against may actually be flawed – migrants may not feel discriminated against even when discrimination is otherwise rampant or may have such perceptions even when a society is largely tolerant and fair, but given differences in cultural norms and attitudes. There is substantial evidence to show that discrimination against migrants is pervasive in labour markets in the UK, especially in the National Health Service (NHS), which has been an important employer of doctors and nurses from the Indian subcontinent (Batnitzky and McDowell 2011; Esmail 2007). Brexit, and the alarming rise in hate crime incidents in its aftermath, further signify that presence of migrant populations may instil economic and cultural insecurities among the natives. Citizenship acquisition/naturalisation, which has strong linkages to inculcating a sense of belonging to the host country is a costly and complex process,17 and often discourages TCNs to think of EU countries as secure destinations from the perspective of long-term migration. In fact, citizenship acquisition by TCNs has witnessed a decline in the recent past, from close to 90 percent of all acquisitions (723,000) in 2010 to 86 percent (727,200) in 2015. For Indians too, as a percentage of total TCNs, the rate of citizenship acquisition has dipped from 4.8 percent (34,776) in 2010 to 4.2 percent (30,983) in 2015.18 It is often reported that “civic” integration tests that are required for family reunion and long-term residence permits in MS like France, Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands are restrictive and demand that TCNs exhibit sufficient understanding of host country’s language, culture, history and values (Carrera and Weisbrock 2009). While this requirement is unequivocally considered as an “indispensable part of integration” in Common Basic Principles (CBPs) of migrant integration adopted by the EU in 2004, applicants who are economically

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 23 better-off, highly skilled and those who come from the West are often exempted from taking such tests. Let us delve into the historical background a little bit to understand the mismatch of expectations between migrants and host country governments and natives. Historical background Colonisation and decolonisation post-World War II (WWII) stimulated an exodus of workers from Asia and Africa to Europe. During two World Wars, immigrants were required to serve as soldiers and temporary labourers in armies of their European rulers. The collapse of colonial rule led former colonial rulers, people of mixed lineage and other minority groups to migrate to Europe. European nations also struggled to reconstruct their economies after WWII and invited migrants to address their post-war labour shortages. For instance, Germany’s gastarbeiters (guest workers), comprising largely of Turkish, Greek, Spanish and Italian migrants, were recruited to work in German mines and factories for a period of one or two years and then expected to return to their home countries. Even though millions of migrants and refugees came to the EU since the 1950s, the need to formulate a coherent integration policy was felt after the 1980s when, for the first time in history, the number of TCNs entering the continent exceeded the number of EU citizens going abroad. Moreover, since Europe had traditionally been a continent of temporary/ad-hoc migration, the process to develop a comprehensive integration policy for migrants did not gain momentum until recently. Consensus to develop a common EU-wide integration policy received impetus with the Tampere policies of 1999, which laid a foundation for providing “freedom and security” to all TCNs residing legally in the EU. The adoption of CBPs in 2004 – which covered vital aspects of integration such as making employment contribution of migrants visible, addressing educational needs of migrants and their descendants, facilitating frequent interaction between migrants and citizens, ensuring equal access to private and public services, etc. – further reaffirmed the EU’s moral commitment to TCNs. While implementation of integration policies is a function of national and subnational governments, these policies are closely associated with EU provisions that confer certain fundamental rights to TCNs residing in the EU. For instance, Directive 2000/43/EC guarantees racial and ethnic equality and Directive 2000/78/EC provides a framework for equal treatment and opportunities to all TCNs. Further, Article 79.4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (2012) reiterated the EU’s obligation

24  Ali Mehdi, et al. to support and incentivise integration measures undertaken by MS. Of late, however, the EU’s integration policy has almost exclusively focused on addressing challenges that have emanated from the ongoing refugee crisis. For instance, the 2016 EU Integration Action Plan of TCNs, despite its broader emphasis on comprehensive integration measures for all TCNs, is heavily focused on tackling problems being faced by refugee communities. Conceptual underpinnings In the sociological literature, efforts to understand the significance of the term “integration” or “integrated societies” have evolved historically. The popular theory of “citizenship-as-common rights”, advocated by TH Marshall, inspired some of the most compelling deliberations to homogenise heterogeneous societies. His theory was driven to improve the plight of the English working classes who were socially and economically backward and laid emphasis to including people in a ‘common culture’ to ensure ‘loyalty to a civilisation that is a common possession’. He suggested that granting citizenship rights would entitle all members to access healthcare and education services, which in turn would foster national integration and creation of a common identity (Marshall 1965: 101–102). Closely resembling the strategy of national integration proposed by Marshall, erstwhile immigrant integration policies were premised on the concept of ‘assimilation’ that requires all legal migrants/refugees to forego their natural cultural identity and acquire the identity of the recipient country. Extending citizenship rights to disadvantageous sections or promoting migrant integration through assimilation may, hence, be considered as a tool of nation-building, envisioned to promote a common national identity and culture (Kymlicka 2007). It is, however, important to note that despite possessing rights to access basic social services, citizens and migrants may continue to feel alienated due to inability to adapt and identify with mainstream culture and identity. Unlike assimilation, “multiculturalism” is based on reciprocity and requires natives of host country and migrants to show mutual respect for each other’s language, racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds. According to EU regulations, integration is defined ‘as a two-way process based on mutual rights and corresponding obligations of legally resident TCNs and the host society which provides for full participation of the immigrant’, or a ‘two-way process involving adaptation on the part of both the immigrant and of the host society’ (Commission of the European Communities 2003:17, 2000:19). Although the

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 25 EU-wide definition of integration is closer to principles of multiculturalism, there is a great degree of variation between policies of MS. For example, the objective of migrant integration policy in Sweden is to maintain and reinforce ‘respect for fundamental values such as human rights, democratic governance and equality between women and men’. Overall, it seeks to build a cohesive society where people with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds can live peacefully. On the other hand, Poland does not have a clear migrant integration policy and the Polish approach to deal with migrant issues is infamously known as ‘assimilation via abandonment’. In Portugal, the process of integration is considered complete when migrants ‘accept the language, laws and moral and cultural rights of the Portuguese nation’. In Germany, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has defined integration as a ‘long-term process’ for everyone ‘who lives in Germany on a permanent and legal basis’. While ‘immigrants should have the opportunity to participate fully in all areas of society on an equal footing’, their ‘responsibility is to learn German and respect and abide by the Constitution and its laws’. The UK, on the other hand, has been seen as lacking a clear integration policy to address cultural, education and other requirements of its migrants (Bijl and Verweij 2012: 35–36, 347). In conclusion, there is a clear dichotomy between EU-wide and member state policies on migrant integration. For most EU MS, the onus of integration lies predominantly on migrants. Second, it is important to understand that vehement or subtle hostility against migrants is most often the result of an underlying fear of losing jobs or insecurity with regard to disintegration of a common identity or culture. However, migrant workers, in most cases, are recruited to meet labour deficits in specific sectors and neither displace existing workers from jobs nor adversely impact domestic wage structures. As the demand for Indian and other TCNs, especially in high-skilled sectors in EU countries, will dramatically increase in the forthcoming years, strategies to manage native perceptions around economic and cultural insecurities should involve proactive steps, and not just policies, in order to promote respect for diverse cultures in host countries. Migration is mutually beneficial, and so has to be integration of migrants. Third, since national integration and migrant assimilation measures are only slightly helpful in promoting mutual respect and solidarity, and there is no systematic evidence to show that migrants who are ethnically rooted to their original culture pose a threat to the heritage of host country, immigrant integration strategies in the EU are bound to fail in their present form. Liberal democracies like Canada and Switzerland are classic examples of how government policies have helped more

26  Ali Mehdi, et al. than one culture to prosper. Last, but not least, it is worthwhile to reiterate that integration is a continuous process, both for migrants and host countries, and should, by no means, end with acquiring/granting citizenships.

Conclusions In the evolving global geopolitical environment, India and the EU have a great deal of potential in terms of trade and migration, as well as beyond. As far as the mobility of people is concerned, they have made noteworthy progress overtime, but there are a host of challenges – some of which have been highlighted in this chapter – which need to be taken into account and addressed to realise this mutual potential. From the perspective of this paper – although from the perspective of promoting the EU’s trade and mobility with India, Indian policymakers also need to do a lot in their turn – the EU as well as individual MS have an opportunity to fill gaps that Brexit poses in terms of the movement of labour and students from India. For this to happen, the EU will have to look beyond its traditional sources of labour and student mobility from its own vicinity. However, more generally, it will have to address a range of common challenges that third-country nationals living or aspiring to live face or anticipate. The first step is to acknowledge them – which, in itself, will be quite an achievement. Obviously, they would have to be addressed through appropriate mechanisms on the ground rather than through policies on paper. Very importantly, there has to be coherence in the EU’s migration and integration policies, followed by coherent operationalisation across institutions in the EU and MS.

Acknowledgements This chapter has been produced on the basis of research funded by the European Union through the ILO-ICMPD India-EU Cooperation Dialogue on Migration and Mobility. The contents of this chapter, however, are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either of the above-mentioned agencies or ICRIER’s.

Notes 1 Daniel Naujoks. 15/10/2009. ‘Emigration, Immigration, and Diaspora Relations in India’. Migration Policy Institute. www.migrationpolicy.org/ article/emigration-immigration-and-diaspora-relations-india/ (13/11/2017, 14:17 hours).

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 27 2 As per Council Directive 2003/109/EC, person who is not a citizen of the Union within the meaning of Article 17(1) of the Treaty. 3 MPs are mainly with neighbouring countries – Cape Verde, Republic of Maldova, Georgia, Armenia, Morocco, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Jordan and Belarus. CAMM with Ethiopia, Nigeria and India (https://ec.europa.eu/ home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/international-affairs/global-approachto-migration_en (11/11/2017, 11:13 hours). 4 As per information available with Ministry of External Affairs, India concluded social security agreements with Norway (2010), Denmark (2009), Luxembourg (2009), Netherlands (2009), Belgium (2006), French Republic (2008), Germany (2008), Hungary (2010), Czech Republic (2010), Sweden (2012), Finland (2012), Austria (2013), Portugal (2013), Comprehensive Social Security Agreement between India and Germany (2011). Also, there is only one Labor Mobility Partnership Agreement concluded, with Denmark, in 2009. 5 In Italy, a ‘long-term programme on immigration policy and foreigners on State territory’ is prepared every three years, to set the policies on immigration. Also, a quota for incoming migrants is set annually in the “Flows Decree” (EMN 2013: 4). Also see: Italy releases 2017 work permit quotas for non-EU nationals www.ey.com/gl/en/services/people-advisory-services/ hc-alert–italy-releases-2017-work-permit-quotas-for-non-eu-nationals (13/11/2017, 10:23 hours). 6 As per European Commission press release dated 7 June 2016, only 31 percent of the highly-educated migrants choose an EU destination out of all non-EU migrants coming to OECD countries. http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_MEMO-16-2071_en.htm (9/11/2017, 14:40 hours). 7 Under GATS, services can be traded internationally in four different ways: Mode 1: Cross-border supply (e.g. banking services transmitted via telecommunications or mail). Mode 2: Consumption abroad (e.g. tourist or patient). Mode 3: Commercial presence (e.g. domestic subsidiaries of foreign insurance companies or hotel chains). Mode 4: Presence of natural persons (e.g. students, doctors, teachers, etc.). 8 Transition in the UK’s policy for international students in 1980s is considered as a move from ‘aid to trade’, while for the rest of the EU, it is a move from ‘aid to cooperation and exchange’ (Wit 2012). 9 http://monitor.icef.com/2016/09/oecd-report-highlights-internationallymobile-students-advanced-higher-education/ (14/11/2017, 14:30 hours). 10 Erasmus Mundus (EM) is a cooperation and mobility programme of the European Commission in the field of higher education which aims at improving the quality of European higher education. Further, it aims promote dialogue and understanding between people and cultures through cooperation with third countries. Now, it is part of Erasmus + which is EU’s programme for support activities in the field of education, training, youth and sport. The programme covers a wide range of subjects including engineering, science, technology, mathematics and social sciences. 11 https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/india/26173/india-among-top-benefi ciaries-erasmus-mundus-2017-scholarships_en (8/11/2017, 17:26 hours). 12 www.mastersportal.eu/articles/1717/non-english-european-countrieswith-most-english-taught-degrees.html (14/11/2017, 16:24 hours).

28  Ali Mehdi, et al. 13 In general, residence permits in the EU are issued only if a student is planning to stay over three months, and for shorter durations Schengen visas (short-term visas) are issued. For specific Member States, kindly check EMN Synthesis Report – Immigration of international students to the EU (2012). 14 http://pjp-eu.coe.int/documents/1017981/1663184/201311_Execeutivesummary-Visas_StS1.pdf/376e38bd-2f14-4ac8-8ab7-b9f071bb4273 (14/11/2017, 14:30 hours). 15 Ibid. 16 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indians-can-now-extend-stayin-France-for-2-years-after-completing-studies/articleshow/46894811.cms (13/11/2017, 18:30 hours). 17 Migrant Integration Policy Index http://mipex.eu/access-nationality (12/11/2017, 9:15 hours). 18 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (12/11/2017, 14:30 hours).

References Batnitzky, Adina, and McDowell, Linda (2011). Migration, nursing, institutional discrimination and emotional/affective labor: Ethnicity and labor stratification in the UK national health service. Social & Cultural Geography 12 (2), pp. 181–201. Beutin, Ricklef, Canoy, Marcel, Horvath, Anna, Hubert, Agnes, Lerais, Frédéric, Smith, Peter, and Sochacki, Myriam (2006). Migration and public perception: Bureau of European policy advisers (BEPA). European Commission. Bijl, Rob, and Verweij, Arjen (Eds.) (2012). Measuring and monitoring immigrant integration in Europe. Integration policies and monitoring efforts in 17 European countries. The Hague: The Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP (SCP publication, 2012–8). Carrera, Sergio, and Weisbrock, Anja (2009). Civil integration of third-country nationals. Nationalism versus Europeanisation in the Common Immigration Policy. Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies. CEDEFOP. (2016). Briefing note: Skill shortage and surplus: Occupations in Europe, ISSN 1831–2411. Commission of the European Communities. (2000). Communication from the commission to the council and the European parliament. On a community immigration policy. COM (2000) 757, Brussels. Commission of the European Communities. (2003). Communication from the commission to the council, the European parliament, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions. On immigration, integration and employment. COM (2003) 336, Brussels. Esmail, Aneez (2007). Asian doctors in the NHS. Service and betrayal. British Journal of General Practice 57, pp. 827–834. Eurobarometer Opinion Poll. (1997). Racism and xenophobia in Europe. Opinion poll number 47.1, Luxembourg.

Preferred destination for Indian migrants? 29 European Migration Network.(2011). EMN synthesis report: Satisfying labor demand through migration. EMN. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/homeaffairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/networks/european_migration_ network/reports/docs/emn-studies/labor-demand/0b_emn_synthesis_report_ satisfying_labor_demand_final_version_august2011_en.pdf. Last accessed on November 10, 2017. European Migration Network.(2013). EMN inform: The application of quotas in EU member states as a measure for managing labor migration from third countries. EMN. Retrieved from http://emn.lt/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/13. EMN-Inform_Application-of-Quotas-in-EU-Member-States_2013-Sep.pdf. Last accessed on November 9, 2017. European Migration Network Study. (2012). Immigration of international students to the EU. European Migration Network, Home Affairs, European Commission. FRA. (2016). Current migration situation in the EU. Hate crime. Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Goyal, T.M., and Mukherjee, A. (2013). Movement of engineers and architects between India and EU. Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Working Paper No. 403. Retrieved from http://research.iimb.ernet.in/han dle/123456789/7940. Last accessed on November 11, 2017. Kymlicka, Will (2007). Contemporary political philosophy: An introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lavinia, K. (2016). Exploring professional recognition in the EU: A legal perspective. Journal of International Mobility, pp. 43–58. Retrieved from www.cairn.info/revue-journal-of-international-mobility-2016-1-page-43. htm. Last accessed on November 13, 2017. Marshall, Thomas H. (1965). Class, citizenship and social development. New York: Anchor. Mukherjee, A., and Goyal, T. (2013). Examining mode 4 commitments in India and the EU’s agreements: Implication for the India-EU BTIA. Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Working Paper No. 396. Retrieved from https://iimb.ac.in/research/sites/default/files/WP%20No.%20396_0. pdf. Last accessed on November 11, 2017. OECD. (2013). International migration outlook 2013. Paris: OECD Publishing. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1787/migr_outlook-2013-en. Last accessed on November 13, 2017. OECD/EU (2015). Indicators of immigrant integration 2015. Settling in. Paris: OECD Publishing. Oliveira, T., and Mayer, F.P. (2017). Facilitating cooperation on migration and mobility between the European Union and India. Indigo Policy. Retrieved from https://indigoprojects.eu/object/document/252/attach/Facilitating_co operation_on_migration_and_mobility_between_the_European_Union_ and_India.pdf. Last accessed on November 10, 2017. Stuchlik, A., and Poptcheva, E.(2015). Third-country migration and European labor markets: Integrating foreigners. European Parliamentary Research

30  Ali Mehdi, et al. Service. Retrieved from www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/ 564389/EPRS_BRI(2015)564389_EN.pdf. Last accessed on November 10, 2017. Tejada, G., Bhattacharya, U., Khadria, B., and Kuptsch, C. (Eds.) (2014). Indian skilled migration and development: To Europe and back. New Delhi: Springer. Wit, Hans De. (2012). Student mobility between Europe and rest of the world: Trends, issues and challenges. Curaj, A. et al. (Eds.), European higher education at the crossroads: Between the Bologna process and national reforms. New York: Springer. UN. (2016). International migration report 2015. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations. UN. (2017). World population prospects: The 2017 revision. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations. UNDP. (2015). International migration report 2015. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations.

2 Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice Evidence from India’s SSA with countries in Europe Atul Kumar Tiwari, Dhananjay Ghei and Prerna Goel Introduction It is estimated that around 215 million people, constituting about 3 percent of the world’s population, living outside their country of origin, are engaged in the world economy (IOM, 2010). This transnational movement of people for employment or migration is, contrary to popular perception, not due to different levels of development but due to the economic development in a globalised world that tends to stimulate migration. It is in this background that we find transnational enterprises sending their skilled workers and professionals abroad to host countries as “posted or detached” workers1 who return to their countries of origin or home country after completing their assignment. India is one country where the migration rate of high-skilled workers has been higher than the total migration rate. One of the key factors influencing the international mobility and transnational movement of workers is the dual contribution of social security benefits in both the host and home country. It is in this context that totalisation arrangements assume significance. Consider a software engineer from India who is posted to Germany; social security agreement provides exemption from contribution to the German social security system during this period. Taking an estimated average monthly salary for the worker to be around USD 4,417,2 social security exemption of 10.85 percent translates into a monthly saving of about USD 480 each for the employer and the employee. Thus, social security agreements reduce the cost to employer, sending its employee abroad for work. Totalisation agreements come under the rubric of Social Security Agreements (SSAs, hereafter), which are the bilateral instruments (treaties) between two countries that allow provisions which prevent

32  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. dual contribution of social security, provide exportability of benefits to third-country, and totalisation. SSAs in India are of recent origin. The first agreement was operationalised with Belgium in 2009. Since then, India has signed agreements with 18 countries; 16 of them have been operationalised till June 2016. Therefore, it is important to study how SSAs have shaped the migration of workers, and the Indian social security system landscape. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: first, we investigate the provisions of social security agreements and address some areas of policy concern; second, we seek to understand the demographics of the workers who have utilised the agreements. We begin with a discussion on the social security agreements and the social security landscape in Section 2. We explore the rationale behind social security agreements, its principles and benefits associated with the agreements. We look at the existing framework of social security agreements that India has signed in Section 3. We do a qualitative analysis of the agreements and present the differences in the present agreements. Section 4 describes the data on the demographics of the people who have utilised the provisions of the agreements. We show that the agreements have been utilised mostly by workers in the age group of 25–45, and for duration of less than one year. Section 5 addresses key areas of policy concern in the field of social security agreements. Here we look at four areas: 1) dispute resolution mechanism, 2) detachment benefits, 3) totalisation procedure and 4) extending the scope of agreements.

Social security agreements “Social security” refers to State established programs that insure individuals against interruptions or loss of earning power arising from retirement, unemployment or disability. Protection of the insured person and dependents usually is extended through cash payments to replace at least a portion of the income lost as a result of old-age, sickness, death or any such event (ISSA, 2016). Social security programs across the world are, in general, financed using one of two systems – defined-contribution and defined-benefit. In a defined-contribution or ‘funded’ system, individuals make contributions to their accounts and upon eligibility, receive benefits from these same accounts. In a defined-benefit or Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) system, benefit amount is defined by the government and comes from contributions made by workers paying into the system currently.

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 33 Defined-contribution plans present less risk to the government and they are mostly seen in the developing nations while PAYG systems are more commonly seen in developed ones, though many countries do have hybrid systems as well (Population Reference Bureau, 2009). Indian social security system As compared to developed countries, the Indian social security system (as applicable to the formal sector) is poorly developed. ‘The best way to describe social security coverage in India is a patchwork. There is no such thing as one umbrella coverage for all workers in all sectors; and what happens in the formal sector is very different from the informal sector’ (ISSA, 2013). India is characterised by a large economy with a huge informal sector and low tax base thus impacting the ability of states to provide social security for all. The Indian social security system is governed by the Employees’ Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952 (PF Act) and the schemes made there under. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), a statutory body established by the government of India, administers the social security regulations in India. Every establishment in India, employing 20 or more persons is required to register with the social security authority if not an exempt establishment. An establishment employing less than 20 persons can voluntarily opt to register with the authorities for the welfare of its employees. Upon voluntary registration, the provisions of the Indian social security regulations apply in exactly the same way as if such registration were mandatory. The social security system (contribution-based) for formal workers that is overseen by the EPFO under different Acts consists of three streams: the Employee Provident Fund (EPF), Employee Pension Scheme (EPS) and the Employee Insurance Scheme. While the EPF is largely a defined-contribution scheme (that provides a lump-sum payment on retirement); the EPS is a defined-benefit scheme that pays a pension proportional to earnings at the time of retirement after a minimum 10 years of contribution. The schemes are partly financed by the contributions from the employer, employee and the government. As on 31 March 2016, EPFO covered 926,297 establishments with 171.41 million enrolled members (including 5,357,781 pensioners). Contributions collected in 2015–16 were USD 18,040 million, while total funds managed under the EPFO were USD 108,677.88 million, thus making it by far the largest pension fund in India.

34  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. Rationale behind SSAs One of the key instruments impacting “circular migration”3 or “posted/ detached” Workers4 is the SSA. It is because most of the developed countries, and India, have a mandatory social security system based on the contributions made by the employers and employees concerned. However, such a system poses three kinds of difficulties for the “posted/detached” workers. First, such contributions need to be made for a specified period before the benefits can be drawn. Since the “posted/detached” workers ordinarily leave host countries much before the stipulated period, they do not derive any benefits out of the contribution made. Second, the ‘posted/detached’ workers make double contributions: both in the home, and the host country. Third, in case of relocation to their countries of origin – even if they made contributions for stipulated period because of the host countries’ legislation they cannot export such benefits. It is here that the framework of SSA helps. SSAs are binding bilateral reciprocal instruments (treaties) between two nation states to overcome these obstacles in the manner described below: 1 Exemption from social security contribution for the ‘posted/ detached’ worker in the host country (provided the said worker is covered under the social security system of the home country, and continues to pay the contribution in the home country during the period of migration to the host country). Towards this, the said worker is required to obtain a Certificate of Coverage (CoC) from the social security institution of the home country, and submit it to the social security institution of the host country so as to be exempt from making contribution to the host country’s social security system for a certain period. 2 Exportability of benefits in case of relocation to home country, or any third-country, after having made the social security contribution in the host country. 3 Totalisation for the periods of contributions made in both host and home countries for the purpose of assessing eligibility for benefit/ pension under the legislation of each country. Thus, only such SSAs that have the component of totalisation within it, are, in common parlance, called the “Totalization Agreements”, which presupposes the existence of other elements that are described above. While the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recommends a rights-based approach to social security coverage, and its portability

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 35 in respect of migrant workers; the instrument of SSAs, by reducing the cost of employees not only makes companies more competitive but also protects the social security cover of such workers and thereby reduces the barriers to international mobility of skilled workers. In so far mobility of persons is necessary for flow of capital and goods under globalisation, our understanding of the efficacy of the instruments (like SSA) that aid the flow of labour as a factor of production would be crucial to understand the deepening of the process of globalisation. Cost savings One of the major benefits of SSA is reduced cost in terms of savings for employers and employees by removing dual contribution of the social security system. We estimate the savings of employers and employees by collecting data on the approximate average monthly salaries and exemption rate in different countries with which India has signed an SSA. Table 2.1 provides an estimate of the costs for different countries using the number of CoCs issued during this period. We use the monthly average salary for a software engineer from Payscale.com in that country as a proxy salary for Indian workers going to that country. Next, we calculate the number of CoCs issued using data from EPFO as an indicator or number of Indian workers who utilised the SSAs for work in the host country. Thus, total monthly exemption for employers’ equals the product of monthly salary, number of CoCs issued and the employers’ exemption rate. Similarly, we do the same calculations for employees. Table 2.1 shows a country level summary of the estimated monthly social security savings due to SSAs. Employers’ estimated monthly savings are calculated using the employers’ exemption rate with the total number of CoCs issued and average monthly salary. Similarly, employee exemption is estimated using the employee’s exemption rate. Next, we look at some indirect benefits of SSAs. In particular, we look at the linkages of migration with trade and social welfare. Trade and migration The process of globalisation is considered to have led to intensification of transnational movement of capital, goods, services and information. However, there is considerable evidence that supports the argument that gradual reductions in trade barriers – including barriers to migration, would yield huge benefits at little economic cost because labour mobility and infusion of new skills are essential to sustain economic

Total number of CoCs issued

(2) 33,657 2,723 398 11,096 531 1,579 3,763 132 11,181 1,434 9,674

Estimated average monthly salary (USD)

(1) 4,417 5,750 4,583 3,667 2,500 3,583 4,583 2,667 6,000 4,333 6,250

(3) 10.85 8.52 12.45 27.65 23.50 18.00 13.37 25.00 14.10 4.95 9.50

Employers’ exemption (%) (4) = (1)*(2)*(3) 16,128,715 2,319,996 227,109 11,249,495 311,963 1,018,455 2,305,935 88,000 999,126 307,593 5,743,938

Employers’ estimated monthly savings (USD)

10.85 1,704.00 14.89 12.39 18.50 5.70 7.00 6.50 8.20 4.95 0.00

(5)

Employee’s exemption (%)

Notes: 1. Average salary as per Payscale.com for a software engineer in that country. 2. Number of CoCs issued from 1 Oct 2008 to 31 Mar 2016 considered as per EPFO website. 3. Denmark’s social security contribution in absolute numbers. 4. The above savings do not consider the impact of tax benefit due to exemption from social security contribution.

Germany Denmark Luxembourg Netherlands Hungary Finland Sweden Czech Republic Norway Canada Australia

Country

Table 2.1 Social security savings

(6) 16,128,715 4,639,992 271,618 5,040,913 245,588 322,511 1,207,296 22,880 581,052 307,593 –

Employee’s estimated monthly savings (USD) (6) = (1)*(2)*(5)

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 37 growth in the context of expansion of global supply chains and production structures. An increase in migration from developing to highincome countries that accumulates to a three percent boost in the latter’s labour force (both skilled and unskilled) by 2025 might increase global income by approximately USD 700 billion year by 2025 (The World Bank and International Organisation for Migration, 2004). The extant literature on links between migration and trade broadly supports the hypothesis that both are being complementary but not without qualifications and not unambiguously. Barra et al. (2016) show a positive non-linear relationship between the extensive margin of trade and the proportion of migrants in the total population. Bruder (2004) establishes a substitutional link between trade and foreign labour force, while indicating no substantial impact of labour migration on trade and a significantly negative effect of trade volume on labour migration. Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk (2015), however, talk about how migrants spur exports, especially along the extensive product margin of trade and for differentiated products, but with no significant impact on imports. Starting with Gould (1994), there are many studies which analyse the empirical relation between trade and migration. For example, as Figure 2.1 shows, India’s bilateral trade with a cluster of four countries in the EU is positively correlated with the mobility of poster workers. However, in light of various estimation issues, estimating the SSA’s impact on migration by isolating it as a factor and its subsequent impact on trade is an even more rigorous exercise. It is not difficult to find why it is so. First, the global trade is affected not just by various tariffs, taxes, etc., but also by a slew of other factors. Same is true of migration. Secondly, even if all the variables and their relation to trade and migration are postulated, determining the effect of SSAs on trade through its impact on migration requires a considerable sample size, which, as of now, is not available. This is attributable to the fact that not much time has elapsed since the SSAs started becoming effective. Given such constraints, any empirical study on links between Indian SSAs and trade would be difficult to pursue. Hence for the near future, researchers may have to concentrate on analytical frameworks for studying the links between the two and wait for the SSAs to mature to have their frameworks empirically tested. Social welfare and migration Some of the provisions of SSAs like totalisation and portability of accrued benefits, and even the SSAs in general (in so far these facilitate

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

2009

2011

2012

2013

No. of CoCs issued to Indians migrang to the 4 countries

India's total trade with the 4 countries

2010

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

800000

700000

16000

Figure 2.1 India’s total trade with Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland versus CoCs issued

Million USD

900000

Number

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 39 legal migration by working on disincentives to migration), have positive impact on welfare of migrants, and the mobility of international workers. The circular migration facilitates transfer of skills and technology from host to home countries through the return of the posted workers to home country, besides increasing the remittance inflow (Koettl et al., 2006). Koettl et al. (2006) and Kapur (2005) argue that even though highly skilled migrant workers earn more compared to other classes of migrants, their propensity to remit back is much less compared to other classes. This behaviour arises from the fact that highly skilled migrant families are seldom in need of remittances; the workers themselves stay for longer durations abroad and very often reunite with their families in their host countries. Secondly, remittances are an endogenous function of society, since both their magnitude and efficacy in contributing to the overall welfare of the migrant’s origin society is a function of the general development conditions of the given society. Such a contingency on the efficacy of remittances implies that the scope for aiming and improving the developmental impact of remittances is limited (De Haas, 2007). But, this is not our concern in this essay, as it is a separate area of enquiry. Razin and Sadka (1999) show through an analytical framework that even when migrants are low-skilled and net beneficiaries of the welfare state, in a dynamic set up, all the age and income groups would be better off due to the arrival of migrants. This is so because the migrants help in paying the social security benefits to the current elderly while more than compensating for any other distortions that they may cause in the host country. Interestingly, such an analysis holds good especially for non-contributory benefits as well.

Existing framework International worker Taking note of outwardly mobile Indian workers as well as inwardly mobile foreign workers, paid salaries in excess of INR 6,500 per month, were outside the ambit of the EPF Act in India – and to level the playing field – a category of International Worker (IW) was created by a notification of EPFO on 1 October 2008. A foreign national qualifies as an IW if he/she is working for an establishment to which the Indian social security regulations apply, provided he/she is not declared as an “excluded employee”. If, however, the foreign national is from a country with whom India has a reciprocal SSA, then he/she

40  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. is “excluded” from application of Indian social security regulations (because he/she enjoys the status of detached worker as per the terms of the SSA). In addition, the salary limit above which these IW and their employers were not required to contribute to pension and provident fund was removed, and they were mandatorily required to make contributions towards pension and provident fund on his/her full salary, without any ceiling. When translated into the Indian currency at 12 percent each from the IW and his/her employer, the contributions turn out to be substantial. It prompted many countries to consider SSA with India, as is evidenced by a large number of SSAs that India entered into within a span of five years. It is another matter that for Indian workers qualifying as IW, it poses challenges that need to be addressed by the EPFO.5 Framework of SSAs While the social security coordination between countries, particularly within the European Union (EU) have been in existence for decades (Jorens, 2010), the first SSA between India and Belgium was made operational only on 1 September 2009 (MEA, 2006). India has, since then, signed SSAs with 18 countries, and 16 of these are effective as on June 2016 (see Table 2.2).

Table 2.2 Countries having SSAs with India Country

Signed

Operationalisation date

Belgium Germany Switzerland Denmark Luxembourg France Republic of Korea Netherlands Hungary Finland Sweden Czech Republic Norway Austria Canada Australia Japan Portugal

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

1 Sep 09 1 Oct 09 29 Jan 11 1 May 11 1 Jun 11 1 Jul 11 1 Nov 11 1 Dec 11 1 Apr 13 1 Aug 14 1 Aug 14 1 Sep 14 1 Jan 15 1 Jul 15 1 Aug 15 1 Jan 16 1 Oct 16 N/A

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 41 We may evaluate the Indian SSAs on four principles that are broadly agreed as laying the foundation of the SSA (Jorens, 2010): The principle of equality of treatment and reciprocity: the equality principles states that an individual who ordinarily resides in the territory of a Contracting State shall receive equal treatment with nationals of that Contracting State in the application of the legislation of that Contracting State. In other words, it means that the discrimination on grounds of nationality or the rules that either directly or indirectly favour their own nationals over other nationals are prohibited. We find that all the SSAs of India, except the SSA between India and Switzerland, have this principle.   In so far reciprocity is concerned, it mostly applies to benefits arising out of contributions made by the employer/employees on reciprocal basis. Thus, it does not cover non-contributory benefits as available in developed countries. The Indian schemes covered are 1) old-age and survivors’ pension for employed person, and 2) the permanent total disability pension for the employed person. These arrangements reflect the limited coverage and applicability of SSAs, pertaining to the characteristics of India. However, some countries cover non-contributory benefits also in the SSA (for example, health insurance applicable in the Indo-Switzerland and Indo-Norway SSA). Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Belgium and Norway have as their scope, other than 1) and 2), ‘the social security for employed persons’. However, the full impact of this clause requires further enquiry. The Indo-Belgium SSA also covers social security schemes for self-employed persons, along with the employed ones. 2 The detachment principles applied on emigrating workers: This enables exemption from payment of social security contributions in the host country (based on production of Certificate of Coverage or CoC) provided such payments are made in the home country. However, the duration for which a CoC is valid ranges from two years (Sweden) to six years (Switzerland). Further, the period for which the exemption period can be extended on mutual consultation also varies as also treatment of detachment to a third state (see Indo-German SSA). 3 The principles of portability of accrued benefits: The portability of accrued benefits (like pension) to the home country or to beneficiaries in a third-country, on completion of their assignment or retirement varies between the SSAs. The Indo-Swiss SSA does not provide for portability of Swiss benefits though it allows withdrawal and portability of Indian benefits and contributions made 1

42  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. in India. The Indo-German SSA simply has no such portability provision. The Indo-Australian SSA does not provide portability to a third-country. Other than these three SSAs, all other have the portability to home country and third-country provisions. However, it must be noted that under the portability regime, non-contributory benefits are kept out of its purview. 4 The principles of totalisation of contribution periods: It means that the insurance periods completed pursuant to one of the Contracting State’s legislation are “totalised” – when necessary and to the extent that they do not overlap – with the insurance periods completed pursuant to the other Contracting States’ legislation. The SSAs differ on this aspect. The SSAs with Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland do not have totalisation provision at all, while others have such provisions mostly with the methodology mentioned therein.6 With this background, we analyse the SSAs signed by India from different perspectives as detailed in Table 2.3. More detailed analysis on the existing framework is available in Table 2.A.

Table 2.3 Provisions in Indian SSAs Country

Equality of treatment

Portability

Totalisation

CoC validity*

Belgium Germany Switzerland Denmark Luxembourg France Republic of Korea Netherlands Hungary Finland Sweden Czech Republic Norway Austria Canada Australia Japan Portugal

Yes Yes – Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes – – Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes – – Yes Yes Yes Yes – Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

60 48 72 60(36)** 60 60 60 60 60 60 24 60 60 60 60 60 60 60

Note: * 60 months for Indians and 36 months for Danes.

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 43

Data description7 The data for CoC is taken from the EPFO, which is the agency that issues CoCs to people travelling abroad for work. We have individual level data of employees who were posted in the countries where SSAs have been operationalised and contains the following fields of the CoC form: 1 location of the EPFO office where CoC was issued; 2 state; 3 age group the individual belongs to; and 4 validity (or duration) of the CoC. Data is available on an annual basis from 2009 to 2016. 83,274 CoCs were issued during this period from 17 different states and 59 different offices, which included both EPFO and non-EPFO offices. We also use the data on emigration from the International Migration database provided by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. International migration database provides the total inflows of foreign population by nationality on an annual basis for each country. We use the subset of the data to the time period of our study. Broad facts about Indian SSA In this section, we analyse the data on number of CoCs issued to Indians emigrating for work abroad by the EPFO, and the emigration data from the OECD. By way of analysis, we try to come up with some insights on the demographies that is making the most use of the SSAs, and, whether these have been dynamic or not. It is to be noted that there is a greater emphasis on the demographies to whom the COCs are being issued than on the magnitude of the COCs issued since the latter would continue to increase as more SSAs would become operational over the period of time analysed. Figure 2.2 shows a dot plot for the CoCs issued to different age groups from 2009 till 2015. It shows a clear positively skewed distribution between the number of CoCs issued and the age group of the CoC applicant, with most number of CoCs consistently being issued to individuals in the age group of 25–35 years, followed by age group of 35–45 years. This pattern is a reflection of the interaction of a large number of intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of individuals and industries. The natural risk aversion of different age groups, demographic composition of different industries could be a few examples of the factors affecting the observed pattern.

44  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. While admittedly an individual’s choice to migrate for employment abroad is not influenced by a lack of portability of social security benefits; such portability constitutes a critical element in the individual’s lifecycle planning and social risk management. Employees who are near their retirement may not want to jeopardise their retirement benefits by getting a posting abroad. This sense of jeopardy stems from the fact that the SSA environment in India is in its nascent stages. It may also mean that a large number of business enterprises are either unaware of the SSA’s provisions or given the SSA’s current wordings, consider these to be uncertain. The second reason for the pattern outlined in the first paragraph is regarding the demographics in particular industries. A lot of the industries like IT and Engineering have blossomed only in the last couple of decades. It is, therefore, possible for them to have a younger workforce. Employees getting posted abroad from such industries will naturally be from the younger section of the workforce. The dot plot in Figure 2.3 also shows a clearly discernible trend amongst the different validities of the CoCs issued. We see that the data is bi-modal at observations of 6–12 and 36–42 months. We also observe that the validity of the majority of the CoCs issued is less than one year and such CoCs constitute approximately 40–60 percent of the CoCs issued in any given year (not shown here). This trend of CoC with validity of less than one year is despite the fact that most of the SSAs have a provision for CoCs with validity of up to 60 months. Similar to trends in the previous paragraph, this trend, too, is attributable to various factors like validity of work visas granted, nature of

20000 18000

No of CoCs issued

16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 0-25

25-35

35-45

45-55

Age group (in years)

Figure 2.2 CoCs issued to different age groups

55-65

>65

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 45 work assigned, visa policies of the destination countries, the level of the engagement with the destination economy. Any enquiry to ascertain its root cause(s) requires more data and subsequent analysis. The most number of CoCs are issued by the EPFO offices located in the South, followed by West regions of India, as seen from Figure 2.4. Most of the CoCs issued in the South, according to the EPFO, are to the employees of firms from the IT industry, while most of CoCs issued in the West are either to the Engineering Products or EngineersContractors industry (data not shown here). • East has the states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal • North has the states of Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand

20000 18000

No of CoCs issued

16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 0-25

25-35

35-45

45-55

55-65

>65

Age group (in years)

No of CoCs issued

Figure 2.3 CoCs issued according to their validity duration

16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 East

North

Region

South

Figure 2.4 CoCs issued in various regions of India

West

46  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. • South has the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Telangana • West has the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan

Emigrants with CoCs (in percent)

This should not be confused with CoCs being issued to individuals from these regions. It might be the case that a substantial proportion of the CoCs being issued in a particular region are to individuals, who are not from that region. This can be the case for industries which have highly localised physical infrastructure but whose employees are from across the country. Firms belonging to the IT industry and concentrated in southern Indian cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad could be cited for this pattern. The analysis of the previous paragraphs is important since based on it agencies can model the SSAs to cater to the particular needs of the industries or sectors that are in the need of making use of provisions of SSAs. From Figure 2.5, it appears that there is a rise in the number of CoCs being issued, testifying that the provisions of SSAs are being utilised for circular migration. However, due to the nature of the available data and its small sample size, it is not possible to comment on their efficacy in achieving their intended purpose; and, indeed, if all such persons venturing on circular migration are utilising the provision to seek exemption from the social security legislation of the host State. Without speculating on the status before the advent of SSAs, we could, nonetheless, venture to state that there is a demand, and fulfilment of demand for CoCs, and the government should work towards its further popularisation so that more people use this provision of SSA; and depending on the demand, accelerate efforts to have SSAs with such host countries where Indians are going on detachment postings. We 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2009

2010

2011

2012

Years

Figure 2.5 Percentage of emigrants with CoCs

2013

2014

2015

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 47 should remind ourselves that SSAs do not apply to independent professionals or self-employed persons, as this category of transnationals workers are beyond the scope of the social security system of India.

Areas of concern In this section, we address some of the areas of concern based upon our discussion in Sections 3 and 4. We have seen differences in provisions across SSAs that India has signed. For example, only the IndoBelgian SSA lays down totalisation procedure in detail unlike the SSAs signed by India with Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland. This section talks about some key problems with the existing framework and the need to address some of them in order for SSAs to be more efficient. Dispute resolution mechanism In general, the bilateral SSAs signed by India contain a single paragraph on dispute resolution relegating it to the “competent authorities”. The SSA with the Netherlands states that ruling by one of the Contracting State’s courts can be overruled by the other Contracting State if it is “contrary” to the public policy of that Contracting State. Besides, it does not specify the course of action to be taken in such a scenario (Article 15 of Indo-Netherlands SSA). Here, the example from the EU becomes relevant. The Court of Justice of the EU has passed more than 600 judgements on the provisions of social security whenever there is a doubt on their application vis-a-vis the national laws. The aggrieved party approaches the Court after having tried available national remedies, and once the matter is in the Court, it passes a judgement on the relevant provision(s) of the law, and it becomes a precedent. Besides, the national court may seek the EU court’s insights in interpretation of the contested provision. While adoption of such a system may not be feasible in the Indian context, an arbitration council on the lines of EU court appears feasible. Such a council, drawn from members not only from the concerned competent authorities mentioned in the administrative arrangements may give rulings on the provisions of the concerned SSA and not individual cases per se. The council may adopt protocols for speedy resolution of disputes, and should meet at least once in one/two years to review the working of the SSAs and suggest any amendments that may be required (Spiegel, 2010).

48  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. Detachment benefits The detachment clause under some of the Indian SSAs requires the migrating employee to be working ‘on behalf of’ the Indian entity. In practice, however, when an employee goes on an “assignment” abroad, he/she is considered to be working for the host country entity (and not for its Indian counterpart). This is done to avoid a corporate tax exposure for the Indian entity in the host country. SSAs of India with Austria, Belgium, France, Japan, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland have such clauses. The wording in these agreements is such that it is unclear whether an employee going on assignment to another country is eligible for a Certificate of Coverage from the EPFO or not. A clarification from the Government that a CoC can be obtained by such an employee irrespective of the terms of the SSA with the host country, provided the PF contributions continue to be paid in India, remains to be made. Additionally, many SSAs also provide that the benefit of detachment can be availed for the extended period of deputation. No specific instruction/circular, however, has so far been issued by the EPFO on the process for availing this benefit. Data availability The current template of CoC form consists of two pages and does not contain very useful information. For example, the CoC form for Denmark does not even ask for the gender of the applicant. The hurdle in improving CoC form is that these are mutually agreed upon and these cannot be tweaked without the express consent of the other Contracting State. Given this limitation, it can be proposed that there could be a two-tier process: the first tier has the usual CoC form while the applicants can be made to fill an extra form so as to collect data of the applicants and their economic activities, like the nature of job, nature of employer, duration of stay and the extent of utilisation of SSA’s provisions, etc. For example, we would like to confirm that a substantial proportion of Indians seeking CoC while going to Germany are from the engineers-contractors industry. Further, the CoC data should be interfaced with the data collected by the immigration authorities. This would enable drawing of changing dynamics of circular migration that are also linked with the immigration and the trade, and also allow for incorporating provisions that best meet the needs of a particular kind of detached workers.

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 49 Interfacing CoCs with immigration data would enable to have a finding on the utility of SSA. For example, while it is possible to obtain data of Indian posted workers going to Germany, it was not possible to obtain reciprocal data of German nationals migrating to India with CoCs obtained from competent authorities in Germany. Totalisation procedure Without the totalisation provisions, the utility of SSAs diminish in so far that it relates to ensuring the benefits accruing from contributions made in the host and home countries. While all SSAs provide for detachment, totalisation is not provided for in certain SSAs. Some recent SSAs, namely those with Australia and Portugal, do provide for all kinds of benefits. It is also typically the more complex process thus requiring that the methodology relating to totalisation (as available in Article 12 of the Indo-Belgian SSA that is identical with the Indo-Hungary SSA) are revisited since some of the SSAs have been in operation for more than five years. Extending the scope of SSAs Any enlargement of benefits in the SSA is constrained by the Indian social security system (contributory in nature), and the practice of reciprocity applied in the bilateral agreements. However, we recommend that two provisions could still be inserted: first, exportability of benefits to third countries (whenever this provision is lacking in the extant SSAs) and, second, measures to cover medical insurance in the host country. The absence of the latter compels the Indian posted workers (and their families) to subscribe to health insurance policies both in India. This leads to adding to the cost per employee and thereby non-realisation of full benefits of SSAs on the circular mobility of such persons.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter is to familiarise readers with the dynamics of the SSA in the overlapping contexts of trade, mobility and migration and social security cover. The mobility of persons as a factor of production has only recently started getting serious attention (as in Mode IV of GATS that, however, remain subject to domestic regulations). Using novel data from EPFO, we show that more number of CoCs are issued for young and middle-aged employees than otherwise, and

50  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. are mostly issued for a period of less than one year. We also show that there is a considerable increase in the popularity of CoCs, since the percentage of migrants applying from them has constantly risen. However, data constraints and the lack of sound academic theory in the subject, limit our conclusions. We suggest the setting up of a two-tiered CoC application process to start with, specifically designed to provide reliable migration data to enable deeper analysis of this emerging area of research. We have found that the SSAs suffer from various issues: some are generic in nature (such as overwhelming percentage of informal workers) while others are specific (like formulation of International Workers). There is a variation in the provisions of SSAs signed by India with various countries, and the actual implementation of SSA raises many pertinent issues that require attention of the policymakers and the practitioner alike. It would be fair to state that if the benefits of SSAs, as these are, get attention of the business enterprises, more numbers of “posted/detached” workers would take advantage of it. Moving forward we try to establish that trade, circular migration and social welfare get a boost from signing SSAs. While trade is facilitated because of the migrants’ knowledge of the local customs and markets in both the host and home countries, their welfare in terms of social security coverage is promoted due to provisions of SSAs. Studies even suggest that migration is welfare enhancing for the host countries since the migrants help in balancing the social security system from being burdened by an ageing population. We have touched upon some of the issues, all of which, and more, require separate enquiries. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Renuka Sane and Puneet Gupta for helpful feedback and useful comments. We would like to thank Prithu Sharma for excellent research assistance.

Appendix

Table 2.A Social security schemes covered under SSAs Country

Foreign social securities

Indian social securities

Belgiuma

Old–age and survivors’ pension for employed persons and self– employed persons; invalidity insurance for employed persons and self–employed persons Statutory Pension Insurance Old–age and survivors’ insurance; disability; insurance; accident insurance; health insurance Social Pensions Act; Act on various anticipatory pension; Labour Market Supplementary Pension Act Pension insurance in case of old–age, invalidity and survivorship; the social security for employed persons (sickness; insurance, accidents at work and occupational diseases insurance; unemployment benefits and family benefits)

1) Old–age and survivors’ pension for employed persons; 2) the Permanent Total Disability pension for employed persons. Same as above.

Germanyb Switzerlandc

Denmarkd

Luxembourge

Same as above and; 3) health insurance.

Same as above.

Same as above.

(Continued)

Table 2.A (Continued) Country

Foreign social securities

Indian social securities

Francef

Old–age pension including survivors’ pension schemes; invalidity insurance including survivors pension National Pension Act and its regulations that provide pension benefits in case of old–age or death of bread–winner Legislation on social insurance concerning 1) old–age; disablement; survivors and 2) sickness, maternity, unemployment, children’s allowances Legislation concerning the insurance obligation and the payment of contributions covering social insurance benefits and benefits paid in case of unemployment, as well as the social insurance pension benefits Old–age, disability and survivors’ pension under Earnings related pension scheme Income based old–age and survivors’ pension; sickness and; activity compensation; guarantee pension and surviving children’s allowance* Pension insurance; liability for payment of social security and state employment policy contributions Old–age and survivor’ pension; disability grant; funeral; grant; Labour and Welfare Service Act; National Insurance and Family Allowances Act Health insurance

Same as above.

Republic of Koreag

Netherlandsh

Hungaryi

Finlandj

Swedenk

Czech Republicl

Norwaym

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 53 Country

Foreign social securities

Indian social securities

Austria

Pension insurance; sickness and accident insurance. Age pension; superannuation guarantee

Same as above.

n

Australiao

Same as above.

a Ministry of External Affairs, 2006. b Ministry of External Affairs, 2006. c Ministry of External Affairs, 2014b. d Ministry of External Affairs, 2010a. e Ministry of External Affairs, 2011b. f Ministry of External Affairs, 2011a. g Ministry of External Affairs, 2010b. h Ministry of External Affairs, 2014d. i Ministry of External Affairs, 2011e. j Ministry of External Affairs, 2012. k Ministry of External Affairs, 2014c. l Ministry of External Affairs, 2011c. m Ministry of External Affairs, 2011d. n Ministry of External Affairs, 2014a. o Ministry of External Affairs, 2014e.

Notes 1 “Posted/detached” worker means intra-corporate transferees to other countries. 2 More details on the savings under the present social security system can be found in Table 2.1. 3 “Circular migration” means transnational movement of people for employment to a host country for a given period of time after which they return to the home country. 4 As part of SSA, detached workers implied a worker posted in an establishment in India who contributes to the social security programme of the home country in whose favour of COC issued by the competent authority in the home country. 5 An Indian national qualifies as an IW if he/she has worked or going to work in a country with which India as entered into a SSA, and is eligible to avail the benefits under the social security programme of the host country. Thus, once an IW, always an IW. 6 If a person has completed periods of coverage under the legislation of both Contracting States, these periods, insofar as they do not overlap, if necessary, shall be added together for the purpose of acquiring entitlement to a benefit, as if they were periods of coverage in the relevant Contracting State (Article 10 (1) of Indo-Austrian SSA). 7 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIG.

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54  Atul Kumar Tiwari, et al. using the statistical mechanics of cooperative systems,” Palgrave Communications, 2016, 2. Bruder, Jana, Are trade and migration substitutes or complements? – The case of Germany 1970–1998, European Trade Study Group, September 2004, pp. 9–11. Gould, David M., “Immigrant links to the home country: Empirical implications for US bilateral trade flows,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1994, pp. 302–316. Haas, Hein De, “Remittances, migration and social development,” Social Policy and Development Programme Paper, 2007, (34). Hatzigeorgiou, Andreas and Magnus Lodefalk, “Trade, migration and integration – Evidence and Policy Implications,” The World Economy, 2015, 38, pp. 2013–2048. IOM, World migration report: The future of migration building capacities for change, International Organization for Migration, Geneva, 2010. ISSA, Social security coverage extension in the BRICS, International Social Security Association, 2013, pp. 80–103. ———, Social security programs throughout the world: Europe 2016, International Social Security Association, 2016. Jorens, Yves, “Fifty years of social security coordination: Past-present-future,” Report of the conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the European coordination of social security, Prague, 2010. Kapur, Devesh, “Remittances: The new development mantra?,” Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects, 2005, pp. 331–360. Koettl, Johannes, Robert Holzmann, and Stefano Scarpetta, “The relative merits of skilled and unskilled migration, temporary and permanent labor migration, and portability of social security benefits,” World Bank Social Protection Discussion Paper, 2006, 614. Ministry of External Affairs, GoI, “Agreement on social security between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of India,” November 2006. ———, “Agreement between the Republic of India and the Federal Republic of Germany on social insurance,” October 2009. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Denmark,” February 2010. ———, “Agreement on social security between Republic of India and Republic of Korea,” October 2010. ———, “Agreement on social security between the government of the Republic of India and the government of the French Republic,” August 2011. ———, “Agreement on social security between the grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Republic of India,” August 2011. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Czech Republic,” August 2011. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Norway,” August 2011. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Republic of Hungary,” August 2011.

Social security agreements (SSAs) in practice 55 ———, “Agreement on social security between Republic of India and Republic of Finland,” June 2012. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of Austria and the Republic of India,” August 2014. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and Swiss Confederation,” August 2014. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Sweden,” August 2014. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” August 2014. ———, “Agreement on social security between the Republic of India and Australia,” November 2014. Population Reference Bureau, “Social security systems around the world,” Today’s Research on Aging, January 2009. Razin, Assaf and Efraim Sadka, “Migration and pension with international capital mobility,” Journal of Public Economics, 1999, 74 (1), pp. 141–150. Spiegel, Bernhard, Analysis of member states bilateral agreements on social security with third countries, European Commission, December 2010. The World Bank and International Organisation for Migration, Trade and migration: Building bridges for global labour mobility, Vol. 763, OECD Publishing, 2004.

3 “Blue Card” A comment on the EU’s preferential immigration visa for attracting human capital vis-à-vis its own multilateral conundrum Binod Khadria Introduction On the evening of 23 October 2007, I had to reluctantly shun attending a close friend’s daughter’s wedding reception because of a last-minute urgent phone call from the BBC London. The BBC requested me if I could come over to their television studio in New Delhi for the 9 p.m. World News, and comment live on the so-called “Blue Card” the European Commission had unveiled that very day. The scheme, having far reaching repercussions for international migration, brain drain and so on was based supposedly designed after the US Green Card, but in the aftermath of post-9/11 restrictive immigration regime in the US. It was aimed to attract (or effectively divert from the US) 20 million skilled immigrants from across the world and many from India to the EU by 2020. It required the nod of its 27 member countries, which did come through excepting for the UK, Denmark and Ireland. Whatever I said before the BBC camera that night in response to the questions from the World News presenter Nik Gowing was impromptu and speculative about the Blue Card being “an old wine in a new bottle”. A little over five years later, on 6 March 2013 I delivered one of the Euro-Visions Public Lectures that I was invited to by Trinity College Dublin in commemoration of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The topic I chose for my lecture was “Between the ‘Blue Card’ and Circular Migration: Crisis of EU’s Immigration Policy for the Third-country Nationals”. Within three years of that lecture, the European crisis in immigration both deepened and expanded policy, and the policy took a different turn away from high-skill immigration – in the wake of the refugee crisis, Brexit, the US Travel Ban on select Islamic countries and so on. At the same time, it is faced with the challenges of meeting the expectations and migration-related targets of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

“Blue Card” 57 This paper critically traces the EU objective of harmonisation of the member states’ immigration policies under one unified Blue Card scheme and how multilateralism, whether within a block or outside, failed to deliver when it came to the field of international migration.

The background Globally speaking, immigration in the western world has always been selective. The early 20th-Century American exclusion of Indians, Chinese and other Asians had started exactly 100 years ago – in 1917, when a legislative measure in the US designated a “barred zone”, adding illiteracy to the list of exclusions. These restrictions were finally done away with by the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, which abolished the earlier quota system based on national origins of immigrants and established a new immigration policy based on the dual objectives of reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labour to the United States. The outcome of this high-skill occupational domination of the 20thcentury US immigration continued until the 9/11 happened, when it again became restrictive for security reasons. The EU grabbed the post-9/11 opportunity to compete against the US. It started shedding the image of “Fortress Europe” and, in 2007, proposed the “Blue Card” for the EU member states to come together and harmonise their high-skill immigration policy that would appeal to the highly skilled third-country nationals to come and settle in the labour markets of the EU countries – thereby to compete not only with the United States’ “Green Card”, but also the Canadian and Australian policies in a “global war for talent”. The directive on the admission of high-skill immigrants sought to establish more attractive entry, residence and work conditions for human capital-endowed third-country nationals in the EU states.

The focus of the Blue Card The new EU policy was outlined by Franco Frattini, the then EU Justice Commissioner, at a conference of immigration ministers of the EU member states in Portugal. He said that while illegal immigration was to be reduced, skilled migrants should be actively encouraged: We have to look at immigration as an enrichment and as an inescapable phenomenon of today’s world, not as a threat. We should take count of what statistics tell us: 85 per cent of unskilled labour goes to the EU and only 5 per cent to the USA, 55 per cent of

58  Binod Khadria skilled labour goes to the USA and only 5 per cent to the EU. We have to reverse these figures with a new vision. (European Commission 2006) Following the mission spirit of this statement, in October 2007, the European Commission adopted two proposals: first, to establish a Framework Directive for admission of highly educated migrants to the EU, later known as the EU Blue Card directive, and second, to simplify migration procedures by a single application procedure, the Single Permit directive. The European Council followed the European Commission proposals, and, adopted the EU Blue Card directive in May 2009, and the single permit directive in December 2011. Together, the two directives established the EU Blue Card Scheme: A demand-driven, residence and work permit. José Manuel Barroso, the former President of Portugal as the European Commission President said, ‘Labour migration into Europe boosts our competitiveness and therefore our economic growth. It also helps tackle demographic problems resulting from our ageing population’ (European Commission 2007). The initiative highlighted six distinctive features aimed at turning Europe into the world’s most sought-after migration destination: 1) Working and salary conditions equal to nationals; 2) Free movement within the Schengen area; 3) Entitlement to a series of socioeconomic rights; 4) Favourable conditions for family-reunification; 5) Permanent residence perspective; and 6) Freedom of association. Of the 27 EU member states, all except United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland, participated in the EU Blue Card scheme, although Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Cyprus and Finland too had expressed apprehensions. Like the US Green Card, the European Blue Card too is an Immigration Visa, giving the beneficiary the legal entitlement to live and work in the complying EU member states for a period ranging from one to four years. The beneficiaries could aspire for and apply to have permanent residence rights after fulfilling two conditionalities: (1) Legal and uninterrupted residency for five years in the EU as a Blue Card holder; and (2) Legal and uninterrupted residency for two years immediately preceding the submission of application. On 25 May 2009, the EU issued a Press Release, saying: 1 “The Blue Card will facilitate access to the labour market to their holders and will entitle them to a series of socio-economic rights

“Blue Card” 59 and favourable conditions for family-reunification and movement across the EU”. 2 “After eighteen months of legal residence in the first member state as an EU Blue Card holder, the Blue Card holder and his/her family may move to a member state other than the first member state for the purpose of highly skilled employment”. 3 “Workers on the Blue Card will receive equal treatment as nationals of the EU Country issuing the Blue Card including the same access to education and training, and welfare benefits”.

Rationale behind the Blue Card It would address a shrinking labour force and ageing population: Age 65+ population was anticipated to rise from 15.4 percent in 1995 to 22.4 percent by 2025. It would enable EU companies to easily recruit workers with specialised skills that are scarce:20 million over the next 20 years. In Healthcare, Engineering, Science and Information Technology Sectors and tourism: between 384,000 and 700,000 IT workers would be needed by 2015, and between one and two million healthcare workers by 2020. The Chief Advisor to the EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Maria Senius, said, ‘If we are going to realise our goals in the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU needs to remain open and competitive in the labour market, and we need to create more legal ways for migrants to come to Europe’ (European Policy Center 2011).1 There was also a rationale of social integration in the Blue Card because high-skilled immigrants have traits like: (1) Higher earnings leading to higher tax contributions; (2) Smaller reliance on social benefits; and (3) Fluency in the destination country’s language, which facilitate their integration in the destination society. The highly skilled are different from the lowskilled immigrants, who are seemingly slower in integrating within the host society leading to social tensions. ‘Immigrant scientists, engineers and physicians reinforce the nation’s supply of scarce talent and mix easily with the domestic population by becoming dispersed throughout the country’ (Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Cerna 2016). These immigrants are thus less likely to create geographic concentration and racial tensions with the native population. Thus, the Blue card fell in line with the preceding global trend of selective immigration policies: ‘Migration policy in receiving countries reflects greater selectiveness, favouring the admission of skilled migrants who meet specific labour needs. . . . About 30 countries have policies promoting the admission of highly skilled workers’ (UN,

60  Binod Khadria 2006), and ‘Governments are increasingly recognizing the need and benefits of international migration by adopting policies and measures to tailor migration to national need’ (UN, 2006).

The conundrums Right from its genesis, the EU Blue Card scheme attracted criticism from within the EU, but also from the less-developed origin countries of human capital. Whereas Member States like Italy, France and Spain supported for the scheme’s rationale of highly skilled human capital enhancing the competitiveness and economic growth in the EU. The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, stated this clearly in his speech: Skilled labour migration into Europe boosts our competitiveness and therefore our economic growth. It also helps tackle demographic problems resulting from our ageing population. This is particularly the case for highly skilled labour. With today’s proposal for an EU Blue Card we send a clear signal: highly skilled migrants are welcome in the EU! We are also proposing to give a clear set of rights to all third country nationals who legally reside in the EU. This will protect EU citizens from unfair competition in the labour market and promote the integration of migrants into our societies. (European Commission 2007) On the other hand, Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark expressed explicit concern and reservation over the scheme. Opinions were divided between negative effects on training opportunities for their native citizens and compromise of sovereignty, and illegal migrants using the temporary permits route to enter and reside in the EU permanently. The harmonisation of high-skilled immigration policies of EU member states was an aim that was hardly achieved. Rather, the member states had their own respective agendas, but there could not be a multilateral agreement on them across the states. Meanwhile, the EU migration has been fraught with new challenges – the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit which further distanced Great Britain from the continental Europe, Scotland Referendum for separation from England, the Catalonian Referendum for separation from Spain and so on. In addition to the US, Canada and Australia, the EU has been facing new competition from newer destinations like Singapore, Malaysia and even China, which has been turning from a mainly origin country to a

“Blue Card” 61 destination country for global human capital. The Blue Card scheme of the EU to attract human capital has been mired by its own conundrum of failed multilateralism within the EU.

Note 1 See also blogs like https://www.commonwealthcontractors.com/uk-visas/eublue-cards/

References Cerna, L. (2016), Immigration Policies and the Global Competition for Talent, Palgrave Macmillan, London. European Commission (2006), Press Release on “2768th Council Meeting, Justice and Home Affairs,” C/06/34115801/06, Brussels, 4–5 December 2006 (Presse 341). http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_PRES-06-341_en.htm? locale=en European Commission (2007), Press Release on “Making Europe More Attractive to Highly Skilled Migrants and Increasing the Protection of Lawfully Residing and Working Migrants”, IP/07/1575, Brussels, 23 October 2007. https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP=07-1575_en.htm. European Policy Centre (2011), Report: Does Crisis Europe Need More Skilled Migrants? http://www.epc.edu/events_rep_details.php?pub_id=1212&cat_id=6 Portes, A. and Rumbaut, R.G. (1996), Immigrant America: A Portrain, University of California Press, p. 235, cited in L. Cerna (2016), Immigration Policies and the Global Competition for Talent, Palgrave Macmillan, London, p. 34. United Nations (2006), World Population Policies, 2005, Sales No. E.06.XIII.5, cited in United Nations (2009), International Migration Report 2006: A Global Assessment, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs/ Population Division, New York, p. 8.

4 Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals in the European Union S. Irudaya Rajan

Background Migration from India to the European Union countries is an important phenomenon. In recent years, the numbers of Indian emigrants, especially highly skilled migrants and students, have increased considerably. In 2013, 756,471 residents of the United Kingdom were India-born. Indian nationals accounted for nearly 56.9 percent of the population in the United Kingdom alone, and this was mainly for employment reasons. However, in recent years, Europe has also been attracting a number of students from India. India is also one of the countries which loses the most highly skilled workers to foreign markets. In fact, India and the Philippines supply most of the foreigntrained doctors and nurses to the OECD countries, particularly to English-speaking countries (Khadria, 2008). The English language as a medium of instruction at the university level of education was one of the significant factors that enabled high-skilled Indian migrants to access US labour market successfully (Potnuru and Sam, 2015). The departure abroad of a large number of well-trained Indians, as expected, has led to concerns about “brain drain” in India. For example, one of the most affected sectors is genetic engineering and biotechnology. Here there are shortages in junior staff, as approximately 90 percent of post-graduates in this field go to the United States after the completion of their studies in India. However, available data on the numbers of highly skilled Indian emigrants suggest that the country does not suffer seriously from brain drain (Natalia and JeanBaptiste Meyer, 2012). Against this backdrop, this paper aims at assessing the potential visa facilitation process and current visa requirements and procedures for Indians to emigrate to European countries. It deals explicitly with the short-term visa requirements and hurdles involved in getting visa clearance, if any. There is a need to make travel more

Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals 63 accessible, convenient and smooth and improving visa procedures is paramount in both economic and bilateral relations contexts. With a brief introduction, the first section overviews the importance of Indian emigration to the EU, followed by a review of the existing visa requirements for the short-term visas for tourists, students and highly skilled Indian workers with some case studies.

Patterns of emigration from India to European Union The geographical distribution of the Indian emigrant’s destination countries primarily depends on the level of their educational qualifications. The emigration flows of the highly skilled are oriented towards more traditional Indian destinations namely, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and more recently, towards non-English speaking European Union countries. The emigration policies of the Indian Government and the policy orientation of the EU governments towards Indian migrants are important not only in deciding the quantum of Indian emigrants going to the EU but also their choice of destination country within the EU (Gupta, 2013). This migratory wave was accelerated by India’s integration with the world economy. In contrast, semi-skilled and unskilled Indian workers are chiefly concentrated in the high-income countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. In the fight for market share and under pressure from growing global competitiveness, the developed countries seek to attract the best and the brightest minds to win this battle. With a well-developed educational system and a large workforce, India is a strategic supplier of highly skilled specialist emigrants to many developed economies including the EU countries, which have become increasingly popular destinations (Khadria, 2009). An initiative of the EU known as the Blue Card Directive is related to the entry and residence of the third-country nationals in the EU for the purpose of highly qualified employment. The objective of this Directive is to make the EU a more attractive destination for highly qualified third-country nationals by establishing common criteria and a fast track procedure for issuing residence and work permits. According to the Indian High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora, the percentage of Non-Resident Indians and People of Indian Origin residing in Europe (including the United Kingdom) is about 10 percent (ICWA, 2001). Even when we consider the 20 countries in the world with a stock of 50,000 or more Indian migrants, only two countries in Europe figure in the picture: the United Kingdom and Germany (see also Table 4.1). At the EU level, Indian students account for 34.4 percent of the foreign students in tertiary education,

64  S. Irudaya Rajan Table 4.1 Number of Indian emigrants in European Union countries Country

Emigrants

Country

Emigrants

Austria Bulgaria Cyprus Denmark Finland Germany Hungary Italy Lithuania Malta Poland Romania Slovenia Sweden Total

13,328 159 3,236 9,343 4,934 61,115 1,202 120,224 69 320 919 28 200 20,582 1,149,238

Belgium Croatia Czech Republic Estonia France Greece Ireland Latvia Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Slovakia Spain United Kingdom

14,513 0 2,521 101 48,045 9,218 17,700 119 205 20,141 8,068 107 36,370 756,471

Source: World Bank. 2013. Migration and Remittances Data. World Bank. Migration and Remittances Matrix.

in particular, social sciences, business or law. On the other hand, in engineering streams, Indians account for just 14.1 percent of the total number of students studying in Europe (Eurostat News Release, 2009). Though science and engineering are generally preferred subjects in India, the students studying those subjects in Europe are actually dwindling. This situation may lead to the reinforcement of India’s position as a supplier of the human resources necessary for sustaining Europe’s progress towards a knowledge-based economy (Eurostat News Release, 2009). This declining trend may be explained jointly through a few broad deterrents such as the costs of education, difficulty in visa procurement, and access to grants and funding. Over the years, India has become a major source of human capital for advanced economies in the context of its demographic advantage over other economies, including Europe. India, China and South Korea are the top nations of origin for foreign students in the United States mostly in the science and engineering streams. India with 68,000 students in 2009 accounts for the largest number of foreign students, followed by China with 54,000 students. In 2004, the United States was the favoured destination of 62 percent of the 71,290 physicians emigrating from India, while 32 percent chose the United Kingdom (Bhargava et al., 2010). In the European Union, the United Kingdom is

Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals 65 the preferred destination for highly skilled Indian emigrants which attracted two-thirds of the total number of Indian emigrants in Western Europe in 2008 (Khadria, 2008). Indians also represented more than 40 percent of the estimated 22,000 entries under the United Kingdom’s Highly-Skilled Migrant Program (Raveesh, 2013). Germany is another major country which is recruiting students from India, notably in engineering and computer science. As per the available statistics, Indian emigrants to European countries increased from 0.8 percent to 3.5 percent during 2000–2009.

Highly skilled emigration and citizenship to Indians in the EU The immigration conditions abroad for the highly skilled workforce determined the presence of this category abroad especially in Europe. The United Kingdom has the highest number of immigrants from India followed by Italy and France. Amongst the citizens of non-EU countries, Indians constituted the largest group which obtained residence permits under the category of employment. The United Kingdom is the main member state where the permits issued to Indians for the family reasons and the education are at the largest (see Table 4.2). In terms of employment in services, the United Kingdom is having a major share of Indians. The percentage of Indians employed in the Table 4.2 Citizenship granted to Indians as first residence permit in the EU-28 and main EU Member States by reasons, 2015 Country

Family reasons

Education

Employment

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent United Kingdom 24,655 Italy 7,146 Denmark 6,517 Netherlands 2,614 France – Ireland – Sweden – Other EU 11,069 countries Total 52,001

47.4 13.7 12.5 5.1 – – – 21.3

10,335 1,148 – – 1,901 1,099 – 6,448

49.4 5.5 – – 9.1 5.3 – 30.8

29,670 2,645 – 3,185 – – 3,113 13,575

56.9 5.1 – 6.0 – – 6.0 26.0

100.0

20,931

100.0

52,188

100.0

Source: European Commission, Eurostat 2015, Population database

66  S. Irudaya Rajan service sector increased from 25.2 in 2005 to 26.5 percent in 2010. According to the news reports from the Business Line, the United Kingdom represents about 17 percent of the Indian IT services business.

Agreements between India and the European Union With a view to facilitate labour mobility between India and the EU, a Common Agenda for Migration and Mobility (CAMM) was endorsed at the India-EU Summit recently (30 March 2016). Several bilateral and multilateral agreements (including trade, social security and labour mobility) have been signed between India and the EU (and its Member States) to facilitate mobility. As far as labour mobility is concerned, a partnership agreement between India and Denmark is currently in force in order to promote orderly migration of workers from India to meet the growing demand for skilled and trained workers in the Danish economy. The identification and return of Swiss and Indian Nationals under the Bilateral Technical Arrangement between these two countries has facilitated the return of irregular migrants. The recent annual report of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs shows that the ministry has successfully entered into bilateral Social Security Agreements with Norway (2010), Denmark (2009), Luxembourg (2009), the Netherlands (2009), Belgium (2006), French Republic (2008), Germany (2008), Hungary (2010), Czech Republic (2010), Sweden (2012), Finland (2012) and Austria (2013) and are currently in force.

Recent developments in EU’s migration policies The EU has progressively developed its migration policies so as to reduce the scope of permanent residency and to enable the local skilled labourers replace the bulk entry from foreign nations. The annual number of asylum applications in the European Union (EU) increased significantly in 2014, before doubling in 2015. EU Member States responded to this sharp rise in asylum claims with restrictive migration policy measures. These measures set in motion a domino effect of similarly restrictive policies across the EU and in other states, aimed at deterring migration to the region. The Valletta Summit in November 2015 brought migration issues to the heart of the EU’s relations with African countries. The EU-Turkey Statement established new ways to bring order into migration flows and save lives. The European Union and its Member States have progressively laid out a stronger and more articulated policy response to save lives and better manage migratory flows in the Central Mediterranean recently

Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals 67 in January 2017. The Joint Way Forward (JWF) between the EU and Afghanistan reflects the joint commitment of the EU and the Government of Afghanistan to step up their cooperation on addressing and preventing irregular migration, and on return of irregular migrants. The JWF is not intended to create legal rights or obligations under international law. It paves the way for a structural dialogue and cooperation on migration issues, based on a commitment to identify effective ways to address the needs of both sides.

EU Blue Card for high-skilled migrants The Blue Card was intended to encourage geographic mobility between different member states of the EU. The top three nationalities to make use of the EU Blue Card in 2014 were skilled migrants from India, the US and China. The purpose of the Blue Card, besides providing residence to skilled migrants, is to attract and retain highly skilled workers to the EU to fulfil labour needs of Member States and to strengthen the EU’s competitiveness and economic growth. The card was expected to change labour migration in Europe by making it possible for third-country workers to move between different member states for work purposes. While the Blue Card initiative is an EU scheme, each European country implemented this EU legislation according to its own rules, requirements and additional privileges for Table 4.3 Citizenships granted to Indians in EU countries, 2015 Country

Permits

Percent to total granted in each country

Belgium Denmark Germany Estonia Ireland Italy Cyprus Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Netherlands Finland Sweden United Kingdom Total

2,805 3,785 9,597 107 2,883 11,585 1,289 353 210 355 6,942 1,586 6,508 71,651

5.6 8.2 4.9 2.7 7.5 6.5 8.3 5.6 4.1 7.2 9.6 7.3 5.9 11.3

Source: European Commission, Eurostat 2015, Population database

68  S. Irudaya Rajan cards issued by that country. In the Netherlands the national Highly Skilled Migrant (HSM) scheme offers far more favourable conditions. The annual report of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) and the figures of Eurostat show that in 2015 approximately 11,000 highly skilled candidates from outside of Europe took up work in the Netherlands via the national HSM scheme. Recently in 2016, a single EU-wide scheme replaced parallel national schemes for highly skilled workers. This provides more clarity for applicants and employers and makes the Blue Card scheme more visible and competitive.

Visa requirements for highly skilled migrants in Germany: case study Germany was reluctant to become a country of immigration for most of the past half century (Martin, 2012). In the 1960s the German government allowed employers to recruit low-skilled guest workers who were recruited for short-stays and thus intended to move in and out of the country. Germany became a known country of immigration in 2005, and since then a new gap between emigration policy goals and realities has appeared. Since 2005, German policy has welcomed highly skilled foreign nationals. However, it received very few immigrants. With the German labour force projected to shrink, the major migration issue in Germany is how to attract more highly skilled foreign nationals and how to integrate low-skilled foreign nationals in the country’s workforce. Germany’s first attempt to attract a larger number of highly skilled foreign nationals was the Green Card programme, which grew out of the failure of the SPD-Green coalition government elected in 1998 to enact a comprehensive immigration programme (Martin and Werner, 2000). The computer association BITKOM in 2000 argued that there were at least 75,000 unfilled IT jobs, and that too few students were graduating from German universities to fill these vacant positions and the new ones being created during the IT boom. BITKOM pointed out that Germany had to attract more highly skilled foreign nationals to retain a competitive economy. The SPDGreen government launched the Green Card programme in 2000 to highlight the benefits of skilled foreign nationals. It allowed German employers to recruit non-EU foreign nationals to fill computer-related jobs for five years if they were paid at least DM 100,000 (USD 45,000) a year in Germany (this was later changed to EUR 51,000 a year).

Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals 69 Germany issued about 16,000 Green Cards to non-EU foreign nationals, including a quarter to Indians (Martin, 2003). The Green Card programme ended when Germany enacted its first-ever comprehensive immigration law, effective from 1 January 2005. Germany’s Migration Law acknowledges that Germany is a country of immigration and puts no limits on the number of foreign nationals who invest at least Euro 1 million and create at least 10 jobs in Germany (Euro 250,000 and five jobs since 2009), as well as on scientists and professionals earning at least Euro 86,400 a year (reduced to Euro 66,000 a year in 2009, and to be reduced to Euro 48,000 in 2012). The law allowed foreign students graduating from German universities to stay in Germany for an additional year, as long as they find a job, to receive a residence and work permit with few formalities. On the contrary, far more German professionals left Germany than were admitted to replace them. What explains the gap between Germany’s policy of welcoming highly skilled foreign nationals since 2005 and fewer than 1,000 admissions? There are several reasons, including the relative ease of entering the US, Canada, Australia and other English-speaking countries. Moreover, these countries generally have more expansive family unification policies, fewer requirements on employers to obtain H-1B and similar visas in these countries, and perhaps tax considerations. Another reason could be difficulties associated with having foreign-earned credentials recognised in Germany. This prompted changes in 2011, aimed at speeding up the recognition of credentials earned outside Germany. Germany has 350 regulated professions, and many of the 300,000 foreign nationals in Germany with foreign-earned qualifications cannot easily gain recognition from the guilds that often control entry to medicine, engineering, and other occupations. Under the 2011 changes, German professional organisations are to complete their assessments of foreign nationals seeking recognition of their foreignearned credentials within three months. This may be true for Indians too (Martin, 2003). While there are no age restrictions or differentiations for Blue Card holders in Germany, there is a minimum salary requirement for most highly skilled third-country nationals. Compared to the income requirement under the previous immigration legislation, which used to be 66,000 Euro (in 2011), the German Blue Card now enables highly qualified third-country nationals with lower incomes (e.g. recent university graduates in entry positions) to participate in the German labour market (Gereke, 2013).

70  S. Irudaya Rajan

Visa requirements for highly skilled migrants in Italy: case study To enter, sojourn in or transit throughout the Schengen area, aliens must be in possession of a passport, visa and other travel documents recognised as valid for the purposes of crossing all Schengen State borders. Likewise, to enter, sojourn in or transit through Italy, aliens must be in possession of a passport, visa or any other travel document recognised as being valid by the Italian government. On 26 October 1997, Italy joined the Schengen system at the end of a gradual process of adjusting to the common visa regime provided by the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement. Reinforcement of the common external border followed the parallel and gradual removal of internal border controls, allowing complete freedom of movement within all the territories of the Schengen agreement signatory States and establishing what has become known as the Schengen Area (European Commission Home Affairs, 2012). A visa, which consists of a special sticker affixed to the applicant’s passport or other valid travel document, is a foreigner’s authorisation to enter the territory of the Italian Republic or that of other Contracting Parties for transit or visit purposes. The visa issued on the basis of criteria related to the preservation of good international relations and to the protection of national security and public order. Visas issued by Italian foreign missions are valid for access, transit or brief short-stay (up to 90 days) both in Italy and in other countries that apply the Schengen Convention and this type is known as a “Uniform Schengen Visa” (USV). The USV issued by the diplomatic-consular missions of other countries that apply the Schengen Convention, grants entry into Italy. A long-term entry visa (for more than 90 days) is called a “National Visa” (NV) and grants access for long-term sojourn in the State that issued it and that allows, on condition it is still valid, free circulation for no more than 90 days per semester in the territory of other Member States. Italy has recently published a Decree introducing the new EU wide immigration permit (ICT Permit) regulating intra-company transfers of non-EU nationals. The Decree, which entered into force on 11 January 2017, sets out new procedures with the purpose of facilitating the secondment to Italy of managers, highly skilled workers and trainees. It is expected the new regime will speed up the process of obtaining work permits for non-EU nationals being transferred to Italy by multi-national companies. The Decree also provides the required framework to allow those already in possession of an ICT Permit, issued by another EU member state, to carry out work in Italy without being subject to the standard immigration process.

Short-term visa requirements for Indian nationals 71

Conclusions As high-skilled immigration from India to mainland Europe is a rather recent phenomenon, the activities of Indian professionals in Europe are under-researched. The findings have wider application in contributing to the policy dialogue on migration and development, specifically to the advantage of developing and emerging economies. In the context of bilateral investments, the skilled labour mobility between India and the EU needs to be checked. The movement from India to the EU is driven mainly by the skill shortages and to facilitate the offshoring of client process to India. The significance of the EU Blue Card scheme is relevant in this context. Indians are the largest migrant group from outside the European Union (EU) to settle in the United Kingdom, but the overall migration in the country has fallen in the year 2016. These changes suggest that Brexit is likely to be a factor in people’s decision to move to or from the United Kingdom – but decisions to migrate are complex and other factors might also influence the figures. Considering the apparent desire among highly educated Indian youth to immigrate to developed regions such as the EU, recruiting such aspirants could be economically viable and much more beneficial and productive for the EU economies. The proposals to open negotiations on visa facilitation and readmission agreements with India are an important and welcome step in this direction.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on the earlier work of the author, published as CARIM-India Research Report 2012/21.

References Bhargava, A., F. Docquier, and Y. Moullan (2010). Modelling the effects of physician emigration on human development. Economics and Human Biology, Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 172–183. Buga, Natalia, and Jean-Baptiste Meyer (2012). Indian human resources mobility: Brain drain versus brain gain, CARIM-India Developing a Knowledge Base for Policymaking on India-EU Migration, CARIM-India Research Report 2012/04. Outnumber Births in the EU27, STAT/08/119, 26 August 2008. The Economic Times (30 November 2017). Indians largest non-EU migrants in UK. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/61867729.cms?utm_ source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst. European Commission, Eurostat (2015). Population database. European Commission Home Affairs (2012). International migration database. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/EUROSTAT.

72  S. Irudaya Rajan Eurostat News Release (2009), Population Projections (2008–2060). From 2015, deaths projected to from the South, Geneva: International Organization for Migration. Gereke, Johanna (2013). Highly-skilled Indian migrants in Germany, CARIMIndia Research Report 2013/32. Gupta, Pralok (2013). Facilitating migration between India and the EU: A policy perspective, Migration Policy Centre, CARIM-India Research Report 2013/06. www.india-eu-migration.eu/. HR and Tax Alert (January 2017). Italy introduces new immigration permits for non-EU nationals. ICWA (2001). Report of the high level committee on the Indian diaspora, New Delhi: Indian Council of World Affairs. Khadria, B. (2008a). “India; skilled migration to developed countries, labour migration to the Gulf”, in S. Castles and R. Delgado Wise (eds) Migration and development: Perspectives from the South, Geneva: International Organization for Migration. Khadria, B. (2008b). “Future of migration from South Asia to the OECD countries: Reflections on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh”, Paper Prepared for the OECD IFP Workshop on the Future of Migration to OECD Countries, Paris. Khadria, B. (2009). “Migration of highly skilled Indians: Current policy trends and future insights on India – US migration”, Speech at Georgetown University Institute for the Study of International Migration, 8 September. Martin, Philip. (2003). “Erfahrungen der amerikanishcen Zuwanderungspolitik mit Facharbeitern”, in U. Heilemann und H. D. von Loeffelholz (eds) Arbeitsmarktsteuerung der Zuwanderung - neuere deutsche Ansätze und internationale Erfahrungen. Heft 43. pp. 51–72. http://www.rwi-essen.de/ Martin, Philip (2012). “Attracting highly skilled migrants: US experience and lessons for the EU”, Background Paper, CARIM-India Research Report 2012/01. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI). Martin, Philip and Heinz Werner. (2000). Recruitment of IT specialists: American way – a modal for Germany? IAB-Kurzbericht, No. 5/2000, Nürnberg: Institute for Employment Research (IAB). Migration and Remittance data (World Bank), Migration Remittance Matrix (2013). Potnuru, Basant Kumar, and V. Sam (2015). India EU engagement and international migration: Historical perspectives, future challenges, and policy imperatives. IIMB Management Review, Vol. 27, Issue 1, pp. 35–43. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.iimb.2015.01.001 Raveesh, S. (2013). Brain drain: Socio-economic impact on Indian society. International Journal of Humanities and Science Invention, Vol. 2, Issue 5, pp. 12–17.United Kingdom Border Agency (2012). www.ukba.homeoffice. gov.uk.

5 Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe Loss or win situation in case of return? Pauline Melin Introduction Currently, Europe and India are demographically opposite. While Europe is faced with an ageing population and labour shortages in different sectors (European Commission 2011: 2, 2014: 3), India has a booming population growth. By 2024, the UN predicts that India will become the most populated country in the world (UN 2017: 5) and expects it to be a net sender of more than 100,000 migrants annually (UN 2017: 10). In that context, there is a great potential for an increasing migration between India and Europe. The importance of labour mobility has been recognised by both actors since 2010 (EUIndia Joint Statement 2010: 11). In order to enhance it, India and the European Union and its Member States have agreed upon a Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (CAMM) between India and the European Union and its Member States during their last summit (EUIndia Joint Declaration 2016). The continuous and future labour migration between India and Europe poses a number of questions with regard to the rights of the migrant workers. One of these questions concerns their social security rights. Due to their atypical career, migrant workers can end up in a situation where they are not covered by any national social security system. They can also contribute to both the social security systems of the country of origin and the country of work. Migrant workers can be in a situation of loss if they are contributing to a social security system without the possibility to benefit from it. Such a situation is particularly relevant for migrant workers as many social security systems require a certain number of years of contributions before a person can be granted benefits. But due to the temporary nature of the work, migrant workers might be unable to contribute for the sufficient number of years. They face a risk of lack of recognition of the

74  Pauline Melin periods of contributions made. Moreover, those who are sent by a company to work in another country could be in a losing situation if they have to pay social security contributions in the State where the company is based and in the State where they work. They face a risk of paying double contributions. Finally, migrant workers are in a losing situation when they are not able to export social security benefits upon return in their country of origin while having contributed for it in their country of work. They face a risk of being unable to export benefits acquired. Recognising those risks faced by migrant workers, the European Union, its Member States and India have agreed that the cooperation on social security issues is one of the top priority of their collaboration (EU-India Joint Declaration 2016: 2). The most common and recommended way of protecting migrant workers’ social security rights is through the conclusion of bilateral agreements on social security between States (International Labour Organisation 2006: 18). However, only 23 percent of the worldwide population is covered by an agreement on social security (Holzmann and Koettl 2011: 5). India has understood the importance of concluding reciprocal agreements with other States in order to secure the social security rights of its immigrating population. It has currently 18 bilateral agreements and 12 of those are with a Member State of the European Union.1 The first bilateral agreement concluded by India with a Member State of the European Union was the one with Belgium in 2006. On the contrary, there is still no bilateral agreement between UK and India despite the fact that the UK is the top destination of Indian migrants in Europe. Therefore, Belgium and the UK represent opposite study cases of cooperation with India in the context of protecting social security rights of Indian migrant workers. This paper aims at analysing the situation of Indian migrant workers going to work either the UK or in Belgium and how their social security rights are impacted upon return in India. This paper is restricted to old-age benefits; i.e. pension, survivors and invalidity benefits as they are the most common benefits covered by bilateral agreements (Avato 2008: 2; Sabates Wheeler 2009: 9; Van Ginneken 2013: 215). As already identified above, migrant workers’ social security rights are faced with three main types of risks: the risk of lack of recognition of periods of contributions completed in one country; the risk of paying double contributions; and the risk of being unable to export benefits acquired. Those three risks can be overcome through the help of three rules: the rule on aggregation of periods of insurance, the rule on avoiding double contributions, and the rule on export of benefits.

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 75 In the case of Belgium, it would be interesting to see whether the agreement concluded in 2006 with India permits to overcome the risks identified. For the UK, the importance of the legal analysis would be to consider whether there is an existing strategy aimed at diminishing the risks despite the lack of a bilateral agreement with India.

Situation of Indian migrant workers in Belgium and their return to India Indian nationals are not the most represented foreign national population in Belgium; however, they are the largest group of foreign nationals who obtain a work permit (Work Permit B). Additionally, more than half of the special permits for highly skilled workers2were given to Indians (OECD 2014: 238). Many Indian-based IT companies are established around Brussels (Mukherjee and Chanda 2012: 23) and there are a lot of economic links between India and Anvers/Antwerp in Belgium in relation to the industry of diamonds (Cosemans and Gooderis 2013: 2). In this context of strong labour migration and investment perspectives, Belgium was the first European Union Member State with whom India signed a bilateral agreement on social security in 2006. The Agreement entered into force on the 1 September 2009. Alongside the Agreement, an Administrative Arrangement was concluded to further spell out all the administrative and procedural details. Without going into too much details concerning the content of the Agreement, the following paragraphs highlight the important elements it contains for Indian migrant workers. The India-Belgium Agreement on social security has to be seen as a model for other European Union countries’ agreements with India. In terms of scope, the Agreement covers all persons who are or have been subject to the legislation of either of the Contracting States (Article 3 of the Agreement). Hence, the Agreement does not concern exclusively Indian or Belgian nationals but rather anyone who has or has been subject to the Indian or Belgian social security legislation. In addition, the Agreement covers all persons deriving rights from persons subject to the legislation of either of the Contracting States. Such persons deriving rights must be traditionally understood as family members. It is fair to say that the India-Belgium Agreement covers potentially a large amount of persons. With regard to the benefits it covers, the Agreement mentions the specific national legislations it applies to. Without entering into the details of the national legislations, it can be said that the India-Belgium social security Agreement covers essentially pension rights, i.e. old-age, survivor’s and invalidity pensions

76  Pauline Melin (Article 2 of the Agreement). Traditionally, bilateral agreements are based on the reciprocity principle which means that countries would include in the agreement only elements that exist in both systems. On that note, it is interesting to consider that the Belgian legislations covered by the India-Belgium Agreement concern both employed and self-employed persons whereas the Indian legislations only concern employed persons. This can be explained by the fact that India does not have a social security legislation covering self-employed persons. The Agreement between India and Belgium contains a rule on the determining the law applicable (Article 7 of the Agreement). The purpose of such a rule is to ensure that the worker does not pay double contributions, one of the risk identified above, in India and in Belgium. There is a general rule for all workers and specific rules for workers who are in particular working situations. The general rule is the lex loci labori (Article 7a of the Agreement). This means that the law applicable to the social security situation of the person is the law of the country where that person works. The specific rules concern the situation of members of the travelling or flying personnel, seafarers, members of diplomatic missions and posted workers. Those are the traditional categories of workers who are in a particular working situation and therefore who benefit from special rules on the law applicable. However, there is the possibility for India and Belgium to agree to add other categories of workers (Article 10 of the Agreement). Posted workers are the most important category of workers who are exempted from the rule of contributing to the country where they work. The special rule for posted workers provides that the person who is employed by a company in one of the Contracting States will remain to be subject to the legislation of that State even though he moves to work in the other Contracting State (Article 8 of the Agreement). This means essentially that the posted worker does not have to pay contributions in the country where he works. That rule applies for a period of 60 months (Article 8(1) of the Agreement). The same rule will apply to his family members provided that they do not exercise professional activities themselves. For example, an Indian worker is sent by an Indian IT company in Belgium for a work mission. He remains subject to the Indian social security legislation even though he is residing in Belgium. His family also remains subject to the Indian legislation as long as they do not take up employment in Belgium themselves. This means that the IT Indian worker and his family members will be paying contributions to the Indian social security system for a period of 60 months. According to the India-Belgium Agreement, the 60 months-period can be extended if the Contracting States agree (Article 8(2) of the

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 77 Agreement). However, it must be said that the National Administration of Social Security’s practices in Belgium only allows for a maximum of 5 years (60 months) of exemption of contributions for posted workers (Mussche, Corluy, and Marx 2013: 62). Hence, it means that it is very unlikely that Belgium would ever agree to extend the period of exemption for more than the 60 months provided in the India-Belgium Agreement. The procedure for a posted worker to remain subject to the legislation of the country from where he was previously working is that the competent authority must have delivered a certificate, called the certificate of coverage, stating that the posted worker remains subject to its legislation and until which date (Article 4(1) of the India-Belgium Administrative Arrangement). The original copy of the certificate must be kept by the worker in order to prove his situation in the receiving country (Article 4(3) of the India-Belgium Administrative Arrangement). Finally, a copy of that certificate is sent to the competent authority of the Contracting State where the worker is posted (Article 4(4) of the India-Belgium Administrative Arrangement). Another important element contained in the India-Belgium social security Agreement is the rule on the aggregation of periods of insurance. Such a rule enables the competent authorities who decide on the grant of social security benefits to take into account periods of insurance completed abroad. Without a rule on the aggregation of periods, it might very well be that a worker does not qualify for the entitlement to a benefit due to the lack of sufficient period of contributions. This issue is a typical issue faced by migrant workers who contribute to the social security systems of different countries for temporary periods of time. With the rule on the aggregation of periods of insurance, the insurance periods completed pursuant to the legislation of one of the Contracting State to the social security Agreement are totalised with the periods completed pursuant to the legislation of the other Contracting State. In the case of the India-Belgium social security Agreement, the periods are totalised for the acquisition, retention or recovery of the right to old-age, survivors and invalidity benefits (Articles 11, 13 and 16 of the Agreement). Additionally, when the legislation of a Contracting State subordinates the granting of old-age or survivors’ benefits to the insurance in a specific occupation, only equivalent periods of insurance completed in the other Contracting State for the same occupation shall be taken into account (Articles 11(2) and 16(2) of the Agreement). However, if the periods of insurance in a given occupation did not entitled the person to the said benefits, the insurance periods shall be taken into account for the general scheme of employed persons (Article 11(3) and 16(3) of the Agreement).

78  Pauline Melin The India-Belgium social security agreement provide for the possibility to export benefits (Article 5 of the Agreement). The provision on export of benefits has two components. First, it provides for equal treatment in the export of benefits. Hence, it provides that Indian workers shall be able to export benefits in the same conditions as Belgian workers when they decide to go reside in a third-country. The benefits should be paid directly to the beneficiary (Article 7 of the Administrative Arrangement). Second, the India-Belgium Agreement provides that the Contracting States shall not reduce or modify benefits acquired under its legislation based on the fact that the beneficiary is residing in the territory of the other Contracting State. With regard to the actual benefits that can be exported, the India-Belgium Agreement only allows for the export of old-age and survivor’s benefits, not for invalidity benefits. The restriction to export to old-age and survivor’s benefits is common practice of the bilateral agreements signed by Belgium. Also, the India-Belgium social security Agreement contains a provision on equal treatment (Article 4 of the Agreement). Equal treatment is provided for persons covered by the Agreement for the application of the legislation of the Contracting State where they ordinarily reside. The presence of such a provision and its relevancy for Indian migrant workers in Belgium should however be relativised. The equal treatment provision does not really have an added value for Indians working and residing legally in Belgium, as the Belgian social security system is based on work and contributions and is therefore open to everyone, migrant or not (Mussche, Corluy, and Marx 2013: 62). As a result, equal treatment is already provided without the need of an additional provision in a bilateral agreement. Finally, in order to smooth out the process of entitlement and export of benefits as well as potential exemptions from contributions, the India-Belgium social security Agreement contains a number of provisions on administrative cooperation. Important for Indian migrant workers is the fact that the documents and certificates delivered by one competent authority are exempt from further certification by the competent authority of the other Contracting States (Article 20(3) of the Agreement). The documents and certificates are also exempt from taxes or stamp duties or any recording fees if it is also the case for documents delivered by the other Contracting States (Article 20(2) of the Agreement). Hence, when the Indian Provident Fund delivers a certificate of coverage which is the certificate proving that an Indian worker remains subject to the Indian social security system while working temporarily in Belgium, the competent Belgian authority must recognise

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 79 the certificate without asking for further certification. Additionally, if the competent Belgian authority does not charge any tax or stamp duty or any recording fee for a Belgian certificate of coverage, it should not do so for an Indian certificate of coverage. Another important element of administrative cooperation is the situation of error made by the social security beneficiary. It states that when a social security beneficiary applies to a competent authority in one of the Contracting State, whereas he should have done so in the other Contracting State, his application shall be acceptable if presented within the specified time limit of the first State (Article 21 of the Agreement). For example, if an Indian migrant worker makes a mistake in applying for a benefit in Belgium whereas it should have done so in India, his application should still be accepted by the Indian Provident Fund if the application was made within the correct time limit prescribed in Belgium. This rule is made in order to enable migrant workers to correct their mistake of application while still protecting the States against potential abuses by migrant worker through the requirement of the time limit. In conclusion, the India-Belgium Agreement provides a protection against all the risks identified in the introduction of this paper. The Agreement covers migrant workers and their family members. It contains a rule ensuring that periods of contributions accomplished in one country are recognised in the other. It provides for the possibility of export of old-age and survivor’s benefits. Furthermore, in the case of posted workers, the Agreement permits the exemption from contributing to the social security system of the country where the work is temporarily carried out if the worker remains subject to the social security system of the country from where he is sent. In that case, the Agreement avoids situations where workers and companies would have to pay social security contributions in both the country where the work is carried out and the country where the company is established. The Agreement has the consequence that Indian migrant workers are not in a losing situation when they come work in Belgium and return to India afterwards.

Situation of Indian migrant workers in the UK and their return to India Contrarily to the situation of Indian workers in Belgium, Indian workers in the UK do not benefit from a social security agreement. Despite the fact that Indians represent the number one immigrant population from outside Europe working in the UK (Broomfield 2014: 44), there is still no bilateral agreement between the UK and India securing the

80  Pauline Melin rights of Indian migrant workers. The discussions on the conclusion of such an agreement have been going on for years (Shubhajit 2011; The Economic Times 2012; Puneet 2016; The Hindu 2016) with a great willingness from the Indian side to conclude it. The lack of bilateral agreement between the UK and India sits at odds with the number of bilateral agreements concluded by the UK with other countries. Sabates-Wheeler considers the UK to be a good example of a European country that concludes a large amount of bilateral and multilateral agreements on social security in order to protect migrant workers (Sabates-Wheeler 2009: 9). Besides the social security coordination regime between the UK and EU countries as well as EEA countries and Switzerland, the UK has concluded bilateral social security agreements with Barbados, Bermuda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Chile, Guernsey, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Mauritius, Montenegro, New Zealand, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Serbia, Turkey and the US. In lack of a social security agreement, the situation of the social security rights of Indian migrants is determined solely by the respective national legislations. This means that when an Indian migrant worker comes to work in the UK, UK law determines whether a person is entitled to benefits, has to contribute to the national insurance system and is able to export benefits upon return to India. In order to determine whether the Indian migrant workers are in a losing situation or not in respect to their social security rights when they come to work in the UK, the three risks identified above in the introduction are considered. First, it is inquired whether they are entitled to pension benefits, invalidity and survivor’s benefits. Second, it is looked at whether they have to contribute to the UK national social security system or if they can be exempted if they continue to contribute to the Indian national social security system. And third, the export of pension benefits, invalidity and survivor’s benefits is examined. First, in the UK, the Pension State Scheme, the Bereavement Allowance and the Widowed Parent’s Allowance (survivor’s benefits), and the Employment and Support Allowance (invalidity benefits) are all contributory social security benefits. This means that access to pension benefits, invalidity and survivor’s benefits depends on the contributions paid to the UK national social security system. Hence, entitlement to those benefits is not restricted to UK nationals and can be granted to Indian workers. However, the lack of a bilateral agreement between India and the UK has the consequence that periods of contributions paid in India will not be taken into account for the purpose of getting benefits in the UK. Usually, when States conclude a bilateral

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 81 agreement on social security, they include a provision on the aggregation of insurance periods. Such a provision is, for example, contained in the India-Belgium social security agreement (Articles 11, 13 and 16 of the Agreement). A provision on the aggregation of insurance periods ensures that periods of contributions paid in one of the Contracting State are taken into account for entitlement to social security benefits in the other Contracting State. Hence, depending on whether an Indian worker has contributed for a sufficiently long period of time in the UK to get access to pension, survivor or invalidity benefits, that person might be in a losing situation. For example, according to the new rules on State pension applicable for anyone reaching the pension age in the UK after 6 April 2016, 10 qualifying years are necessary in order to be entitled to State Pension (Section 13 of the State Pension Regulations 2015). Generally, the 10 years are achieved through working and contributing to the National Insurance contributions. For an Indian worker who comes to work for a couple of years only in the UK, the 10 years necessary for qualifying for the UK State Pension will not be reached. However, that person will contribute during the years of working in the UK. In those cases, where people work and contribute below the qualifying period and then go back to their country of origin, they are in a losing situation. Second, one of the interests in concluding a bilateral agreement on social security is to provide for a rule avoiding double contributions. Indeed, when a person is sent by a company to work in another country that person and that company are required to pay social security contributions in both the country of work and in the country where the company is based. Such a situation is avoided through the inclusion of a rule on double contributions in bilateral social security agreements. Such a rule would provide that the worker and the company remain subject to the social security system of the country where the company is based and are exempted from paying contributions in the country of work. That rule is not in place between India and the UK resulting in potential financial loss for both migrant workers and companies who end up paying double contributions. However, if India had an agreement on social security with the UK such as the Korea-UK Agreement or the Japan-UK Agreement, the period of exemption would be of 5 years with a possibility of extension if both Contracting States agree (Article 5 of the Korea-UK Agreement and Article 5 of the JapanUK Agreement). The period of 5 years of exemption corresponds also to all bilateral agreements concluded by India with European Union Member States, with the exception of Sweden which only allows for a 2-year exemption (Article 7 of the India-Sweden Agreement).

82  Pauline Melin Thirdly, bilateral agreements on social security often contain a rule on export of benefits. This rule on export of benefits ensures that migrant workers can take the benefits from the national system they have contributed to back in their country of origin. Because of the lack of bilateral agreement between the UK and India, there is no rule on export of benefits. However, this does not necessarily mean that Indian migrant workers would not be able to take UK benefits they have contributed to back to India. Indeed, such a possibility exists for certain type of benefits according to UK law. UK law allows for the export of state pension benefits and survivor’s benefits, i.e. bereavement benefits and widowed parent’s allowance, under certain conditions (Section 20 of Pensions Act 2014). One of these conditions is that the person must have been resident in the UK before moving abroad in order to be able to export those benefits (Laura Broomfield (Home Office) 2014: 39). Hence, if an Indian husband worked in the UK but left his wife and children in India, his wife will not be able to export the survivors benefits in India upon the death of her husband. However, if the wife was living in the UK and then decided to return to India few months after her husband’s death, she would be able to export the benefits. Next to the possibility of exporting survivors’ benefits, there is also the possibility to export State pensions. State pensions are exportable by anyone who has reached the qualifying period to benefit from it. However, the lack of a bilateral agreement would have the consequence that the qualifying period is harder to reach for migrant workers who have contributed to different national social security systems during their career. Additionally, the State pension is calculated according to the standard of living. As a result, pensioners living abroad receive a less extensive pension as pensioners living in the UK. According to the European Court of Human Rights, such a situation is not discriminatory as pensioners living abroad and pensioners living in the UK are not considered to be in an equivalent situation (European Court of Human Rights 2010). One might think that a bilateral agreement on social security could solve the issue of the amount of pension received by pensioners living abroad. Indeed, if the bilateral agreement provides for the possibility of uprating the pension benefits, then pensioners living abroad might receive an equivalent amount or more than those staying in the UK. However, there is a policy pursued by the UK government to only conclude new bilateral agreements on social security if they are cost-neutral (Spiegel 2010: 39). This means that the bilateral agreements should not contain the possibility of uprating or indexing the exportable benefits. Therefore, the current situation between India and the UK is the best possible situation with regard to

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 83 the export of pension rights. A bilateral agreement would only help with regard to the qualifying period for being granted the pension rights but not with regard to the export of pension rights. Finally, noncontributory benefits are usually not exportable, except for industrial injuries disablement (Avato 2008: 2–3). In conclusion, it is as simple as to say that because the UK does not have a bilateral agreement with India on social security, Indian migrant workers who come for work in the UK and then go back to India are in a losing situation. This section has looked at three elements: the access to State pension, survivors and invalidity benefits; the issue of double contributions; and the export of the State pension, survivors and invalidity benefits. For the three elements, the UK national legislation protects Indian migrant workers to a certain extent. It does provide access to the benefits as well as the possibility to export it. However, due to the fact that the UK does not recognise the periods of contributions already completed in India, some Indian migrant workers do not reach the sufficient qualifying period to be granted benefits and export it. Such a situation would be avoided by a rule on the aggregation of periods of insurance in a bilateral agreement. Concerning the risk of double contributions, this is probably the main issue of the current situation. Due to the lack of a UK-India Agreement on social security, Indian migrant workers and Indian companies in the UK might be in a situation where they have to pay social security contributions both in the UK and in India.

Conclusion The situation of Indian migrant workers’ social security rights differs, whether they can benefit from a bilateral agreement or not. The case of Belgium illustrated that a bilateral agreement can include provisions permitting to avoid all the risks faced by migrant workers. Indeed, the India-Belgium bilateral agreement contains a rule ensuring that periods of contributions completed in one country are taken into account for the acquisition, retention or recovery of old-age, survivors and invalidity benefits. In addition, it provides for a general rule that the law applicable to the social security situation of a worker is the law of the country where the work is carried out. This general rule is however derogated by special rules in cases of particular work situations such as the situation of posted worker. Hence, Indian migrant workers do not face the risk of paying double contributions. Finally, the India-Belgium bilateral agreement contains a rule allowing export of benefits.

84  Pauline Melin On the other end, the case of UK illustrated the situation of Indian migrant workers who do not benefit from a bilateral agreement. In that case, the question was to know whether their situation was negatively impacted by the lack of bilateral agreement. This paper has shown that, despite the lack of bilateral agreement, UK law protects the social security rights of Indian migrant workers. The access and export of social security benefits is neutral with regard to the nationality of the person. The qualifying criterion is whether that person has contributed to the UK social security system for a sufficient number of years. While the system is being neutral with regard to nationality requirement, for migrant workers who move temporarily to the UK, the sufficient number of years of contributions might not be reachable. Finally, Indian migrant workers who are sent by their Indian company to work temporarily in the UK might be in a situation of paying social security contributions to the Indian social security system as well as to the UK one. In the end, it cannot be said that, without bilateral agreement, Indian migrant workers are in a losing situation as national legislations protect them. But it can certainly be said that the presence of a bilateral agreement facilitates the recognition of periods of contributions completed abroad as well as facilitates the export of benefits through administrative cooperation. In the context of a bilateral agreement, Indian migrant workers’ social security rights will be better protected than without it.

Acknowledgements This PhD project is part of the TRANSMIC Project funded by the Marie Curie Actions – Initial Training Networks funding scheme.

Notes 1 Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Denmark, Hungary, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Portugal. 2 Either the Work permit B specifically for high-skilled workers or the EU Blue Card.

References Bilateral agreements Editorial. 2009a. Administrative Arrangement concerning the Implementation of the Agreement between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of India on Social Security. Belgian Law Gazette, 31 August 2009.

Social security benefits of Indian migrants in Europe 85 Editorial. 2002. Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Japan on Social Security, signed in 2000. UN, Treaty Series, 2002, Volume 2169, I-38018. Editorial. 2009b Agreement on Social Security between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of India. Belgian Law Gazette, 21 August 2009. Editorial. 2012 Agreement on Social Security between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Sweden, signed in 2012. www.mea.gov.in/images/pdf/ ssa-sweden.pdf (accessed 28 August 2017). Editorial. 2001 Convention on Social Security between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Korea, signed in 1999. UN, Treaty Series, 2001, Volume 2139, I-37297.

UK legislation Pensions Act 2014 c.19. State Pension Regulations 2015 No.173.

Official documents and judgments European Commission. 2011. ‘The Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM)’, Communication, COM (2011) 743 final, Brussels. European Commission. 2014. ‘An Open and Secure Europe: Making It Happen’, Communication, COM (2014) 154 final, Brussels. EU-India Joint Statement. 10 December 2010. Brussels. EU-India Joint Declaration. 2016. ‘Joint Declaration on a Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility between India and the European Union and Its Member States’, 29 March 2016, Brussels. European Court of Human Rights. 2010. ‘Carson and Others v. the United Kingdom’, Appl.42184/05, 16 March, Strasbourg. International Labour Organisation. 2006. ‘ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration: Non-Binding Principles and Guidelines for a RightsBased Approach to Labour Migration’, Geneva, pp. 1–32. Laura Broomfield (Home Office). 2014. ‘Migrant Access to Social Security: Policies and Practice in the United Kingdom’, National Contribution from the United Kingdom, European Migration Network Report, pp. 1–59. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Population Division). 2017. ‘World Population Prospects. The 2017 Revision. Key Findings and Advance Tables’. https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/ WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf (accessed 28 August 2017).

Academic sources Avato, Johanna. 2008. ‘Portability of Social Security and Health Care Benefits in the United Kingdom’. Human Development Network-Social Protection and Labor, The World Bank, Background Study, pp. 1–7.

86  Pauline Melin Broomfield, Laura. 2014. ‘Migrant Access to Social Security: Policies and Practice in the United Kingdom. National Contribution from the United Kingdom’. EMN Study, pp. 3–56. Cosemans, Sara and Gooderis, Idesbald. 2013. ‘Indian Migration to Belgium’. CARIM-India Research Report 2013/45, pp. 1–19. Holzmann, Robert and Koettl, Johannes. 2011. ‘Portability of Pension, Health, and other Social Benefits: Facts, Concepts, Issues’. Social Protection and Labor, The World Bank, Discussion Paper, No.1110, pp. 1–58. Mukherjee, Deeparghya and Chanda, Rupa. 2012. ‘Investment and Migration Linkages between India and the EU’. CARIM-India Research Report 2012/16, pp. 1–29. Mussche, Ninke, Corluy, Vincent, and Marx, Ive. 2013. ‘Migrant Access to Social Security-Policy and Practice in Belgium’. EMN Study, pp. 7–101. OECD. 2014.International Migration Outlook 2014. Special Focus: Mobilising Migrants’ Skills for Economic Success, OECD Publishing, pp. 9–311. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1787/migr_outlook-2014-en (accessed 28 August 2017). Sabates-Wheeler, Rachel. 2009. ‘Social Security for Migrants: Trends, Best Practices and Ways Forward’. International Social Security Association, Working Paper No.12, Geneva, pp. 3–22. Spiegel, Bernhard. 2010. ‘Analysis of Member States’ Bilateral Agreements on Social Security with Third Countries’. European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities DG, Report, pp. 3–70. Van Ginneken, Wouter. 2013. ‘Social Protection for Migrant Workers: National and International Policy Challenges’, European Journal of Social Security, Vol.15, No.2, pp. 209–219.

Online newspaper articles The Economic Times. 2012. ‘No Relief for Indians from Social Security Taxes in UK’, 16 April. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/workingabroad/no-relief-for-indians-from-social-security-taxes-in-uk/articleshow/12682075.cms (accessed 28 August 2017). The Hindu. 2016. ‘U.K Raises Tax Issues, India Visa Curbs’, 2 December. www.thehindu.com/business/U.K-raises-tax-issues-India-visa-curbs/arti cle16439225.ece (accessed 28 August 2017). Puneet, Gupta. 2016. ‘How Social Security Pact with UK Can Benefit Indian Employees’. Financial Express, 23 November. www.financialexpress.com/ industry/banking-finance/how-social-security-pact-with-uk-can-benefitindian-employees/452977/ (accessed 28 August 2017). Shubhajit, Roy. 2011. ‘Citing Fund Crunch, UK Says No to Social Security Pact’. The Indian Express, 22 March. http://archive.indianexpress. com/news/citing-fund-crunch-uk-says-no-to-social-security-pact/765462/ (accessed 28 August 2017).

6 Challenges and opportunities for the Indian migrants in the EU In the context of EU enlargement and Brexit Puja Guha Introduction 1 May 2004 marked the fifth and the largest European Union enlargement, with accessions for 10 countries, eight of which were Eastern European.1 Following this, another round of enlargement took place in 2007, which gave Bulgaria and Romania EU member status. The introduction of Eastern European countries to the existing EU-15 Member States not only added to the cultural and social diversity of the EU member states, but also called for policies to manage the large economic gap in terms of wages, trade, etc., that existed between the old and the new member states. The most important and a much-discussed phenomenon which followed the accession process was the migration of labour from these New Member States (NMS) to the older EU-15 countries. After the 2004 accession round, citizens from the eight eastern NMS residing in the EU-15 increased from about 900,000 persons to about 1.9 million in 2007. This corresponds to an annual net increase of 250,000 persons per annum in the first four years since EU enlargement.2 During the same period, the number of foreign residents from Bulgaria and Romania in the EU increased from about 700,000 persons to almost 1.9 million, though these countries joined the EU only in 2007.3 While certain transitional restrictions were imposed by some countries, Ireland, Sweden and the UK allowed free movement of labour from the newly accessed countries. This had consequences. Austria and Germany, who received about 60 percent of the immigration flows to EU before enlargement, were replaced by Ireland and the UK. Migrants from Bulgaria and Romania, meanwhile, preferred Spain and Italy. The year 2016 marked yet another important event – the unprecedented exit of UK from the EU. Such a move is bound to have several economic and political ramifications on the world economy. However,

88  Puja Guha India being the top migrant-sending country to the UK, may face particular scepticism and vulnerability in labour mobility to the UK. A study conducted by FICCI in 2016 with Indian companies having operations in or doing business with the UK indicate that a majority of the companies feel that skilled migration is going to decline significantly.4 Such scepticism arises from the fact that “taking back control” and “sovereignty” have been widely stated as main reasons for UK to exit from EU. Thus, there is a possibility that UK makes its border regulations stricter post-exit. For Indian labour, the main destination for migrants to the EU has been the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain. With Spain and Italy opening up to newer countries, India is bound to face competition from the New Member States (NMS). With smoother intra-EU labour mobility for young and relatively cheap labour from Central European NMS, India may face stiff competition both in the semi-skilled and low-skill sectors such as farming etc., and also in skilled migration specifically in the IT and technology sector. With easy access to cheap English-speaking labour, it is feared that EU enlargement could have an adverse impact on business process outsourcing (BPO) operations from India. The offshoring business remains predominantly Englishspeaking. After the United States, the United Kingdom remains the largest market for Indian companies. With the addition of 10 new countries, most from East Europe, geographical proximity to Western Europe, relatively lower wages and greater potential for labour mobility within the EU is likely to put more pressure on Indian firms for IT Enabled Services (ITES) and BPOs compelling them to be more competitive through value addition. The objective of this chapter is to understand the effects of postenlargement migration flows within the EU on labour mobility between Indian and the EU. While, on the one hand, the accession of these States within the EU and the UK’s exit from the EU means competition for Indian migrant labour, on the other hand it has opened up newer avenues of mobility between India and the EU. The paper simultaneously looks at both the competition faced by Indian labour and also possible opportunities in terms of new destinations that might have opened up for Indian workers. The data suggests that NMS migrants are gradually increasing in number in the EU destinations which have traditionally been dominated by Indian migrants, thus increasing competition. But, a deeper analysis shows that there are other potential sectors within the older EU countries which remain to be explored. Moreover, with the changing labour market conditions in the NMS, increases in job vacancies,

Challenges and opportunities 89 higher wages, etc., many of these newly accessed States are becoming attractive to Indian migrants. Given that the process of enlargement culminated only recently, and Brexit is a very recent event, the data on labour migration and other labour market parameters are still quite scarce and preliminary. The chapter uses the data to examine the trends of migration pre- and post-accession and attempts to highlight the changes in the patterns of migration as well as changes in the profile of the migrants. Based on these trends it then comments upon the challenges that Indian migrants may face as well as the possible opportunities that they might explore in the future years. The chapter is organised into seven sections. Section 2 explains the trends in the internal mobility within the EU, from the NMS, preand post-enlargement. Section 3 examines the changes in the trends of Indian migration to the EU, over the same period and identifies the preferred EU destinations for Indian migrants. Section 4 provides a comparative analysis between Indian and NMS migrants in the preferred EU countries, based on competition and challenges. Section 5 explores the effects of Brexit on Indian migrants. Section 6 highlights the possible opportunities that might emerge for Indian immigrants and concludes the chapter by providing certain policy directions.

EU enlargement and internal mobility: pre- and post-enlargement The EU accession of 2004 and 2007 was a milestone in the EU’s policy regime. Bringing the 105 (EU8+2) underdeveloped former communist countries together with first world developed nations, in such a way that there was free movement of goods, services and labour had never before been attempted by any international consortium. The striking diversity in the social, economic and political backgrounds of these countries created conducive factors for labour to move from the lesser developed regions to the more developed regions. As the dual sector rural-urban migration model of Lewis (1954) suggests, higher wages and better welfare benefits in the labour-scarce developed countries provided enough incentives for EU-10 labourers to migrate. Though Western Europe had historically experienced migration from the Eastern Europe, it was feared that open borders would mean a surge in immigrants to the west, which may have meant unfavourable consequences for the socio-economic status of the receiving countries. The sudden surge in immigration was first pointed out in a study by Boeri and Brücker (2001) where they suggested that EU-8 citizens residing in

90  Puja Guha EU-15 might increase from 0.85 million to 3.9 million, and that there would be an influx of 335,000 migrants each year from the eastern to the western countries. Though these estimates were based on certain assumptions regarding absence of any mobility restrictions and convergence speed, it, nevertheless led to debate about free movement of labour between the borders of the “old” EU and the “new” EU. Given such concerns certain mobility restrictions were adopted by a few of the EU-15 countries, in order to manage immigration flows. The timeline of restrictions abolition by the older EU-15 countries can be summarised in Figure 6.1. Older EU countries, for Bulgaria and Romania, will have to wait until 2014. While most of the countries adopted restrictions, the UK, Sweden and Ireland allowed for free movement of labour from the newlyaccessed countries. Austria and Germany were the last to open up to free labour movement. While all the eastern 2008 NMS have been granted free movement in all the older EU countries, for Bulgaria and Romania will have to wait until 2014. It is difficult to provide a comprehensive account of post-enlargement migration flows given the general scarcity of data. Nevertheless, the trend and the pattern of mobility can be traced from the available datasets. Table 6.1 gives the change in the annual migration inflow pre- and post-enlargement. The table suggests that the pre-enlargement migration destinations like Austria, France and Denmark, have been replaced by Italy, Spain, the UK and Germanyas the new preferred destinations. For example, for migrants from Czech Republic the preferred migration destination has changed from Austria, France and Germany to the UK. Similarly for immigrants from Hungary, Germany has replaced

2004 UK, Ireland, Sweden

2006

2009

2011

Finland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherland, Belgium

Denmark, France

Germany, Austria

2014 Free movement for Bulgaria and Romania

Figure 6.1  Phases of abolition of labour mobility restrictions by EU-15 countries Source: Author’s illuistration.

2.69 0.53 0.13 0.82 0.21 0.32 5.69 5.02 0.57 0.17 16.15

0.09 0.06 0.02 0.10 0.08 0.35 1.89 0.32 0.06 0.02 2.98

0.11 0.02 1.68 0.07 0.05 0.05 0.25 0.12 0.03 0.01 2.39

0.34 −0.06 0.00 −0.06 0.00 0.01 −0.02 1.64 −0.02 −0.02 1.80

15.23 −2.01 −0.13 5.83 1.04 2.27 55.18 28.30 1.23 −0.66 106.26

Spain United Kingdom

−3.07 4.43 7.05 −0.40 1.17 0.25 0.80 5.62 0.00 0.07 0.14 0.00 1.44 0.65 1.01 −1.59 0.00 0.18 0.35 −0.32 1.07 0.30 1.40 −0.13 4.32 7.30 7.94 49.31 152.82 1.69 58.20 9.61 1.90 0.45 0.77 13.30 0.89 0.16 0.15 0.00 160.54 15.48 77.80 75.39

NL

Note: Prior to 2004, Poles could migrate temporarily to European countries, with a stipulated period of stay of three months. But many Polish migrants overstayed their stipulated period of legal stay and did not register with the authorities. Thus an increase in the number of Polish migrants beyond 2004 could be explained by “invisible” migrants already residing in the host country. The official statistics do not capture such illegal or invisible migrants.

Source: Author’s calculation from Eurostat database on ‘Immigration by Citizenship’ and OECD Stat Data on International Migration. Change in flow is the difference between the Average inflow of immigrants per year, pre- (1995–2003) and post-enlargement (2004–2009). For Romania and Bulgaria pre-enlargement is 1995–2006 and post-enlargement is 2007–2009.

Bulgaria 0.03 Czech Republic −0.01 Estonia 0.03 Hungary 1.90 Latvia 0.05 Lithuania 0.13 Poland 1.18 Romania 5.97 Slovakia 1.83 Slovenia 0.08 Total Change in Inflow from NMS 11.20

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Italy

Table 6.1 Change in the inflow of migrants from NMS in selected EU-15 countries pre- and post-enlargement, 1995–2009 (in thousands)

92  Puja Guha France as the migration destination of choice. Such changes in the migration destination can be attributed to the restrictions on mobility imposed by these countries during the initial phase of accession. While the UK opened its labour market right from the beginning, Italy and Spain followed in subsequent years. However, inspite of mobility restrictions Germany remained one of the preferred destinations both pre- and post-enlargement. The mobility restrictions adopted provided certain shielding to some types of domestic workers. But, at the same time, Austria and Germany are reported to have growing numbers of NMS citizens who have registered as self-employed service providers (Tamas and Münz, 2006). As for the migrant sending nations, Poland and Romania lead the way with the highest increases in the immigrants to EU-15 countries, both pre- and post-enlargement. They are closely followed by Bulgaria and Slovakia. For Polish Workers, preferred migration destinations are the UK, Ireland and Germany. The UK and Ireland have become increasingly important destinations. The number of migrants to the UK and Ireland was up by 221 percent and 150 percent respectively during the second quarter of 2005. Germany’s share of seasonal workers from Poland has, on the other hand, been gradually decreasing from 35 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2005 (World Bank, 2006). In the UK for three consecutive years after accession, Polish workers outnumbered other nationalities, including Indians, the largest immigrant group in the UK (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski, 2007) While pre-enlargement Polish migrants were mostly temporary migrants, post-enlargement, most Polish migration has been permanent in nature. These are relatively well educated, though postenlargement migration witnessed a rise in the migration of those with lower education (Kaczmarczyk, 2005). Polish immigrants are concentrated predominantly in the “typical” secondary migrant sectors of the receiving economies such as construction, agriculture, cleaning, restaurants and hotels (Kaczmarczyk and Łukowski, 2004). After experiencing the unprecedented influx of migrants from the newly accessed States, during the second round of enlargement whenBulgaria and Romania were to be included, older EU countries became concerned about the scale of migration. Only Sweden and Finland had opened their labour markets fully to the new member states. The UK, which had opened its market during the 2004 accession, placed strong restrictions on migrants entering from Romania and Bulgaria, fearing the displacement of domestic workers from local services like health, education and housing (FT, 2007c). However, the restrictions did not

Challenges and opportunities 93 stop the Romanians and the Bulgarians from entering Spain. This was primarily due to the two-year labour exchange contract, under which employers in Spain contract workers to fill in job vacancies which no resident wants. Most jobs of this kind are found in the agricultural sector. In 2007, 506,000 Romanians registered under this scheme and were set to replace Moroccans as the biggest foreign community in Spain (FT, 2007b). In Italy, since freedom-to-travel rights were implemented on 1 January 2007, many Romanian migrants travelled to Italy. Romanians have visa-free access to Italy and other EU countries, but they cannot work there unless they secure work permits. Most of these migrants are Romas (gypsies) and they have been associated with criminal activities and they have been seen as a threat to public safety. Though the country needs foreign labour, the sudden influx of immigrants has created pressure in managing the flow, especially of illegal migration.

Nature of India-EU mobility: pre- and postenlargement While the EU authorities have debated the socio-economic impact of internal mobility, the non-EU labour sending countries to the EU have been concerned about stiff competition and the displacement of labour from these countries. India has stood as the top-migrant sending country in the World with an estimated 11.4 million migrants residing abroad.6 Migrants include both high-skilled and low-skilled groups. India is not the largest migrant sending nation to the EU, but the proportion of Indian migrants of the total migrants in EU-15 is significant. Based on the Eurostat data, 22,446,958 migrants came to the EU15, of which 571,706 were from India, namely 2.5 percent.7 The numbers of Asian migrants to the EU-15 stood at 3,266,396: 17 percent of these were Indian.8 Thus not only are Indian Migrants a fast growing group in the EU, they are also significant numerically when we consider Asian migrants to the EU. The spread of Indian migrants in the different countries of EU-15 group is given in Table 6.2. From that table it will be seen that Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK have traditionally been the preferred destinations of Indian migrants travelling to the EU. The number one immigration destination in the EU is the UK, where Indian immigration flows have increased by more than 900 percent in the last decade. While migration flows to Germany have been quite stable over the last decade, flows to Italy have been spasmodic, with certain years seeing lesser inflows than other years, with the exception of 2007 where there was a sudden jump, when the

1998

828 561 5,077 334 289 1,041 112 – 5,417 726 322 10,346

1999

1,271 662 6,544 368 648 1,004 158 – 7,011 661 369 17,150

2000

2002

836 1,405 852 959 8,949 9,433 384 343 835 887 1,142 1,261 186 188 – – 4,820 7,155 684 614 428 556 16,001 20,956

2001

638 752 31,257

1,428 1,101 9,227 529 2,640 1,221 195 –

2003

2005

1,187 1,255 1,213 1,339 9,125 8,364 613 710 3,709 4,929 1,155 1,104 315 381 – – 5,735 4,152 564 1,217 834 1,077 48,367 46,621

2004

2007

707 912 1,516 1,640 9,500 9,880 798 1,456 4,212 5,569 1,235 1,375 504 534 – – 4,774 10,973 2,011 2,526 1,024 1,146 56,850 55,000

2006

Source: Eurostat database on ‘Immigration by citizenship [migr_imm1ctz]’ and OECD. Stat data on International Migration

Austria 663 Belgium – Germany 4,715 Denmark 299 Spain 240 France 912 Finland 92 Ireland – Italy 2,586 Netherlands 882 Sweden 309 United Kingdom 6,172

 

Table 6.2 Inflow of population with Indian citizenship in the EU-15 countries (in thousands) 2009 946 990 2,058 1,787 11,403 12,009 1,065 828 6,556 5,956 1,499 1,458 623 612 2,170 1,078 14,975 – 3,454 3,069 1,548 1,795 48,000 64,000

2008

Challenges and opportunities 95 migration flows were more than twice that of the previous year. Spain is a relatively newer destination, which saw a surge in Indian migrants in 2003, a surge that has continued ever since. Figure 6.2 gives the annual change in migrants’ inflow on a year-byyear basis, 1996–2003, for the four major EU destinations for Indian migration. Over the last decade and a half, while the migration flows from Germany has been relatively stable, annual immigration to the UK, Spain and Italy has seen several ups and downs. While there was a drop in the inflow to the UK and Italy in 2001, more significant is the trend after 2004. In 2005, immigration flow to the UK dropped significantly. The same is true of flows to Italy. While both UK and Italy flows rise in 2006 and 2007, there was yet another significant fall in 2008 in flows to the UK, Italy and to Spain as well. Given the dearth of data it is difficult to establish empirically a direct relationship between EU enlargement and changes in the inflows of Indian migrants to the EU. However, an interesting point to note here is that the years which witnessed a significant decline in migrant inflow from India were the years following the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements. A similar picture is there in Figure 6.3. This figure gives the yearby-year growth in the combined inflow of immigrants from India to all the EU-15 countries. It witnesses two sharp declines in the period after 2004, one in 2005 and the second in 2008. Another point to note here is that after 2005, even though the rate of inflow has increased to some extent, it stands at a much lower level when compared to the years prior to 2004. Again, given the limitations of data post-enlargement, we cannot conclusively say establish the causality between Eastern EU enlargement and decline in Indian immigration to the EU. But, we can identify the potential competitors that India might be facing given enlargement. The UK being the preferred destinations for Indian migrants to the EU, Indians there face stiff competition from migrants from countries like Poland, Slovakia and Baltic States. Similarly, in Italy and Spain, Indian migrants have to compete with Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. The extent of competition, however, depends on various things including the migrant type in terms of education and skill level; the sectors in which migrants are absorbed, and the labour market in the destination countries. The next section specifically looks at the top three EU destinations for Indian migrants and does a comparative analysis with the migrants from NMS to identify potential competition and opportunities for the Indian migrants.

Germany

Italy

Spain

United Kingdom

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Source: Author’s calculation from OECD. Stat data on International Migration, 1996–2009

Figure 6.2 Change in the immigration inflow of Indian migrants to selected EU-15 countries, 1996–2009

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

Challenges and opportunities 97 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% -10.0%

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

-20.0%

Figure 6.3 Year-to-year growth in the inflows of India migrants to EU-15 countries (%) Source: Author’s calculation from OECD. Stat data on International Migration, 1996–2009

Comparative analysis of Indian vs NMS immigration: competition and challenges Indian migration to the EU, especially to the UK can be traced back several decades. Through time the nature and the type of migrants have significantly changed. Table 6.3 gives an interesting picture of the changing pattern of Indian migration to the UK in recent years. The table gives the top-10 migrant sending countries to the UK. While in the first years of the present century India occupied the first rank in terms of number of Indians migrating to the UK, in the subsequent years India has been pushed down the table. The interesting thing is, however, that the eastern NMS have taken India’s place. While in 2002–03 Poland did not feature on the list, by 2003–04 it was one of the top-10 countries. In fact, by 2004–05 it had overtaken India as, by far, the top-migrant sending nation to the UK. Not just Poland, but several other Eastern European countries like Lithuania, Slovakia and Latvia have started to emerge among the topmigrant sending countries to the UK, competing with Indian migrants. While in the UK it appears that eastern NMS are gaining importance in terms of immigration, we cannot really say whether these migrants are replacing Indian migrants. Here it would be interesting

31.3 18.4 17.1 16.8 14 13.3 13.1 11.9 11.2 10.7

Poland India Pakistan SA Australia Lithuania France China Portugal Slovakia

2004–05 62.6 32.7 20.3 19.3 16.6 15.6 13.3 12.6 12.2 10.5

Poland India Lithuania Slovakia SA Australia Pakistan France Latvia Germany

2005–06 171.4 46 30.5 26.4 24 23.8 22.3 17.2 14.2 13.3

Poland India Slovakia Pakistan Australia Lithuania France SA Germany China

2006–07 222.8 49.3 28.8 25.3 24.4 24.1 20.2 16.9 15.2 13.2

Note: The sudden spike in Poland´s figures for 2004 and 2005 can be attributed to existing Poles legally registering themselves in the UK following Poland’s becoming an EU member state. Hence these are not all new migrants, but mostly represent Poles already living and working in the UK.

Source: Extracted from Kaczmarczyk and Okólski (2007)

India SA Australia Pakistan Portugal China France Spain Poland Philippines

India Australia SA Pakistan France Philippines Spain Zimbabwe Iraq Portugal

25 18.9 18.6 16.8 13.8 11.8 11.7 10.3 10.1 9.8

2003–04

2002–03

Table 6.3 Top-10 migrant sending countries, based on the National Insurance Number in UK, 2002–2007 (in thousands)

Challenges and opportunities 99 to explore the profiles and the employment sectors of migrants from India with that from the NMS. We restrict ourselves to a selected few EU countries, which have traditionally been the major destinations for Indian migrants. These countries include the UK, Italy and Spain. From the NMS we choose Poland, Bulgaria and Romania as they too share the three EU countries as their preferred migration destinations. We examine the education profile and the employment sector of the migrants from India, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania to three EU countries: Italy, Spain and the UK. The education profile of the migrants suggests their skill level of the migrants, i.e., migrants with lower levels of education would probably be categorised as low-skilled and those with higher education levels would be highly skilled. Table 6.4 gives the distribution of migrants by education, and Table 6.5 gives the distribution with respect to the employment sector. The distribution of migrants from India and selected NMS throws up certain interesting points in terms of education.9 In Italy Indian migrants are mostly low-skilled, followed by semi-skilled and a very few highly skilled migrants (China Daily, 2011). The largest migrant group in Italy are the Romanians. They have a significant presence in all the skill categories, being especially concentrated in the lowskilled and the semi-skilled sectors. The difference in the number of Table 6.4  Immigrants from NMS and India to selected EU countries, by education  

 

Italy

Spain

UK

ISCED0/1/2

India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania

7,663 940 3,771 12,824 2,874 1,918 8,253 27,275 1,490 1,015 2,902 4,595

2,260 9,740 4,880 21,360 1,100 2,760 3,060 8,260 760 2,620 2,220 4,080

88,763 296 2,748 459 36,570 585 4,604 749 91,882 2,007 7,829 2,196

ISCED 3/4

ISCED 5/6

Source: OECDSTAT database on ‘Immigration by Education’. The sources for this database are mainly census data, from the 2000 round of censuses. Notes: The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED; cf. UNESCO 1997) used as a baseline. Groups are aggregated as follows: Primary level: ISCED 0/1/2. Secondary level: ISCED 3/4. Tertiary level: ISCED 5A/5B/6.

100  Puja Guha Table 6.5 Immigrants from NMS and India to selected EU countries, by sector of employment  

 

Italy

Spain

UK

Agriculture

India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania India Bulgaria Poland Romania

3,169 234 739 2,076 5,541 958 2,813 13,860 656 379 1,278 8,401 855 660 2,255 5,097 1,210 385 2,151 2,998

160 2,960 560 5,380 460 1,560 1,120 4,660 220 3,540 2,760 9,300 680 2,360 1,580 4,520 200 440 560 780

644 32 127 18 46,324 215 1,858 327 7,366 263 999 338 49,018 1,173 4,948 1,161 42,636 527 3,454 812

Manufacturing

Construction

Other Services*

Social Sector**

Source: OECDSTAT database on ‘Immigration by Sector’. The sources for this database are mainly census data, from the 2000 round of censuses. Notes: Sectors of activity are recorded according to the International Standard Industrial Classification Rev. 3 (ISIC, cf. UN, 1989), at the division level (two-digit level, 60 sectors). *“Other Services” combines Hospitality, Financial Services, Real Estate. **“Social Sector” combines Health and Education sectors.

Indian and Romanian migrants in the low-skilled and the semi-skilled sectors is significant, but the difference is slight when compared with the higher skill levels. Thus, we can say that, while Romanians pose competition to the Indian migrants in the low-skilled and the semiskilled occupations, highly-skilled Indian migrants have little or no competition. Spain has had a similar experience. Most Indian Migrants are concentrated in the low-skilled sectors, and the number gradually decreases as we climb the skill levels. In Spain, Indian migrants face competition from both Romanians and Bulgarians. While the presence of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants in the low-skilled and the semiskilled sector is significant, Indian migrants do have a chance in the highly-skilled sector where competition from other migrants is lower.

Challenges and opportunities 101 The UK is the only country where India has an advantage over other countries. Indian migrants to the UK are mostly highly skilled, closely followed by low-skilled and finally the semi-skilled migrants. In all these three skill categories, though India has been leading the way, migrants from Poland have been on a rise, posing competition for highly skilled workers (World Bank, 2007). Next, we examine employment sectors (Table 6.5). We choose five sectors based on the ISIC classifications: Agriculture, Manufacturing, Construction, Other Services and the Social Sector. The sector “Other Services” include services rendered in the hospitality sector, the financial sector and the real estate sector. The “Social Sector” includes education and health. In Italy, Indian migrants are mostly concentrated in the manufacturing and agricultural sector. In both sectors there is strong competition from Romanian migrants. While in the manufacturing sectors Romanian workers have overtaken Indians, in agriculture the former is posing a stiff competition to the latter. Another sector where Indians migrants have this potential is the social sector, which comprises health and education. In Spain, however, Indian migrants are distributed across all the sectors, with some concentration in the service sector. In all sectors migrants from the other three countries have overtaken Indian migrants. In the UK, there is a concentration of migrants in the services sector, followed by the social sector and manufacturing. The competition scenario in the UK is the opposite to that of Spain, for Indian migrants lead in all the sectors. Nevertheless, there is an increasingly strong presence of Poles, especially in the services and the social sector. In summary, the distribution of migrants with respect to their education profile and the employment sector suggests that while there are some categories where Indian migrants may face competition from the NMS, there are other areas where there is greater potential for the former to explore new opportunities. For example, traditionally Italy and Spain have been destinations for low-skilled migrants from India and there is a gap in terms of the high-skill migration from India. Thus the sectors receiving high-skilled migrants in Italy stand as an opportunity for Indians. Similarly, the UK has seen low-skilled migrants from India in the manufacturing sector and high-skilled migrants in health and education. However, there are other potential sectors in the UK which can be explored, one of them being the services sector. Table 6.6 gives the quarterly job vacancy rates in UK. The job vacancy rate (JVR) measures the proportion of total posts which are

102  Puja Guha Table 6.6 Quarterly job vacancy rate in the UK Year

Total Manufacturing Construction Services Education Health of the Business Economy

2009Q2 2009Q3 2009Q4 2010Q1 2010Q2 2010Q3 2010Q4 2011Q1 2011Q2 2011Q3

1.6 1.7 1.7 1.6 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.7 1.8

1.1 1.1 1.2 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.6 1.7 1.6

0.9 0.8 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.8 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.9

1.6 1.8 1.8 1.8 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.0 2.1 2.2

2.1 2.1 2.0 1.9 2.1 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.3 1.2

1.7 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.3 1.4 1.4

Source: EUROSTAT Job vacancy statistics, quarterly data – NACE Rev. 2 (jvs_q_nace2)

vacant, i.e., JVR = number of job vacancies/(number of occupied posts + number of job vacancies) * 100. From the table we can say that the rate of jobs created in the services sector is higher than in manufacturing and other social service sectors like education and health. This reconfirms the fact that the services sector in the UK is a potential sector for Indian migrants.

Brexit and its effect on Indian immigration The previous section highlights the importance of the UK as a destination country for the migrants from India as well as the newly accessed states, especially Poland. In 2014, an estimated 793,000 residents of Britain were born in India (9.6 percent of the total number of nonBritish born residents in Britain in 2014) up from 709,000 in 2010. During the same period the estimated population of Poland-born residents increased from 540,000 to 790,000.10 Such high levels of immigration were one of the core issues which prompted Britain’s exit from the EU. While the “exit” campaigners viewed migrants as an added pressure on the social services of the UK like housing, hospitals and schools, the reality of the skill gap cannot be ignored, as these migrants also brought with them skills, extra tax and spending power. The possible effect of Brexit on Indian migration to Britain is shrouded with uncertainty. With stricter regulations for post-study work visa, the UK has already witnessed a substantial decrease in the

Challenges and opportunities 103 number of student migration from India. A number of Indian students studying in British universities have reduced from 22,385 in 2012– 2013 to 18,320 in 2014–2015.11 A majority of the large corporates and companies believe that there might be a reduction in the number of skilled professionals’ migration to the UK, unless the latter signs the FTA with India. There is also a possible indirect effect of Brexit on Indian immigration. The above section highlights the fact that the NMS were fast gaining importance in the employment sectors of the UK, especially Poland, which was emerging as a direct competition to Indian migrants in the services sector. In terms of numbers, Polish migrants are also gradually increasing in number, not in terms of entering the country, but also gaining residence permits in the country. Table 6.7 shows the number of entry visa granted and residence certificates granted to Indian and Polish citizens post-2004 accession. Thus purely based on numbers it can be said that India would have felt the heat of competition from the polish migrants in almost all sectors of production in the UK. However, Brexit may change this scenario. Post-Brexit, more than India, it is the Polish migrants who are experiencing the set back. Post-Brexit, the number of polish immigration has reduced by 43,000 from 2015 and emigration of Polish Table 6.7 Entry visa and residence certificates granted to Indian and Polish nationality

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Entry clearance visas granted

Registration certificates and residence cards – granted

India

Poland

India

Poland

– 379,338 437,976 420,711 399,248 406,937 420,013 407,762 380,479 400,740 410,293

– 6 11 8 3 3 4 1 3 0 0

1,707 2,358 2,503 2,750 1,022 2,290 1,817 2,279 1,639 2,958 3,705

1,377 5,375 25,435 26,931 13,437 16,211 7,350 5,321 2,733 2,355 1,153

Source: Author’s calculation from UK Immigration statistics, April to June 2015: data tables (www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-april-to-june-2015data-tables).

104  Puja Guha migrants has increased by 40,000.12 The overall net migration has significantly reduced by 84,000 in last year, which is the lowest in the last three years.

Indian migration to the enlarged EU: new opportunities With all the scepticism regarding the increase in the flow of Indian migrants to traditional EU destinations and the UK, and fear of displacement of existing Indian migrants by NMS immigrants, there exists an opportunity for Indian migrants which has not yet been explored fully. Data suggests that there has, indeed, been a surge in migration from the NMS to the traditional EU-15 countries. But whether these NMS immigrants threaten to replace existing migrants is not clear. The distribution of migrants with respect to their skill profile and the sector of employment suggests a mixed situation. There are certainly some categories where Indian migrants who face competition from the NMS. But there are other areas where there is potential for Indian migrants to explore new opportunities. For example, the data shows that while NMS migrants will compete with Indian labourers in Italy and Spain in the low-skilled sectors, competition is much less intense in the high-skilled sectors. Similarly, a sectoral analysis shows that while Romanians will compete with Indian labourers in agriculture and manufacturing, in health and education Indians will remain the dominant group. In the UK, Indians dominate all sectors across all the skill levels, though Poles may eventually threaten this dominance. However, with Brexit such a possibility is again shrouded with doubts. With the EU enlarging and the NMS becoming a part of the EU, the economy of some of the newly accessed states have seen higher economic growth. This has created several avenues of employment in these emerging economies. The surge in remittances sent back by the migrants has added to the per capita income of these countries, translating into development in agriculture, construction and the services sector. These countries have never been considered as popular destinations for Indian migrants. Table 6.8 gives the small number of Indian migrants in these newly accessed countries, before and after enlargement. While most of the countries have received very little or even no migration from India, there appears to be a slight change in the scenario. For example, Poland, which saw only nominal migration in the last decade, witnessed a considerable increase in the number of migrants, especially in 2008. Similarly, unusual destinations like Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia have witnessed an increase in the flow of migrants from India.

Challenges and opportunities 105 Table 6.8 Inflow of population with Indian citizenship in the new member states  

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Bulgaria Estonia 3 Hungary 70 Lithuania 1 Latvia 8 Malta 0 Poland – Slovenia 11

0 44 8 17 0 – 1

– 47 1 8 0 – 3

– 57 16 7 0 – 8

– 57 19 21 – – 14

– 92 10 6 – – 21

0 0 5 5 12 10 16 14 156 143 229 101 300 218 6 29 20 26 18 17 4 1 12 3 4 7 – – – 84 – – – – 25 9 238 – 13 29 24 32 14 32

Source: Eurostat database on ‘Immigration by sex, age group and citizenship [migr_ imm1ctz]’ and OECD. Stat data on International Migration

Historically, Indians have preferred to migrate to certain EU destinations and to specific sectors of employment. With the new migrants flowing into these sectors of employment, Indian labourers with their years of experience and knowledge of the labour market, have the opportunity to rise up the value chain and explore other better-paying sectors. For example, with the EU loosening its out-sourcing norms, the ITES sector in countries like Italy could be the next major destination for India IT sector workers. Another area of potential opportunities is the newly accessed states themselves. Just out of the shadow of Communism, these emerging sectors have revamped their labourmarket restrictions, allowing for foreign players to step in. These could be the next important destinations for the Indian IT and manufacturing sectors. To summarise, while the surge in NMS migrants to the older EU destinations may appear as a threat to the Indian migrants there, there is, in fact, no strong evidence of replacement of the Indian workers by NMS equivalents. Competition exists in few sectors and at few levels, and thus cannot be termed as a “threat”. Moreover, this competition has created new avenues for Indian migrants and with appropriate policy frameworks, these opportunities will be profitably explored by the Indian migrants.

Notes 1 Eight Eastern European Countries were – Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia. The other two countries which were also given accession were Malta and Cyprus. This study is based on the former eight countries and does not include Malta and Cyprus in the analysis.

106  Puja Guha 2 ‘Labour mobility within the EU in the context of enlargement and the functioning of the transitional arrangements’, study carried out on behalf of the Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Directorate General of the European Commission, 2009. 3 Same as footnote 2. 4 ‘BREXIT – Views and suggestions from India Inc..’ FICCI, July-2016. 5 8 Eastern European countries entered in 2004. Bulgaria and Romania were included in the 2007 accession. 6 Migration and Remittances Fact book, 2011, 2nd ed, World Bank Publication. 7 Data extracted from OECD. Stat database on ‘Immigration by Citizenship and Age’, filtered by ‘Foreign Born Nationals’. 8 Same as above. 9 The data is based on the census data from 2000 round, and gives the historical scenario of education level of the migrants and potential scope of Indian migrants in different skill categories. 10 ET Commentary by Matthew Amroliwala. ‘Brexit: What Britain decides today will affect India tomorrow’, Economic Times, 22 June, 2016. (https:// blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-commentary/brexit-shall-ukstay-or-shall-uk-go/) 11 ‘Brexit and its impact on immigration’ Forbes India, September, 2016. (www. forbesindia.com/blog/health/brexit-and-its-impact-on-immigration/) 12 ‘Surge in Poles leaving UK since Brexit vote fuels immigration drop’, The Guardian, May 2017. (www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/25/ surge-in-poles-leaving-uk-since-brexit-vote-fuels-net-migration-drop)

References Boeri, T. B., & Brücker, H. (2001). Eastern Enlargement and EU-Labour Markets: Perceptions, Challenges and Opportunities. World Economics, 2(1), 49–68. ChinaDaily. (2011, November 13). In Italy’s Heartland Indian Immigrants Work the Farms. ChinaDaily. ET. (2007, December 27). Poland Next Hotspot for Indian Workers in Europe. The Economic Times. FT. (2007a, November 9). Mixed Reception for Black Sea States Workers. Financial Times. FT. (2007b, November 7). Prodi Says Romanian Influx took EU by Surprise. Financial Times. FT. (2007c, November 9). Romania and Bulgaria Left with Labour Shortage. Financial Times. Kaczmarczyk, P. (2005). Migracja w dobie przemian[Migration in the Age of Change], Warsaw: WUW. Kaczmarczyk, P., & Łukowski, W. (eds.) (2004). PolscypracownicynarynkuUniiEuropejskiej [Polish Workers in the European Union Market]. WydawnictwoNaukowe Scholar, Warszawa. www.migracje.uw.edu.pl/ publ/129/. Last accessed on March 3, 2017 Kaczmarczyk, P., & Okólski, M. (2007). Economic Impacts of Migration on Poland and the Baltic States. Fafo-Paper 2008:01.

Challenges and opportunities 107 Lewis, W. (1954). Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour. The ManchesterSchool, 22(2), 139–191. Tamas, K., & Münz, R. (2006). Labour Migrants Unbound? EU Enlargement, Transitional Measures EU Enlargement, Transitional Measures and Labour Market Effects, Stockholm: Institute for Futures Studies. UN. (1989). International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC). New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division, United Nations. UNESCO. (1997). International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 1997, Paris: United Nations. World Bank. (2006). Labour Migration from the New EU Member States. World Bank Quaterly Economic Report. World Bank. (2007). From Shortages of Jobs to the Shortage of Skilled Workers. World Bank EU8+2 Regular Economic Report PART II: Special Topic.

7 Migration of Indian health professionals to the European Union An analysis of policies and patterns Ayona Bhattacharjee Introduction International mobility of health professionals (HPs) stands out from other forms of migration of professionals as it directly involves ethical and equity concerns.1 Similar to the migration of any other professional, the motivation for HP mobility is also attributable to pull and push factors. The pull factors such as better pay, better working conditions, career growth paths or political stability influence the choice of the destination country. On the other hand, push factors such as low pay, poor working conditions or stagnated career paths motivate the HPs to migrate from their home country. Additionally, HP mobility is responsive to demographic shifts, disease burden and factors which affect population health conditions. While these factors may function in isolation or jointly in determining HP mobility, different factors matter for the migration of different groups of HPs. The EU-funded MoHProf survey finds that doctors usually migrate for career advancement, and nurses, for economic reasons (Tjadens, Weilandt, Ecker & MoHProf, 2012). The commonality between these migratory paths is the presence of entry restrictions imposed by the destination countries. Despite the complexities involved, high prevalence of HP mobility has been the subject of substantial academic and policy research.2 This chapter contributes to the existing literature by studying the mobility of medical doctors and nurses from India to the European Union (EU). We choose the EU as the destination not only due to its rising healthcare demand but also because of the market dynamics brought about by the accession and possible exit of European countries at different points in time.3 Accession or exit of countries with respect to a single market redistributes available resources and have implications for the trading partners. During 1960s, India’s trade with the

Migration of Indian health professionals 109 European countries was formalised through diplomatic relations and later strengthened through the Cooperation Agreement (1994), the Joint Action Plan (2005), annual India-EU summits and so on. However, the changing economic and political scenario sparked off by the recent Euro crisis, Brexit, or the UK elections, calls for revisiting the issue of labour mobility both within and to the EU. In this context, this chapter focuses on HP migration from India to the EU by elucidating the current status of EU health system and the latest trends in HP migration therein. The discussion is finally reviewed in the context of the current economic scenario.

Context overview

100% 80% 60% 40%

under 35 years old

aged 35-44 years old

UK

Netherlands

Ireland

Slovenia

Sweden

aged 45-64 years old

Slovakia

Finland

Hungary

Spain

Germany

Estonia

Austria

Denmark

Latvia

France

Italy

0%

Belgium

20% Luxembourg

Percentage share of total physicians

The European Commission projected that the shortage of HPs in the EU will reach nearly one million by 2020 (Mans et al., 2014). Derek Wanless’s report (2002) states that the National Health Service (NHS) will need at least two-thirds more doctors and one-third more nurses by 2022(Wanless, 2002). Such excess demand is not just because of the demand from an ageing population or shifts in disease burden but also due to the reduced supply resulting from an ageing health workforce. Figure 7.1 depicts the age-group wise distribution of physicians in the EU countries. This has implications for future physician demand in the respective countries. It is evident from the figure that countries such as Italy, Luxembourg and Germany have high proportion of aged

aged 65-74 years old

Figure 7.1 Distribution of physicians by age groups in the EU (2015 or nearest year) Data source: Compiled from the OECD. Stat Database (http://stats.oecd.org/). The data corresponds to the year 2015 for all the countries except Denmark (2014) and Sweden (2014), accessed on 7 August 2017.

110  Ayona Bhattacharjee physicians, close to the retirement age. Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK have relatively higher proportion of young physicians. Constrained supply, combined with non-decreasing demand for healthcare, leads to excess demand for health human resources. When the domestic resources do not suffice, countries rely on foreign sources to address such shortages. In an attempt to create a common service market and facilitate resource mobility, the European Commission introduced a Draft Services Directive (Gerlinger & Schmucker, 2007). Several other directives governing mutual recognition of medical degrees were also introduced, adopted, modified, since 1975 in the EU. While some directives stipulate a minimum of six years with 5,500 hours of theoretical and practical training for doctors, additional two years for general practitioners; nursing requires a minimum of three years of training with at least 4,600 hours of theoretical and practical training (Gerlinger & Schmucker, 2007). Directive 2005/36/ EC facilitated automatic recognition of qualifications and simplified administrative procedures for professionals within the EU. In 2009, the Blue Card (Directive 2009/50/EC) was introduced to attract highly skilled migrants from non-EU/European Free Trade Association countries by giving them preferential access to residence and work permits (Kodoth & Jacob, 2013). To fasten the process of immigration through single permits for third-country nationals, Directive 2011/98/ EU was adopted in 2011. Directive 2005/36/EC was modified to Directive 2013/55/EU in 2013, to introduce a European Professional Card for automatic recognition of professional qualifications across the EU (Kroezen et al., 2016). This card became effective in 2016, covering five professions including nurses, pharmacists and physiotherapists. Many of these directives eased the mobility of EU job-seekers thereby leading to stiff competition for the third-country professionals. Figure 7.2 depicts the current share of foreign medical doctors and nurses in the EU, with the majority contributed by HPs from other EU countries. In 2016, Ireland and the UK reported the highest shares of foreign-trained doctors and nurses respectively. Hungary reported a stock of 2,374 foreign doctors in 2015, out which 391 were native born but foreign-trained; similarly, France reported 636 native-born, foreign-trained doctors out of a stock of 23,207 foreign doctors in 2015. The lowest stock of foreign doctors was reported in Estonia (195) and Lithuania (41) during 2015 (source: OECD. Stat). While some EU countries have high shares of foreign HPs, with the EU directives facilitating intra-EU mobility, HPs from India are subject to additional barriers. The common barriers include medical degree recognition and language requirements. Having a grasp over the

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Belgium Germany

Italy

UK

% of foreign trained nurses

Ireland UK Sweden Slovenia Belgium France Germany Hungary Czech Latvia Denmark Austria Estonia Netherl… Poland Italy

% of foreign trained doctors

Estonia Slovenia Denmark

Portugal

Hungary

Greece Sweden

France

Latvia

Data source: OECD statistics (http://stats.oecd.org/, accessed on 5 August 2017); where data for 2016 is unavailable for a particular country, we use data from the nearest year between 2014 and 2015. Countries for which no information is available for either 2014/15 or 2016, are not reported here.

Figure 7.2 Percentage stock of foreign-trained doctors and nurses in 2016 (or nearest year)

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Netherl…

112  Ayona Bhattacharjee language used in the destination country helps one to effectively communicate with the patients and deliver the health service appropriately.

HPs migration to the EU The EU healthcare systems Twenty-eight countries, a mix of high-income and middle-income countries currently constitute the EU.4 Though tied through a single market, each country differs on a variety of factors, including health systems. In order to assess these countries as potential destinations, it is important to know the respective health systems and their openness to foreign-trained professionals.5 The middle-income countries in the EU are Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. Bulgaria has a low ratio of the number of General Practitioners (GPs) to specialists. This is likely to worsen as the average age of GPs is around 50 years. Obstacles to smooth functioning of the Bulgarian healthcare system not only stems from unavailability of resources but also the rapid emigration of physicians and nurses to Germany, France and the UK (Dimova et al., 2012). Majority of the physicians in Croatia are employed in public healthcare institutions and only a small percentage is either in the private healthcare institutions or practice as private doctors. Croatia reports shortage of physicians and unemployment of nurses, and is a net exporter of HPs to Slovenia and Italy; the immigrants are mostly Croatians who have been residents in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia (Džakula et al., 2014). Since the EU accession in 2007, emigration of Romanian HPs to other EU countries has increased significantly, partially led by declining physician wages after the economic crisis. Further, in 2011, the government declared wage reduction by one-fourth for the workforce employed in public institutions – including the physicians and nurses (Vlãdescu et al., 2016). The remaining 25 countries are high-income countries, implying a significantly better standard of living than a developing country. This serves as a pull factor for migrating to these countries. The current focus in Austria is to assess the future health resource requirements and offer competitive salaries to attract more human resources. It is otherwise a net exporter of physicians (Hofmarcher & Quentin, 2013). The immigrant HPs in Austria are mostly from the EU member states which joined the EU in 2004. As per the numerus clausus in Belgium, the maximum number of medical graduates is set at 1,230 during 2015–2018. Due to geographical proximity, the HP inflows are mostly from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Romania.

Migration of Indian health professionals 113 The hurdles of practicing in Belgium include language requirements and work permit related restrictions. The nursing profession in Belgium suffers from a negative image of workload (WHO, 2015). In Cyprus, majority of the physicians are employed by the private sector and the nurses are employed by the public sector. The physician density is below the EU average and majority of the physicians are over 45 years old. A few years ago, when Cyprus fell short of nursing professionals, there were active recruitments from Greece and other eastern European countries and this immigration pattern still prevails (Theodorou et al., 2012). The health sector in Czech Republic expanded recently and the number of physicians is slightly above the EU average. However, the poor working conditions and low salaries in Czech Republic have often been a reason for emigration. A new legislation to be introduced in 2017 will redefine the responsibilities and supervision requirements for physician training, shorten the length of training and allow the young physicians to meet their training in home healthcare facilities (Alexa et al., 2015). The National Board of Health in Denmark regulates the number of doctors trained in different specialties and distributes them according to requirements. Denmark signed agreements in 1989 with the European Union (EU) and with Nordic countries in 1993, to provide easier labour market access to the Danish citizens (Bhattacharjee, 2013). Immigrant nurses in Denmark from developing countries are mostly from Philippines, Indonesia and Suriname. Migrant HPs from India require authorisation for work permits as they are do not get automatic recognition in Denmark. Before the adaptation period starts, they are also required to complete Danish language tests, Danish medical knowledge tests and a course on Danish health legislation. During the early 1990s, Estonia was characterised by an excess supply of doctors while its shortage of nurses remained in oblivion. A government policy, adopted in the 1990s, for restricting admissions to the Faculty of Medicine, led to a reduction in the supply of HPs. Immigration to Estonia is constrained by restrictive work permit regime and language requirements. The immigrant HPs are mostly from Russia, Ukraine and other states of the former USSR. Interestingly, geographical proximity allows the physicians and nurses to work part-time in Estonia and also in Finland (Lai et al., 2013). The majority of HPs in Finland are employed in municipally operated health services. It is estimated that a significant proportion of HPs will soon attain the retirement age. While the ageing population will result in higher demand for health services, the dwindling supply will lead to an excess demand for HPs (Vuorenkoski, Mladovsky, & Mossialos, 2008).

114  Ayona Bhattacharjee The physician and nurse densities in France are close to the EU average. The retired doctors are incentivised to continue private practice while still drawing pensions. France has emerged as a receiving country of foreign-trained HPs with a low emigration rate. However, doctors with non-EU degrees have to clear examinations to establish their professional efficiency. Most foreign doctors are from Algeria, Romania and Belgium; foreign nurses are mostly from Spain and Belgium (Chevreul et al., 2015). Germany experiences significant emigration. The PROMeTHEUS reports that nurses migrate to Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries and the UK due to high workload, poor working conditions, limited decision-making powers and low remuneration (Busse & Blümel, 2014).6The current focus to reduce emigration is by improving family-life balance and flexible working hours. There has been an increasing trend of recruiting physicians from Poland. The medical graduates in Greece choose to specialise rather than become GPs with low remuneration. The current macroeconomic scenario, and the burden of budget deficits resulted in a freeze on hiring employees in public health services. Hungary witnesses a net outflow of physicians, an aged health workforce and a net inflow of nurses. To discourage emigration, the emigrant HPs have to get their diplomas certified by the OHAAP (Office of Health Authorisation and Administrative Procedures of Ministry of Health) and also pay a fee (Gaál et al., 2011). The share of foreign doctors in Italy is less than the EU average. Job uncertainty has been a cause of concern for both domestically and foreign-trained HPs. While unstable employment is resulting in emigration of medical doctors; nursing shortage is attracting foreign-trained nursing professionals from Romania, Poland, Switzerland and Germany. The estimated demand for informal care workers is significantly higher than the demand for nurses (Chaloff, 2008). Over the last two decades, steps were undertaken to retrain doctors and strengthen primary care in Latvia. Latvia has a low proportion of nurses compared to the EU average. There is no defined career path for the professionals and depends on individual initiatives, capabilities and choices. The current focus is on recourse planning for primary and emergency healthcare(Tragakes et al., 2008). The health workforce in Lithuania decreased since 1990s. Lithuania confronts issues of staff replacement, skewed regional distribution of health workforce and low wages (Murauskiene et al., 2013). Forecasts indicate that a major proportion of the HPs will retire before 2025 (Starkiene, 2012). Additionally, Lithuania reports significant emigration of HPs to the UK and the Nordic region.

Migration of Indian health professionals 115 Luxembourg reports lower than average number of physicians but a relatively high number of nurses. Most doctors are self-employed, and the specialists divide their time between private practice and hospital care. The lack of tertiary education in Luxembourg results in high emigration as well as dependence on foreign HPs (Berthet et al., 2015). The health sector is one of the largest employers in Malta. Immediately after the EU accession, Malta became a net exporter of newly graduated doctors to the UK. The Maltese Medical Council and the General Medical Council in the UK agreed upon mutual recognition of medical degrees. There were some recent nurse recruitments through bilateral agreements with Spain and Cyprus (Azzopardi-Muscat et al., 2017). In the Netherlands, the non-EU citizens are required to undergo a Dutch language course and a course on the Netherland’s culture and history. Entry under the Highly Skilled Knowledge Migrant Scheme (HSKM) is exempted from prior Dutch language skills (Bhattacharjee, 2013). The lower cost of medical studies in Poland attracts a large number of foreign students. Nursing students from Lithuania and Latvia contribute significantly to the share of foreign students in Poland. Immigrant HPs in Poland not only face difficulties in getting their qualifications recognised but are also required to pass labour market tests and prove their ability in speaking Polish (Sagan et al., 2011). Portugal reports a physician density above the EU average. Immigrant doctors are mostly from Spain, Brazil and eastern European countries. Current policies include balancing the physician-nurse ratio by increasing the number of nurses through new regulatory bodies, developing codes of practice and so on (Barros, Machado, & Simões, 2011). The health sector contributes 4.5 percent of the workforce in Slovakia. Minimum wages were implemented for hospital doctors to attract more professionals; EUR 250 million was allocated for updating health infrastructure but the high emigration to other EU countries could not be addressed. This resulted in several vacant positions in Slovakia. The immigrant HPs are mostly from the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Austria (Smatana et al., 2016). A deliberate step to increase the number of medical doctors in Slovenia resulted in excess supply, and high unemployment after the financial crisis. The crisis led to austerity measures, such as freezing salaries, thereby motivating emigration. Most of the immigrant HPs are from Yugoslavia and southeastern Europe. In spite of the steady increase in the number of physicians in Slovenia, the physician density is still less than EU average. The nurse density is at par with the EU average (Albreht et al., 2016). The health sector in Spain witnessed a steady rise in the workforce, with physician and nurse densities reaching above EU average. However, a recent survey on employment conditions reports high job insecurity among the

116  Ayona Bhattacharjee family doctors. Spain is often reported as a net exporter of HPs to the UK and Portugal (García-Armesto et al., 2010). Sweden experienced a sharp rise in the immigration of foreign-trained doctors, over the recent years. Active recruitment of foreign professionals is done by the respective Swedish councils. While one county council recruits from Netherlands, Germany, another prefers to recruit nurses from the EU/ EEA countries, another recruits doctors from Germany, Poland and Hungary and so on. There is a reported shortage of physicians in the primary care and an increased demand for professionals in the geriatric care (Anell, Glenngård, & Merkur, 2012). Ireland has become an active recruiter of nurses, including Irish nurses working abroad. To reduce the dependence on non-EU countries, the Irish Government decided to increase inflows from medical schools for Irish and EU students. Foreign doctors account for 30 percent of the doctors working in Ireland, with a major share of Indian HPs. The UK deserves a special mention while discussing both HP migration and Indian emigration. The NHS is the largest employer in the UK with an employment of around 1.57 million people (Cylus et al., 2015). There was a deliberate attempt by the Department of Health to recruit international HPs to scale up the number of NHS staff (Buchan et al., 2009). Since 2014, all NHS organisations were mandated to follow the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), ensuring no ethnicity-based discrimination in career opportunities. This was a positive signal to foreign professionals. The foreign-trained doctors are required to pass the PLAB test to obtain registration. According to the latest data from the General Medical Council, only 696 Indian doctors registered in 2016, declining from a high of 3,640 in 2004. Return migration of Indian doctors from the UK is a common phenomenon. The UK developed bilateral agreements with a number of countries, including India, to recruit HPs. The Department of Health in England issued the Code of Practice on International Recruitment, restricting the NHS employers from actively recruiting from developing countries unless there is a government-to-government agreement. EU as the destination Migratory flows due to economic reasons are driven by wage differentials. In countries with predominantly public healthcare, the governments influence the level and the structure of HP remuneration. However, such systems are more susceptible to austerity measures and hence salary cuts when crises strike. Figure 7.3 shows the relative remuneration of salaried and self-employed GPs in EU countries. As of

Migration of Indian health professionals 117

0

50

100

150

IN 1000 US$ 200

250

300

350

400

Austria Belgium Estonia Finland Hungary Ireland Latvia Luxembourg Netherlands Poland Slovenia Spain UK Salaried GPs

Self-employed GPs

Figure 7.3 Remuneration of salaried and self-employed general practitioners (in 1,000 USD PPP) during 2015 (nearest year) Data source: Computed form the OECD. Stat (http://stats.oecd.org/, accessed on 3 August 2017). Remuneration is defined as the average gross annual income. GPs: General practice; Self-employed physicians operate independently.

2015 or the latest data available, remuneration of self-employed GPs is similar in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, whereas it is higher in the UK and Ireland. The highest remuneration is reported in Luxembourg. The salaried GPs earn relatively less except in Luxembourg. Latvia and Hungary reported the lowest remuneration levels. The income gap between the GPs and specialists have widened overtime, resulting in reduced attractiveness of general practice. The remuneration of specialists has increased faster than the GPs in Finland, France, Hungary and Luxembourg. The reverse happened in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, as the income of GPs grew faster than that of specialists (OECD, 2015). After the economic crisis, many EU countries had to cut down the wages of doctors to reduce costs while protecting access to care for the population. Such reduced remunerations were reported in Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy and Slovenia. However, in more recent years, the remuneration of HPs have started to rise again (OECD, 2015). Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland report the highest remuneration for both nurses and specialists (see ki9, Panels (A) and (B), whereas Latvia, Slovak Republic and Poland report the lowest remuneration. The above comparison shows that for a HP (a GP/specialist/nurse) migrating solely due to economic reasons, Luxembourg, Netherlands or Ireland are the desirable destinations.

0

100

200

300

Panel B

Latvia

Slovak Republic

Poland

Czech Republic

Estonia

Greece

Slovenia

Italy

Finland

France

United Kingdom

Spain

Germany

Denmark

Belgium

Ireland

Netherlands

Luxembourg

0

25

50

In 1000 US$ PPP

75

100

Data source: Computed from the OECD. Stat (http://stats.oecd.org/, accessed on 3 August 2017) Note: Using the OECD Database, we have distinguished between general practitioners and all other medical specialists combined, ruling out possible heterogeneity in the income of different medical specialties.

Figure 7.4 Remuneration (in 1,000 USD PPP) of salaried specialists (Panel A) and salaried hospital nurses (Panel B)

Panel A

Luxembourg Ireland Netherlands Germany UK Denmark Finland Sweden France Italy Spain Slovenia Greece Czech Republic Estonia Slovak Republic Hungary Poland Latvia

In 1000 US$ PPP

Migration of Indian health professionals 119 India – EU HPs migration A constraint in studying cross-country HP mobility has been the paucity of data. The available data is insufficient to portray relevant dimensions such as the motives behind migration; actual flows; status of the migrant professionals; and also circular migration. The inflow data is usually more reliable than the outflow data. Table 7.1 shows the recent data for some of the EU countries, except the UK, which is discussed in detail later. We do not observe any particular pattern in these migratory flows. Ireland witnessed relatively more inflow of India-trained doctors, but Belgium, France or Latvia have reported low inflows. The annual inflow in Ireland declined steadily till 2014, after which there was a sudden increase. Annual inflow in the Netherlands has been relatively higher but recent years’ data is unavailable. Sweden recorded negligible inflow of Indian medical doctors. The annual inflow in Denmark was initially high but declined due to apprehensions regarding new entry norms introduced in 2009. Table 7.2 depicts the annual flow of nurses from India to the EU. While the data is not consistently available for most countries, recent Table 7.1 Annual inflow of the number of India-trained doctors in some EU countries 2009 Belgium Denmark France Ireland Latvia Sweden Netherlands

  27       1 9

2010 1 8

  38   2 8

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2 8 0 41

  2 1 31     5

    0 26 1   6

    0 6     6

  2 0 30      

  1 8

2016 2 2

  35      

Source: Compiled from the OECD. Stat, accessed 3 August 2017 and Bhattacharjee (2013).

Table 7.2 Annual inflow of the number of India-trained nurses in the EU

Belgium Denmark Germany Italy Spain

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

  2   150  

  7   247  

  10   268 1

13

27

24 3 9 117

10

17

    202  

  9 146  

 

  24 81  

    66  

Source: Compiled from the OECD. Stat, accessed 8 August 2017, and Bhattacharjee (2013).

120  Ayona Bhattacharjee data is available only for five EU countries. Italy showed the highest inflows during 2010–11 which declined afterwards. We consider migration to the UK separately as it has received the maximum number of Indian HPs in the group of EU countries. Figures 7.5 and 7.6 depict the composition of the stock of medical doctors and nurses in the UK during 2015 and 2016. It is worth noting that a share of medical doctors who have migrated from India to the UK during the last two years outnumbered the share of immigrant Others 3% Other Asia 22%

India [33%]

Americas 2%

Africa 15% EU 20%

Europe [5%]

Figure 7.5 Composition of the stock of foreign-trained doctors in UK in 2015 and 2016 Source: Computed from the OECD. Stat (accessed 3 August 2017) on Health worker migration to UK Others 10%

Others 10%

Other Asia 26%

India [17%]

Africa 18% EU 25% Europe [2%]

Americas 2%

Africa 17%

Other Asia 25%

Americas 2%

EU 28% India [16%]

Europe [2%]

Figure 7.6 Composition of the stock of foreign-trained nurses in UK in 2015 and 2016 Source: Computed from the OECD. Stat, (accessed 3 August 17) on Health worker migration to UK

Migration of Indian health professionals 121 4000

In numbers

3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500

India-trained doctors

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

0

India-trained nurses

Figure 7.7 Annual inflow of doctors and nurses in the UK from India Source: OECD. Stat on Health worker migration (accessed on 3 August 2017)

medical doctors from other countries. While the contribution of Indian medical doctors in the UK during 2015 was 34 percent of the total foreign-trained doctors, it marginally declined to 33 percent during 2016. A similar one percentage point decline is observed in the share of India-trained nurses practicing in the UK. Unlike the contribution to the pool of foreign medical doctors, the share of Indiatrained nurses is outweighed by the share of nurses from other EU countries. Nurses trained in the EU constitute the highest share of the total foreign-trained nurses in the UK. The trend of medical doctor and nurse migration from India to the UK over the last decade is shown in Figure 7.7. We observe a sharp decline in the migration of both medical doctors and nurses since 2004–05. The trends do not show any significant improvements in recent years. While there was around 30 percent increase in the inflow of India-trained doctors to the UK, the inflow of nurses showed a decline of around 45 percent during 2015–16. The effects of Brexit on Indian HPs migration The inflow of foreign professionals helps in addressing shortages in countries, but the issue comes under tension when crises strike. One of the commonly adopted measures to combat crises is to introduce reforms which can keep the public debts under check. This is attained through large-scale cuts on public expenditure. As the health sector in the EU is largely dominated by the public sector, such austerity measures have direct implications for the health workforce requirement and

122  Ayona Bhattacharjee availability. For instance, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania and Romania reduced the salaries of HPs, while the salary increments were reduced in Denmark and frozen in England, Portugal and Slovenia (Mladovsky et al., 2012). The reforms in Greece decreased public health expenditure and the health workforce (Economou, 2012). Differential measures adopted by different countries aggravate crosscountry wage differentials and affect mobility accordingly. The recent Global Financial Crisis was enough to spark off the foundations for speculating the future of labour markets in the EU. The referendum in favour of Britain exiting from the EU, ending the 44-year-old union, has taken the world by surprise. As Britain moves out of the single market union, the British labour market would no longer be easily accessible to the HPs from other EU countries. While there is a focus on training more domestic students in the UK, it may not suffice for the future healthcare demand. In this event, dependence on India as the alternative source is likely to be re-emphasised. After all, India has been an important source country of HPs to the UK. The historical contribution of Indian HPs to the NHS is likely to remain integral to future employment. A contemporary evidence on this is the recently launched scheme by the UK whereby doctors from India will be required to fill up shortages in the emergency departments of the NHS. As per the Commons Health Select Committee, the Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments will soon experience a significant shortage of doctors.7

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted several important and interrelated issues emerging out of HP migration from India to the EU. An ageing population, ageing health workforce, coupled with greater health awareness, have generated excess demand for health human resources in many countries. In an effort to ensure enough supply of HPs, healthcare reforms and immigration policies are being framed, updated and implemented across developed and developing countries. As per the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, many countries have started training more HPs domestically to reduce the dependence on foreign HPs. The commonly imposed entry restrictions include non-recognition of medical degrees, language tests, specific licencing and registration requirements. Different EU countries are currently experiencing different conditions in their health markets – Austria, Estonia, Poland, Spain and Malta are net exporters of HPs; Bulgaria, Romania and Germany are

Migration of Indian health professionals 123 facing high emigration of physicians; Croatia is facing a shortage of physicians and unemployment of nurses; Hungary is reporting a net inflow of nurses and a net outflow of physicians; Italy is experiencing a high inflow of foreign nurses; Ireland is actively recruiting foreign nurses; France is reporting a high inflow of foreign HPs; the future prospects for foreign HPs in the UK is uncertain. Indian HPs have mostly migrated to the English-speaking countries like the UK or Ireland. No significant aberrations to these trends were observed during the last year under economic and political turmoil. The only issue that came to fore recently involves the potential effects of current political and economic conditions on labour market and migration norms, especially in the UK. As the demand for health human resources will not wane but the supply from other EU countries will not be easily available post-Brexit, the Indian HPs, who were migrating to the UK in large numbers, might potentially end up gaining. The current trends re-emphasise the need for policy measures such as, bilateral negotiations between India and the EU countries on mutual degree recognition, visa norms, recruitment programs and technical assistance in healthcare markets (Chanda, 2002). At the domestic front, introduction of optional language courses during medical studies could go a long way in helping the potential emigrants to prepare for employment abroad. While emigration can have adverse effects on the source country, policies to utilise the knowledge capital of the migrants should be framed appropriately. Steps to coordinate collaborative efforts with the Indian emigrants in the EU and also encouraging return migration by improving working conditions in the Indian health system can compensate for the losses imposed by emigration. Literature has established population health as the outcome of a complex array of different factors, calling for a holistic approach in optimising healthcare resource allocation. Also, the fast growth of the health sector in both developed and developing countries suggests that it will remain a key driver not only in shaping the population health, but also in providing future employment. How this mobility evolves overtime would thus be worth watching out for.

Notes 1 We follow the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) as published by the ILO (2012) to categorise health service occupations. In this chapter, we focus on Code 22 for HPs with subcategories Code 221: Medical Doctors; Code 222: Nursing and Midwifery Professionals.

124  Ayona Bhattacharjee 2 See Chanda (2002), Buchan and Sochalski (2004), Blouin, Drager, and Smith (2005), Smith, Chanda, and Tangcharoensathien (2009), Tjadens et al. (2012), Buchan et al. (2014) and others. 3 Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995; Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004; Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013 (source: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/ countries_en#tab-0-1). 4 Income group classification as stated by the World Bank on the basis of GNI measures for FY’18. (Source: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/ knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups.) 5 Individual country-specific details on Health system reforms were compiled from The Health Systems and Policy Monitor (www.hspm.org/ searchandcompare.aspx). 6 Source: Health PROMeTHEUS (http://ehma.org/projects/past-projects/ health-prometheus/). 7 Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/world/new-scheme-for-indiandoctors-in-uk-to-plug-shortages/article9479399.ece.

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Websites http://stats.oecd.org/, accessed on 9 August 2017. www.hspm.org/searchandcompare.aspx, accessed on 5 June 2017. http://ehma.org/projects/past-projects/health-prometheus/, accessed on 1 August 2017. https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en#tab-0-1, accessed on 25 July 2017. https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-worldbank-country-and-lending-groups, accessed on 1 August 2017. www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/world/new-scheme-for-indian-doctorsin-uk-to-plug-shortages/article9479399.ece, accessed on 5 August 2017.

8 Brexit Did a perceived threat of immigrants divide a country? S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker Introduction Immigration has consistently ranked among the top five issues during political debates in recent history. In the case of Brexit, a portmanteau of “British” and “exit”, denoting United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU), it was no different. A major argument of the ‘Leave’ campaign was that Brexit would allow more control over the flow of immigrants to the United Kingdom, especially from the rest of EU. Leave supporters were concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life. Two prominent views on Brexit, and mass populism in general, are the “economic insecurity” perspective – which emphasises the consequences of profound changes transforming the workforce and society in post-industrial economies, and the “cultural backlash” thesis –which states that support to de-globalise can be explained as a retro-reaction by once predominant sectors of the population to progressive value change. The fundamental element of these economic and political views is migration. Under mounting effects of migration, the supporters of Brexit were influenced by the promises to restrict freedom of movement. The future of migration between the United Kingdom, Europe and the rest of the world is uncertain. A “hard” Brexit could involve the United Kingdom refusing to compromise on the free movement of people, while a “soft” Brexit might maintain status quo on the same. Although different officials of the British Government have given assurances of amnesty to the 3.6 million EU migrants in the United Kingdom, doubts remain over their job security and opportunities. An 82-page document by the Home Office that was leaked is the most detailed exposition of government thinking about migration after Brexit.

Brexit 129 The document says that the transformation of the UK’s immigration policy will take place in three stages. The initial phase, before Brexit, will involve the introduction of an immigration bill. It will be followed by an implementation period of ‘at least two years’, and a final phase, when tough new rules will be put in place. The final phase is about the introduction of UK rules to control the type and volume of both temporary and permanent migration from the EU, in the national interest. These rules are not yet decided and will take into account social and economic circumstances closer to the time (and following negotiations with the EU). The departure from EU means the end of rights-based, unconditional free movement, but not the end of EU migration. The difference will be that the government will have the essential components in place to control EU as well as non-EU migration and to introduce a more selective approach. For the future system, the government will take a view on the economic and social needs of the country as regards EU migration rather than leaving this decision entirely to those wishing to come here, and employers. In this chapter, we argue that at least economically, these apprehensions of reduced wellbeing and missed opportunities are unfounded. It will be shown that, relatively, UK citizens are better off even with the influx of low-skilled migrants to the country.

A brief history of UK and its position in the EU 1964–1968: The creation of the EEC Although the UK was not yet involved, what was to become the modern European Union began to take shape at this time, following the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. This meant the free movement of workers was established. Workers within the EEC (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) were now free to work in whichever EEC country they chose. 1962–1971: Commonwealth restrictions While Commonwealth workers had been encouraged to come to the UK after World War II due to labour shortages, they now became subject to increasing controls. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act meant that Commonwealth passport holders without UK passports now needed to apply for work vouchers. This act was updated in 1968 – Commonwealth citizens were now only free to live in the UK if their parent or grandparent had British citizenship – a policy mainly

130  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker impacting non-white Commonwealth citizens. The 1971 Immigration Act provided assistance to Commonwealth citizens wishing to be repatriated and replaced work vouchers with permits only allowing temporary residence. 1968–1976: Global unrest Unrest in Kenya and Uganda led to many African-Asians fleeing discrimination. Many came to the UK as they were Commonwealth citizens who had relocated to Africa in times of the British Empire. As the unrest escalated, many African-Asians were allowed to settle in the UK in 1972 after being expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. The civil war in Pakistan and Bangladesh, together with political unrest at the end of the Vietnam War, also resulted in many seeking a new life in Britain. It is estimated that 83,000 immigrants from the Commonwealth have settled in the UK since 1968. 1945–1982: The 10-pound poms Between 1945 and 1982, UK citizens were encouraged to relocate to Australia to populate the country and increase the labour force. The Assisted Passage Migration Scheme meant that adults could get a ticket for just 10 pounds sterling, while children went free. However, once they were there, they had to stay for two years. Over 1.5 million people took the risk and became known as the “10 Pound Poms”. 1973–1975: The UK joins the EEC In 1973, the UK (along with the Republic of Ireland and Denmark) joined the EEC. The same year, the oil crisis caused a recession and unemployment rose. The miners’ strike in 1974 resulted in a three-day week being imposed to conserve electricity, and there was a peak in British citizens leaving the EU that year – possibly affected by the UK’s EEC membership and the poor economic conditions in the UK at the time. The Immigration Act of 1971 was also implemented the same year, making immigration from Commonwealth countries to the UK harder. 1976–1978: Canadian emigration and race relations There was racial tension in the UK in the early 1970s and existing laws to prevent discrimination were ineffective. In 1976, the Race Relations

Brexit 131 Act was introduced to promote equal opportunities regardless of race, colour, nationality, ethnicity or religion. In 1978, the Canadian Immigration Act came into force that made it easier for people to move to Canada to join immediate family members. A little later, as the UK entered the 1980s, the economy entered another recession. Both these events explain why there was another peak in British citizens leaving the UK in 1982. 1980–1986: Primary purpose rule and EEC expansion The “primary purpose rule”, introduced in 1980, meant that foreign nationals who were married to British citizens had to prove that the primary purpose of their marriage was not to obtain British residency. This rule was abolished in 1997. The EEC continued to grow in the 1980s with Greece joining in 1981, followed by Portugal and Spain in 1986. 1988: The 1988 Immigration Act The 1988 immigration Act ensured that workers with freedom of movement in the EEC did not need permission to enter or remain in the UK. It also ensured that only one wife or widow of a polygamous marriage had a right to enter the country. 1989–1990: Fall of the Berlin wall The Berlin Wall was pulled down in 1989 – the first time the border between East and West Germany was open in 28 years. 1990 saw an enlarged and unified Germany became an EEC member. The following year, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania independence. Moreover, in 1990, the Work Permit system was introduced in the UK to enable employers to recruit skilled people. 1993–1994: Creation of EU and the Channel Tunnel The 1993 Maastricht Treaty established the European Union. It introduced EU citizenship for all nationals of the member states and not just workers. This meant that all EU nationals were now free to live wherever they wished to within the EU. In 1994, three members of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) – Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein signed an agreement to create a single market with EU member states. This meant that goods, services, people and capital were now

132  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker free to move around all of these countries. The Channel Tunnel also opened the same year, enabling easier transportation between the UK and France. The Sargette agreement was implemented so the UK could carry out immigration controls on French territory. 1995–1999: EU expansion and Hong Kong handover In 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU. In 1997, the UK handed control of Hong Kong back to China. This handover was preceded by a rise in emigration from Hong Kong as people were wary of what Chinese rule would bring. The UK was a popular destination for emigrants, and 50,000 families were granted British citizenship under the 1990 British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act. In 1999, The Euro was introduced as the new “single currency” with 11 member states of the EU adopting its use. 1999–2006: New rules for asylum seekers Around the turn of the century, applications for asylum in the UK increased as people fled persecution in Eastern Europe and warzones in Somalia, Sri Lanka and the Middle East. This led to a number of changes in the way the UK dealt with people seeking asylum, including the removal of benefits, the creation of the National Asylum Service, the introduction of English tests and citizenships exams, a new system for visas, limitations to the appeal system and a fine for employers with illegal employees. 2004: Further EU expansion In 2004, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Malta and Cyprus joined the EU. Over the following years, the UK saw an immediate increase in the number of migrants coming from these countries – particularly the first eight – which are generally referred to as the “EU8”. Additionally, the Worker Registration Scheme was introduced to monitor incoming workers from these countries and help keep track of how the labour market was affected by this influx of migrants. 2008–2009: The economic downturn In 2008, the global economy entered a downturn. As UK unemployment rose alongside increasing immigration from the new EU member

Brexit 133 states, a points-based immigration system was introduced for those migrants from outside the EU. Immigration continued to rise and in 2009, the number of student visas peaked to over 300,000 for the first time. It was thought that immigration would increase even further when Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007, and the UK placed employment restrictions on these citizens for the first few years of their EU membership. These restrictions were lifted in 2014. 2010–2016: Migration ambitions Today, the government has a “migration ambition” to cut overall migration to sustainable levels. Net migration has been higher than 100,000 every year since 1998. In 2013, Croatia joined the EU, bringing the total number of member states to 28. In 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU.

Migration to and from the UK

Thousands

Immigration has increased considerably in the past 20 years, especially after the accession of eight Eastern European countries (or the A8) in 2004. Between 1995 and 2015, the number of immigrants from other EU countries who live in the UK increased over three times from 0.9 million to 3.3 million (see Figure 8.1). The share of EU nationals

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 -100

1964

1968

1972

1976

1980

1984

1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008

2012

2016

-200 Immigraon

Emigraon

Net migraon

Figure 8.1 Long-term international migration to and from the UK, 1964–2016 Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

Thousands

134  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Dec/07

Dec/08

Net Migraon

Dec/09

Dec/10 Immigraon

Dec/11

Dec/12 Emigraon

Dec/13

Dec/14

Dec/15

Dec/16

2 per. Mov. Avg. (Net Migraon)

Figure 8.2  Long-term international migration to and from the UK, Dec 2007–June 2017 Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

grew from 1.5 percent to 5.3 percent of the total population and from 1.8 percent to 6.3 percent of the working-age population (adults aged 16–64). Non-UK populations also continued to increase between 2015 and 2016 (see Figure 8.5). The non-UK-born population increased from 8.6 million to 9.2 million (up 7 percent) and the non-British population increased from 5.6 million to 6.0 million (up 8 percent). The increase in non-UK-born residents was driven by significant increases in both EU and non-EU born residents. However, the increase in the non-British population was driven by EU nationals alone (the number of non-EU nationals in the population has remained stable). In the most recent estimates, net migration has fallen to +230,000 (see Table 8.1). Over the longer term, varying levels of net migration are not unusual and net migration has risen and fallen between +140,000 and +336,000 over the last 20 years. The Long-Term International Migration (LTIM) net migration estimate (the difference between immigration and emigration) for the year ending (YE) June 2017 was +230,000, compared to +336,000 in YE June 2016. This 106,000 difference is the largest annual decrease recorded yet. Net migration is

Brexit 135 Table 8.1 Change in net migration to the UK, YE June 2016 to YE June 2017 (Thousands)

Total British EU (of which) EU151 (of which) EU82 (of which) EU23 Non–EU (of which) Asia (of which) Rest of World

YE June 2016

YE June 2017

Change

Change (%)

336 −49 189 84

230 −49 107 55

−106 0 −82 −29

−32 0 −43 −35

42

8

−34

−81

62

41

−21

−34

196 124

173 109

−23 −15

−12 −12

59

51

−8

−14

Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

the lowest recorded estimate since YE December 2013 and is similar to the level seen in 2014. Over 75 percent of the decrease in net migration to YE June 2017 is accounted for by a significant decrease of 82,000 for EU citizens, falling from the recent high recorded in YE June 2016. EU net migration is the lowest since YE June 2013 (see Table 8.1). The change in EU net migration is due to decreases for EU15 (down 29,000 or 35 percent), EU8 citizens (down 34,000 or 81 percent) and EU2 (down 21,000 or 34 percent) (see Table 8.1). Given the wider economic changes across the EU, a further decrease in EU net migration is expected. Net migration for EU8 citizens is small, with similar numbers arriving as leaving. EU15 citizens still make up the majority of the EU migrating population although this is at its lowest level since YE June 2013. While non-EU net migration is down, British net migration has remained the same (see Figure 8.3). Immigration remains much higher than emigration accounting for the positive net migration over the last 20 years. In the YE June 2017, there was a decrease of 80,000 (or 12 percent) for immigration compared with the YE June 2016. This decrease was driven by falls for both EU citizens (down 54,000 or 19 percent) and non-EU citizens (down 28,000 or 10 percent) (see Table 8.2).

EU15 Cizens

Dec 2008 Dec 2009

Sep 2010

Sep 2011

Sep 2012

EU8 Cizens

Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

-10

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Figure 8.3 EU net migration to the UK by citizenship, Dec 2007–June 2017

Thousands

Dec 2007 June 2008 June 2009 March 2010 June 2010 Dec 2010 March 2011 June 2011 Dec 2011 March 2012 June 2012 Dec 2012 March 2013 June 2013 Sep 2013 Dec 2013 March 2014

EU2 Cizens

June 2014 Sep 2014 Dec 2014 March 2015 June 2015 Sep 2015 Dec 2015 March 2016 June 2016 Sep 2016 Dec 2016 March 2017p June 2017p

−12 3 −19 −14 −33 −17 −10 −11 −7

Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

−80 2 −54 −19 −24 −12 −28 −20 −7

316 127 95 54 31 9 95 55 35

342 128 123 64 40 17 90 49 36

26 1 28 10 9 8 −5 −6 1

8 1 29 19 29 89 −5 −11 3

652 77 284 138 73 70 291 179 94

Total British EU (of which) EU15 (of which) EU8 (of which) EU2 Non–EU (of which) Asia (of which) Rest of World

572 79 230 119 49 58 263 159 87

YE June 2016 YE June 2017 Change Change (%) YE June 2016 YE June 2017 Change Change (%)

 

Emigration

Immigration

 

(Thousands)

Table 8.2 EU and non-EU migration to the UK, June 2016–2017 (in thousands)

138  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker The total immigration estimate of 652,000 in YE June 2016 was the highest immigration estimate recorded, while the latest Figure 8.8 of 572,000 is the lowest estimate recorded since YE March 2014, producing the large fall reported this quarter (see Table 8.2). The emigration estimate of 342,000 is similar to YE March 2017. The highest estimate recorded for emigration (427,000) was in YE December 2008, following the 2008 recession. Both EU immigration and EU emigration saw significant changes in the YE June 2017 as fewer EU citizens moved to the UK and more left, producing the large net migration change. The large immigration falls (54,000 or 29 percent) of EU citizens down to 230,000 was from a peak in YE June 2016 when EU immigration was at its highest estimate recorded (284,000) (see Table 8.2). The majority of the reduction in immigration relates to fewer EU citizens coming to the UK to look for work (a 47,000 decrease of the total 54,000 decrease). EU8 citizens saw a decrease of 24,000 in immigration (33 percent). This fall continues a decline in EU8 immigration seen since the 2008 recession, following the peak in the immediate period following these countries’ accession to the EU in 2004. EU15 immigration is still the largest group in the EU but saw a decrease to the lowest level in three years (down 19,000 or 14 percent). EU2 saw a more modest decrease of 12,000 (17 percent), similar to the change reported last quarter while still outnumbering EU8 immigration. The overall rise in EU emigration to 123,000 in YE June 2017 was the highest level since YE December 2008 when EU8 emigration was at its peak (134,000) following the 2008 recession (see Table 8.2). The rise is accounted for by moderate increases for EU15, EU8 and EU2. Combined with immigration these emigration increases are reflected in the statistically significant net migration decreases for EU15 and EU8 citizens. Emigration from the UK for British citizens was stable (128,000) and is now similar to the number of EU citizens emigrating (123,000).

Source countries and reasons for migration to the UK The size of the foreign-born population in the UK increased from about 3.8 million in 1993 to over 8.7 million in 2015. During the same period, the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 2 million to more than 5.7 million. The number of foreign-born people in the UK increased in almost every year, although there were some slight decreases in 1996, 2007, 2010 and 2013. The highest growth in the foreign-born population occurred between 2005 and 2008 (see Figure 8.5). This period coincides with the significant inflow of Eastern European migrants following EU enlargement in 2004.

Brexit 139

17% 29% 4% 2% 5%

5% 12%

6% 6%

7%

7% Poland

Ireland

Portugal

Romania

Italy

Germany

France

Bulgaria

Spain

Others

Lithuania

Figure 8.4 EU immigrants by nationality, UK, 2015 Source: Centre for Economic Performance analysis of Labour Force Survey

In 2015, there were around 3.3 million EU immigrants living in the UK, up from 0.9 million in 1995 – a rise to 5.3 percent of the population from 1.5 percent. Around 2.5 million of these migrants are between the ages of 16 and 64, and two million are in work. EU countries now account for 35 percent of all immigrants living in the UK. While 29 percent of EU nationals are Polish and 12 percent are Irish, the nationalities of other EU immigrants are quite evenly spread across the other 25 countries in the EU (see Figure 8.4).

140  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker 6000

5000

(Thousands)

4000

3000

2000

1000

0 2005 EU27

2006

2007 EU14

2008 EU8

2009

2010 EU2

2011 Non-EU

2012

2013

2014

Asia

2015

2016

Rest of the World

Figure 8.5 Estimates of the non-UK-born resident population of the UK by country of birth, 2005–2016 Source: Annual Population Survey (APS), Office for National Statistics

There was a significant increase in the non-UK-born population of the UK, increasing from 8.6 million to 9.2 million (7 percent) between 2015 and 2016. This growth was due to increases in both the EU and nonEU born population. The EU population increased from 3.2 million to 3.5 million (9 percent) and the non-EU population from 5.4 million to 5.6 million (4 percent) (see Figure 8.5). Among the EU born population, EU14 born increased from 1.5 million to 1.6 million (7 percent), EU8 born from 1.3 million to 1.4 million (8 percent) and EU2 born from 288,000 to 395,000 (37 percent). Among the non-EU born population, there was a major increase in the resident population of those born in Asia, from 2.7 million to 2.9 million (7 percent) (see Figure 8.5). Poland, India and Pakistan are the main three foreign countries of birth accounting respectively for 9.5 percent, 9.0 percent and 5.9 percent of the UK’s foreign-born population, followed by Ireland (4.5 percent) and Germany (3.3 percent) (see Table 8.3). Poles and Indians are also the main foreign nationalities in the UK, with Poles being the largest group, accounting for 15.7 percent of foreign citizens. Those born in India constitute the biggest group among the foreign-born population in London.

Brexit 141 Table 8.3 Share of immigrants in the UK by countries of birth and citizenship, 2016 Country of birth

Share (%)

Country of citizenship

Share (%)

Poland India Pakistan Ireland Germany Romania Nigeria Bangladesh South Africa Italy

9.5 9 5.9 4.5 3.3 2.6 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.1

Poland India Ireland Portugal Romania Italy Lithuania Pakistan France Spain

15.7 6.4 6 4.1 4 3.7 3.3 3.2 3.1 2.8

Source: Office for National Statistics, Home Office UK

Of the 833,000 Indian born residing in the UK in 2016, over half (471,000 or 57 percent) are British nationals, while only 32,000 (4 percent) of the 911,000 Poland born residing in the UK are British nationals. This reflects the fact that EU nationals currently have the freedom to move between EU countries, whereas for non-EU nationals there is an incentive to acquire British nationality. This may also reflect the length of time that individuals have lived in the UK and the numbers born to UK nationals living abroad. Indian nationals have remained stable over the past few years. Although the numbers of both female and male migrants have increased overtime, women have constituted a small majority of the UK’s migrant population since at least 1993. However, the trend is reversing and in 2015, 52 percent of the foreign-born population were women. Looking at the distribution of foreign-born by age, including children (those aged 0–15), youth (aged 15–25), adults (aged 26–64) and retired (aged 64+), the vast majority of foreign-born people are adults (71 percent), while 9 percent are children, 10 percent are youth, and 11 percent are retired. The shares of age groups are generally the same across foreign born males and females, though there are slightly bigger shares of foreign-born males that are children and youth (just under 20 percent of foreign born males), and a slightly greater share of retirees amongst females (12 percent of foreign born females, as compared with 10 percent for foreign born males). There was a decrease of 51,000 (16 percent) in people immigrating for work in the YE June 2017 compared with the YE June 2016, which was the highest estimate recorded (312,000) (see Figure 8.6). The number of people immigrating for a definite job has remained

Accompany or Join Formal Study

Source: Office for National Statistics, Long Term International Migration

Work Related

Figure 8.6  Immigration to the UK by main reason for migration, 2009–2017

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

(Thousands)

Other Not Stated

Dec 2009 Mar 2010 Jun 2010 Sep 2010 Dec 2010 Mar 2011 Jun 2011 Sep 2011 Dec 2011 Mar 2012 Jun 2012 Sep 2012 Dec 2012 Mar 2013 Jun 2013 Sep 2013 Dec 2013 Mar 2014 Jun 2014 Sep 2014 Dec 2014 Mar 2015 Jun 2015 Sep 2015 Dec 2015 Mar 2016 Jun 2016 Sep 2016 Dec 2016 Mar 2017p Jun 2017p

Brexit 143 stable (187,000) over recent years. Fewer people came to the UK looking for work (down 56,000 or 43 percent), which has driven the overall decrease in work. Of all the people arriving in the UK for work, 28 percent were looking for work in the YE June 2017 compared with 42 percent in the YE June 2016. International Passenger Survey (IPS) data shows that the decrease in people arriving who are looking for work is accounted for by EU citizens, down 47,000 or 57 percent. Among EU workers, 24 percent were looking for work in the YE June 2017 compared to 43 percent in the YE June 2016. In the YE June 2017, EU15 immigrants were less likely to move looking for work than they were a year ago (down 22,000 or 65 percent), as were EU8 immigrants (down 17,000 or 63 percent) (see Figure 8.6). The estimate of non-EU immigrants arriving to work was 65,000 in the YE June 2017. Among them, 17,000 (26 percent) arrived looking for work, who were likely people granted visas under the Youth Mobility Scheme. The majority of non-EU citizens arriving for work come to take skilled jobs. Home Office visa statistics show that the number of visas granted for longer than 12 months to skilled workers (and their dependents) rose by 2,767 (4 percent) for the YE September 2017. In the YE September 2017, there were 93,700 sponsored skilled work (Tier 2) visas granted, a similar level when compared to the previous year. Tier 5 youth mobility and temporary visas were also broadly stable (only 1 percent lower). In the YE September 2017, in all work categories, there were 164,383 work-related visas (including dependants) granted, around the same level as in the YE September 2016 (see Table 8.4). Table 8.4 Work-related visa grants by category, UK, YE September 2016 and YE September 2017 Type of visa granted YE September YE September Change Change (%) 2016 2017 Total work–related visas Tier 1 visas Tier 2 (skilled) visas Tier 5 (youth mobility and temporary) visas Non–PBS or other work visas

164,571

164,383

−188

0

4,516 93,913 41,998

4,820 93,700 41,652

304 −213 −346

7 0 −1

24,144

24,211

67

Source: International Passenger Survey, Office for National Statistics

0%

144  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker Indian nationals accounted for 57 percent of total skilled work visas granted (53,009 of 93,700) and the information technology sector sponsored 40 percent of skilled work visa applications.

Immigration, jobs and wages Currently, there are 28.55 million UK nationals working in the UK, which is 183,000 more than for a year earlier (an increase of one percent). The number of EU nationals is 2.38 million, which is 112,000 more than a year earlier (an increase of four percent), while the number of non-EU nationals working in the UK is 1.21 million which is fewer by 23,000 compared to the year before (a decrease of two percent). The employment rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 years who were in work) was 82 percent for EU nationals, which was higher than that for both UK nationals (75 percent) and non-EU nationals (64 percent) (see Table 8.7). Importantly, EU immigrants are on average more educated than the UK-born – almost twice as many of them have some form of higher education (43 percent compared with 23 percent UK-born). Only 15 percent of EU immigrants left school at 16 compared with 44 percent of the UK-born (see Table 8.6). Not only are EU immigrants more educated, but they are also more likely to be in work (78 percent) than UK-born individuals (73 percent). They are also less likely to be unemployed or economically inactive. This is particularly true of A8 immigrants – almost 82 percent of them are in work (see Table 8.7). EU immigrants are typically younger as well. Among the workingage population, the average age of the UK-born is 40, while the average western EU immigrant is 38 and the average A8 immigrant is 34. About 70 percent of EU immigrants say they come to the UK owing work-related reasons, as opposed to study or joining their families. Since immigration increases the total number of people working or looking for employment, it is natural to speculate that UK workers are being harmed by the increased competition for jobs. However, this is untrue. Believing otherwise is called the ‘lump of labour fallacy’ (Schloss, 1891). There would be harm only if the total number of jobs is fixed and only when immigrants compete for a particular job. But since immigrants also consume local services and goods, this increases demand and raises job prospects of those who produce these goods and services. Adding an immigrant simply raises the population, just like a rise in the birth rate or a fall in the death rate. In the last 100 years, the UK population has grown by around 50 percent,

Table 8.5 UK and non-UK employment, unemployment and economic inactivity estimates from the Labour Force Survey, July to September 2017

All people (000s) All people (rate) (%) UK nationals (000s) UK nationals (rate) (%) Non–UK nationals (000s) Non–UK nationals (rate) (%) UK–born (000s) UK–born (rate) (%) Non–UK–born (000s) Non–UK–born (rate) (%)

Employment

Unemployment

Economic inactivity

32,141 75.20 28,547 75.30 3,589 74.50 26,434 75.50 5,705 73.90

1,501 4.50 1,325 4.40 175 4.60 1,220 4.40 281 4.70

8,728 21.2 7,669 21.1 1,042 21.9 7,019 20.9 1,692 22.4

Source: UK Labour market statistics, ONS

Table 8.6  Education and immigrant status (working-age population), UK, 2015 Age finished education High (21 or older) Medium (17–20) Low (16 or under) All

UK-born (%)

EU immigrants (%)

A8 immigrants (%)

All immigrants (%)

23

43

36

45

33

42

55

36

44

15

9

19

100

100

100

100

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey

Table 8.7 Employment, unemployment, students and economic inactivity by immigrant status (working-age population), UK, 2015 Employment status

UK-born (%)

EU immigrants (%)

A8 immigrants (%)

All immigrants (%)

Employed Unemployed Student Inactive All

72.5 3.3 7.7 16.5 100

78.2 3.2 7.1 11.6 100

81.9 2.5 5.1 10.5 100

69.9 4.2 7.6 18.3 100

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey

146  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker but the unemployment rate has not trended inflexibly upward. Even if there is no reason to believe that immigration decreases unemployment, people find it obvious that an increase in the supply of workers drive wages down. This also is untrue. Along with the increased demand that a rising population brings, the greater movement of labour allows countries to specialise in what they are best at, just like increased trade. Firms will change the mix of their products to account for the new skills available to them. Moreover, immigrants, especially if they are more skilled, can boost productivity. All these effects will tend to increase wages. Consequently, the impact of immigration on UK-born workers is an empirical question and not a foregone conclusion. We need to look at data for evidence. There is a huge amount of research examining the effect of immigration on jobs and wages (summarised in Wadsworth, 2015; Portes, 2016a, 2016b; Centre for European Reform, 2016; Dustmann et al., 2005; Manacorda et al., 2011; Migration Advisory Committee, 2014 among others). The conclusion of this research is that the large increase in immigration in the UK has not significantly harmed the job and wage prospects of UKborn workers. Nevertheless, as shown earlier, since immigrants are on average younger and more educated than the natives rapid changes in technology and the economy may push the low-skilled native workers into unemployment if they fail to adapt. Median real wages for the UK-born grew from the late 1990s till the global financial crisis. Since then, wages have fallen by about 10 percent. Such falls in real wages are unprecedented in the post-war period. The story of the latest recession was not that many people lost their jobs, but that most people’s wages fell. This fall happened when EU immigration was rising – although equally big gains in real wages for UK workers were experienced at a time when EU immigration was also rising. So the cause of the fall of wages is the impact of the Great Recession – not immigration. Dustmann et al. (2013) finds small wage losses for those in the bottom 10 percent of the pay distribution and larger wage gains for those in the middle of the pay ladder as a result of immigration. Their estimates imply that the wave of EU immigration between 2004 and 2015 reduced wages in the bottom decile by 1.03 percent and raised wages for the median worker by 1.24 percent. But the areas where the bottom 10 percent had relatively slow wage growth were places like London. London had big increases in immigration but also had the weakest bite of the rapidly rising minimum wage. Consequently, it is likely that even these small negative effects are overstated by not controlling for the minimum wage effects. Nickell and Saleheen (2015) find small

Brexit 147 wage losses for occupations with fast increases in immigration. Their results imply that all EU immigration since 2004 has reduced semi/ unskilled service sector wages only by about 0.7 percent (compared with a 4 percent increase in the minimum wage over the same period, Centre for European Reform, 2016).

Productivity and immigration Migration acts much like trade, as people tend to move to countries where they can be more productive and thus earn higher incomes. Migrants move from countries with lower productivity (and hence lower wages) to countries with higher productivity. This raises public welfare through greater efficiency in labour allocation across the world. Immigrants also fill the gaps in the skill composition of the national workforce. This encourages specialisation, increases productivity and improves the wages of national workers with complementary skills. There is consensus that there are positive effects of trade and foreign direct investment on UK productivity. But there is somewhat less of a consensus on the effect of immigration on productivity. There is strong evidence of positive effects for more educated immigrants (for example, Ottaviano et al., 2016, for UK service productivity; Ortega and Peri, 2014). Indeed, most studies show insignificant or positive effects of overall immigration. For example, Felbermayr et al. (2010) concludes that a 10 percent increase in the immigrant stock leads to a per capita income gain of 2.2 percent. Recent work by Boubtane et al. (2015) indicates that a 50 percent decrease in the net immigration rate would reduce UK productivity growth by 0.32 percent per annum. Since EU immigration is half of the current UK total, cutting EU immigrants to 80,000 per year is likely to shave 0.16 percent off productivity growth. Therefore, about a decade after Brexit, UK GDP per capita will be about 1.6 percent lower than it would have otherwise been. Supporters of Brexit argue that economic benefits would flow from bringing EU immigration under the same rules as non-EU immigrants. Boubtane et al. (2015) looked at how improving the average skill level of immigrants could increase productivity. To offset the productivity loss from halving EU net immigration, the UK immigration system would have to improve the relative education levels of EU immigrants by about a quarter. Since EU immigrants are already significantly better educated than the UK-born, this may be hard to engineer. Thus, existing research suggests that the arguments that were propounded during the Leave campaign led only to an unfair emotional contagion and not to a better understanding of reality.

148  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker

The impact of EU immigration on public finances and public services Public expenditure will be lower since UK taxpayers did not have to finance the childhood schooling and healthcare costs of an immigrant adult as they would do for a UK-born adult. Second, we have documented above that EU immigrants are younger, more likely to work and less likely to be on benefits. While immigrants, like UK nationals, would not be eligible for contributory-related benefits until they have worked full-time for two years, they would still be eligible for means-tested benefits should they apply. HMRC estimates that around 6 percent of tax credit claims are from households that include an EU national in line with the share of EU nationals in the UK (House of Commons, 2014). Dustmann and Frattini (2014) argue that EU immigrants have made a positive fiscal contribution – they paid more taxes than they received in welfare payments. For example, A8 immigrants paid about £15 billion more than they took out in public spending between 2001 and 2011. Although this effect may seem small, the long-run impact is substantial. The central estimate of the Office for Budget Responsibility (2013) is that the UK’s national debt will be 40 percentage points higher in 2062 if net immigration is reduced to zero from 1,40,000 per year. By contrast, UK nationals received more in benefits than they paid in taxes. As EU immigrants are making net positive contributions, there is no reason to believe that they would crowd out public services. In fact, they bring extra resources that can be used to increase spending on local health and education for the UK-born. In other words, reducing EU immigration would generate the need for greater austerity. This would intensify the need for cutbacks caused by the slower growth of the economy due to reduced trade and investment identified by Dhingra et al. (2016a, 2016b). If immigrants cause social disruption, this would be reflected in crime rates. Bell et al. (2013) find no effect of the large increase in immigration in 2004 from Eastern European countries on crime. Geay et al. (2013) find no effect of immigration on aspects of educational attainment and identifies some positive effect from Polish children on UK-born pupils. The disadvantage of having English as a second language is outweighed by a stronger immigrant push to work harder at school. For the NHS, Wadsworth (2013) finds no greater usage of doctors and hospitals by immigrants relative to the UK-born, and Giuntella et al. (2015) find little effect on NHS waiting times. These studies do not distinguish between EU and non-EU immigrants, but since EU

Brexit 149 immigrants are younger than non-EU immigrants, they are less likely to use health services, and therefore the results are likely to be stronger. In addition, there is a general perception that immigrants are given better treatment when applying for social housing. Battiston et al. (2013) show that controlling for demographic, economic and regional circumstances, immigrant households are less likely to be in social housing than their UK-born counterparts. Lack of access to social housing has more to do with falling supply of social housing. However, the UK’s terrible track record of building insufficient houses does mean that the population increase generated by immigrants adds to housing pressure. This will definitely raise housing prices. But the failure to create enough housing supply is an issue even in the absence of EU immigration. It is rooted in the failure of the UK planning system to make appropriate infrastructure decisions more generally (LSE Growth Commission, 2013; Hilber, 2015). Nevertheless, the empirical evidence does not find positive effects of immigration on local house prices (Sa, 2015).

Refugees It is important to note that the Syrian refugee crisis is not related to the UK’s continued membership of the EU. The total immigration figures will not be much affected as the government will admit only around 20,000 adult refugees over the next five years. Refugees given the right to remain in Germany or other EU countries have no right to live or work in the UK. It takes a number of years (usually between five and eight) before refugees are even allowed to apply for citizenship. Most of them, who are settled, are unlikely to seek work in the UK. The UK is not in the Schengen passport-free travel agreement either. As a result, there are border checks preventing entry of refugees. Put in a different way, stopping illegal entry to the UK would not be any easier after Brexit.

EU immigration after Brexit: will it be restricted? At present, only work visas issued to non-EU nationals are restricted. If the UK leaves the EU but remains as a member of the European Free Trade Area or the European Economic Area, it may have to accept unrestricted EU immigration just as all other countries like Norway or Switzerland do. Only a looser trading agreement with higher trade costs would enable the UK to restrict work-related EU immigration in a similar way as non-EU immigration is restricted. If EU immigration were cut

150  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker following Brexit, then a variation of the current visa scheme that applies to non-EU immigrants would need to be adopted to accommodate immigration from the EU. Current rules exclude non-EU immigrants from all but graduate jobs. They also limit numbers arriving on work visas each year to 55,000 (5,000 in ‘Tier 1’ and 50,000 in ‘Tier 2’). This means that decisions would have to be taken on whether to expand the current quotas and on which skill groups to be allowed. It is likely, then, that after Brexit, skilled EU immigration would be cut, but there is little realistic prospect of non-EU skilled immigration being expanded.

International student migration Student migration comprises of a significant share of international migration to the UK, although it has declined since 2010 (see Figure 8.7). Overseas students contribute around a quarter of total immigration to the UK. The IPS estimates that in 2016, 92,000 non-EU nationals came to study in the UK for at least a year. Adding British and EU citizens who migrated to the UK to study yield an estimate of 132,000 student migrants. In the same year, 195,000 visas were issued for purposes of study. The most recent available data on passenger entries show a figure of 174,000 as of 2015 (see Figure 8.7).

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Figure 8.7  Long term non-EU international immigration for study, UK, 1991–2016 Source: International Passenger Survey, ONS

Brexit 151 Around 1 in 5 non-EU former students had valid leave to remain up to five years after their arrival to study as students or by switching visa routes. In addition, a small proportion of about 1 percent had achieved settlement in five years. The ‘gap’ between the immigration of international students and the emigration of former students implies that the contribution of non-EU students to the total net migration figure of overseas students is typically around 50,000 (see Figure 8.8). However, it is unreasonable to expect the numbers to remain the same as not all students leave the UK at the end of their studies. International students come primarily from non-EU countries. In 2016, 92,000 out of 132,000 students moving to the UK came from non-EU countries (70 percent) (see Figure 8.9). In 2015, the greatest number of students and dependents came from Asia (about 118,600) followed by the Middle East (19,700). Significant recent changes include a sharp drop from North America (over 70,000 each year from 2005 to 2007). Between 2008 and 2009, there was nearly a 50 percent one-year increase in Asian students and their dependents (124,600 to 183,600), but the number has fallen since 2010 (see Figure 8.10).

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Figure 8.8 Immigration for study and emigration of former student immigrants, non-EU nationals, UK, 1991–2016 Source: International Passenger Survey, ONS

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Figure 8.10 Nationality of students and their dependents entering the UK by world region, 2004–2015 Source: The Migration Observatory analysis of Control of Immigration Statistics UK, Home Office

Brexit 153 In the YE September 2017, there were 224,392 study-related visas granted, excluding the Short-term student category (formerly known as Student visitors), an increase of 16,942 (8 percent) (see Table 8.8). During this period, the number of university-sponsored study visa applications (main applicants) rose 6 percent to 177,961. Within the university sector, there was a 9 percent increase for Russell Group universities to 87,362. There were also increases for the Independent school (3 percent to 13,787) and English Language school (34 percent to 3,755) sectors. However, the further education sector fell 4 percent to 14,278. Most of the fall in this sector’s sponsored visa applications since a peak in mid-2011 is accounted for by licences that have since been revoked. In the YE June 2017, there were 95,000 non-EU long-term immigrants coming to study who had an intention to remain a year or more, which was a fall of 18,000 (16 percent). The comparable number of study visas issued rose by 5 percent to 143,735 (see Table 8.8). Three nationalities – China, United States and India – accounted for over half (52 percent) of the 224,392 study-related visas granted in the YE September 2017, with the largest being Chinese nationals (88,258 or 39 percent of the total) (see Table 8.8). Between the YE September 2016 and the YE September 2017, there were increasing Table 8.8 Study-related visas granted, excluding short-term students, September 2016–2017  

YE September YE September Change 2016 2017

Study–related visas 207,450 granted, excluding short–term students of which (Top 5): China 76,561 United States 14,162 India 11,119 Hong Kong 8,923 Saudi Arabia 8,486 Long–term 113,000 immigration for study, excluding dependants Long–term (one 136,630 year or more) study–related visas, excluding dependants

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154  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker numbers of Study visas granted for Chinese (11,697 or up 15 percent), Indian (2,962 or up 27 percent), Pakistani (1,141 or up 36 percent) and United States (877 or up six percent) nationals, and fewer issued to Indonesian (−680 or down 21 percent), Nigerian (−549 or down 8 percent) and Malaysian (−511 or down 6 percent) nationals. The gender ratio of student migrants has fluctuated overtime. In 2015, over 60 percent of all student migrants were female. This is a reversal of previous trends. During the 2000s, male students consistently outnumbered female students. However, since 2012 females have increasingly outnumbered males (see Figure 8.11). When non-EU former students were departing the UK in 2015 and 2016, just over a quarter (28 percent) stated that they were unsure how long they would be out of the UK or that they intended to return within 12 months. Exit Checks data suggest the proportion of non-EU students who actually returned is much lower at around six percent. Moreover, international students who travel abroad several times during their studies may understate their duration when asked how long they have been living in the UK. The majority of international students (70 percent) who responded to the graduate survey said they had travelled outside the UK during Christmas, Easter or summer holidays during the previous year. 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

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Figure 8.11 Shares of student migrants entering the UK by sex, 1991–2015 Source: The Migration Observatory analysis of International Passenger Survey Data

Brexit 155 Sixty-nine percent of the international students who immigrated on a long-term visa (12 months or more) and whose visa or extension of leave to study expired between 2016 and 2017, left the UK. A further 26 percent extended their visas to remain in the UK for further study or for other reasons such as work. The remainder have no identified record of departure or extension, or appeared to depart after their visa had expired. Data following up on non-EU former students who departed between 2015 and 2016 indicate that 77 percent emigrated long-term after their studies (didn’t return within 12 months), 15 percent returned on a short-term visit visa and departed again within 12 months and 6 percent returned on a long-term visa (12 months or more) for work or other reasons. Student migrants are thought to have shorter stays in the UK than other types of migrants. Student visas are temporary, which means they do not provide a direct legal route to settlement. According to Home Office data, of those who entered in 2010 on a student visa (or as a student’s dependent), only 19 percent still had valid leave to remain in the UK five years later in 2015, and only one percent had received indefinite leave to remain (Home Office 2017). In order to remain in the UK after studies, students must generally switch into another visa category, such as work or family. In 2016, 8,800 people who previously held study visas were granted extensions to remain in the UK in a category other than study. This is down from 44,100 in 2012 (20 percent), the year in which the dedicated “post-study work” route was closed.

Indian students The number of visas granted to Indians to study in the UK has seen its first increase since 2010 (see Figure 8.12). The number of longterm study visas granted to Indian nationals increased by 27 percent to 14,081 in the YE September 2017. It follows several years of declining numbers of Indians being issued study visas, with the falls being seen as one of the main consequences of the UK government’s clampdown on student migration from outside the European Union. The figures for India still have a long way to go before they recover to anywhere near the peak number of more than 60,000 Indian students being granted visas between January and September 2010, when the country was ahead of China as the most important sender of migrant students (also see Rajan and Wadhawan, 2014). Currently, China remains the most important origin for overseas students being granted visas to study.

156  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker 70 60

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Figure 8.12 Visas granted to Indian students, UK, 2006–2017 Source: Office for National Statistics, Home Office UK

Attitudes towards migrants Attitudes towards low-skilled labour migrants, extended family members, and asylum seekers are much more negative than towards highskilled migrants, students and close family members. A 2010 survey found that 72 percent supported admitting more doctors and nurses from other countries to cope with increasing healthcare demands, while 51 percent supported admitting more care workers to help the burdens of an ageing population. Evidently, in the short run, Brexit will exacerbate deficiencies in the UK labour market. It also seems that positive attitudes towards high-skilled migrants and students are not enough to ensure easy migration. In the wake of uncertainty on the specifics of the Brexit agreement, British scientists are slowly being pushed out of research funded by the EU. In addition, when EU funding to universities in the UK drop, which is currently at 16 percent of the total, foreign students might bear the brunt. Tourism remains the only section of the economy that is projected not to undergo a significant change as free movement of tourists will be relatively unaffected. Moreover, in a very general sense, Asian migrants are preferred to Eastern European ones. In the case of a “hard” Brexit, it is likely that the UK will be looking towards stronger bilateral relationships with fast growing large economies in Asia. In such a case, it is very likely that Asian immigrants (mainly Chinese and Indian nationals) might

Brexit 157 push out EU immigrants. On the contrary, a “soft” Brexit would lead to the opposite. However, since Brexit occurred due to an overwhelming sense of nationalistic pride and self-centrism, continuing on a path of intimate association with the rest of the EU stifles the voice of the people. Hence, Asians can be optimistic about better opportunities when thinking about their future in the UK.

Discussion It is hard to be precise about the size of the losses resulting from a restriction on immigration following Brexit. Empirical evidence shows that EU immigration has not had significantly negative effects on average employment, wages, inequality or public services at the local level for the UK-born. However, it is also wishful thinking to believe that there are large positive effects. Any adverse experiences of UKborn workers with regard to jobs and wages are more closely associated with the biggest economic crash for more than 80 years. At the national level, falls in EU immigration will likely to lead to lower living standards for the UK-born. This is partly because immigrants help to reduce the deficit – they are more likely to work and pay taxes and less likely to use public services as they are younger and better educated than the UK-born. It is also partly due to the improved productivity of EU immigrants. Trade and foreign investment will also fall after Brexit, both of which would reduce UK incomes. Forecasting the economic consequences of Brexit is a difficult challenge and all estimates will be subject to a degree of uncertainty. The best report to date is the Treasury Report. Their headline forecast is that Brexit would reduce long-run UK GDP by 6.2 percent in the baseline case. The Treasury’s findings reinforce the academic and business consensus that Brexit would make the UK significantly poorer. The Report is a serious contribution to the debate.

Conclusion Migration levels and patterns are constantly under change. The greatest contribution of Brexit is that it has urged individuals and institutions to think more on not just the economic, political and cultural impact of migration but also on the accumulated effect on the emotional and moral life of citizens. Migration will take on a more dominant role in internal and geopolitics in times to come. While the latter part of the last century was commanded by liberal ideas on migration and open borders, the near

158  S. Irudaya Rajan and Nikhil Panicker future seems to be influenced by populist, right-wing ideas. The negative reaction to migration is likely to ripple from one end of the world to the other. Paradoxically, while the vast majority of citizens view migration as harmful, few claim that their own neighbourhood is having problems due to migrants. Opposition to migration comes from general concerns about the country as a whole rather than from direct, negative experiences in people’s own communities. Maybe a communal attitude towards viewing migration and its effects is more helpful than a nationalistic one.

Notes 1 Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. 2 Or A8: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia. 3 Bulgaria, Romania.

References Battiston, D., R. Dickens, A. Manning and J. Wadsworth (2013) ‘Immigration and the Access to Social Housing in the UK’, CEP Discussion Paper No. 1264 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1264.pdf). Bell, B., F. Fasani and S. Machin (2013) ‘Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves’, Review of Economics and Statistics 95(4): 1278–90. Boubtane, E., J.-C. Dumont and C. Rault (2015) ‘Immigration and Economic Growth in the OECD Countries 1986–2006’, CESIFO Working Paper 5392 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2622005_code459177. pdf?abstractid=26 22005&mirid=3). Centre for European Reform (2016) ‘The Economic Consequences of Leaving the EU (www.cer.org.uk/publications/archive/report/2016/economic-conse quences-leavingeu-final-report-cer-commission-brexit). Dhingra, S., G. Ottaviano, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016a) ‘The Consequences of Brexit for UK Trade and Living Standards’, CEP Brexit Analysis No. 2 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit02.pdf). Dhingra, S., G. Ottaviano, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016b) ‘The Impact of Brexit on Foreign Investment in the UK’, CEP Brexit Analysis No. 3 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit03.pdf). Dustmann, C., F. Fabbri and I. Preston (2005) ‘The Impact of Immigration on the UK Labour Market’, Economic Journal 115: F324–41. Dustmann, C. and T. Frattini (2014) ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK.’ Economic Journal 124: F593–643. Dustmann, C., T. Frattini and I. Preston (2013) ‘The Effect of Immigration Along the Distribution of Wages’, Review of Economic Studies 80: 145–73. Felbermayr, G., S. Hiller and D. Sala (2010) ‘Does Immigration Boost Per Capita Income?’ Economic Letters 107(2): 177–79.

Brexit 159 Geay, C., S. McNally and S. Telhaj (2013) ‘Non-Native Speakers in the Classroom: What Are the Effects on Pupil Performance?’ Economic Journal 123: F281–307. Giuntella, O., C. Nicodemo and C. Vargas Silva (2015) ‘The Effects of Immigration on NHS Waiting Times’, University of Oxford Working Paper. Hilber, C. (2015) ‘UK Housing and Planning Policies’, CEP Election Analysis No. 3 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/EA033.pdf). House of Commons (2014) ‘Statistics on Migrants and Benefits’, House of Commons Note Standard (http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/Research Briefing/Summary/SN06955). LSE Growth Commission (2013) Investing for Prosperity (www.lse.ac.uk/ researchAndExpertise/units/growthCommission/documents/pdf/LSEGCReport.pdf). Manacorda, M., A. Manning and J. Wadsworth (2011) ‘The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain’, Journal of the European Economic Association 10: 120–51. Migration Advisory Committee (2014) Migrants in Low Skilled Work (https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/333083/MAC-Migrants_in_low-skilled_work__Full_ report_2014.pdf). Nickell, S. and J. Saleheen (2015) ‘The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Wages: Evidence from Britain’, Bank of England Staff Working Paper No. 574. Ortega F. and G. Peri (2014) ‘Migration, Trade and Income’, Journal of International Economics 92: 231–51. Ottaviano, G., G. Peri and G. Wright (2016) ‘Immigration, Trade and Productivity in Services’, CEP Discussion Paper 1353 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/ download/dp1353.pdf). Portes, J. (2016a) ‘Immigration, Free Movement and the UK Referendum’, NIESR Review 236. Portes, J. (2016b) ‘EU Immigration and the UK Labour Market’, NIESR mimeo. Rajan, S. Irudaya and Neha Wadhawan (2014) ‘Future Diasporas: International Student Migration from India to the UK’, in S. Irudaya Rajan (ed), India Migration Report 2014: Diaspora and Development (Chapter 11, pp.149–67). Routledge. Sa, F. (2015) ‘Immigration and House Prices in the UK’, Economic Journal 125: 1393–424. Schloss, D. F. (1891) ‘Why Working-Men Dislike Piece-Work’, The Economic Review 1(3): 312–26. Wadsworth, J. (2013) ‘Mustn’t Grumble: Immigration, Health and Health Service Use in the UK and Germany’, Fiscal Studies 34(1): 55–82. Wadsworth, J. (2015) ‘Immigration and the UK Labour Market’, CEP Election Analysis No. 1 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/EA019.pdf).

9 The new student migration regime Enhanced opportunities for Indian nationals seeking to study in the European Union? Alexander Hoogenboom Introduction The EU is a popular destination for Indian nationals. In 2016 almost 200,000 residence permits were issued for various reasons, of which over 32,000 for study reasons.1 The actual number of Indian nationals currently studying in the EU is, however, unknown (in part as students may also reside in the EU on non-study related residence permits, e.g. under family-reunification programmes); the latest numbers (dating back to 2013) indicate some 50,000–60,000 students overall.2 The flows are relatively unevenly divided however, with almost 60 percent of all permits being issued by the United Kingdom – 3the currently seceding Member State. However, following the crackdown on immigration in 2012, the island lost some of its lustre and attractiveness for Indian students.4 The ongoing Brexit negotiations are unlikely to enhance its image in this respect, as leaving the EU bloc may have significant consequences. Whereas the UK has always insisted on its own migration regime for so-called third-country national students, there are many “second-order” effects to consider. Students considering the UK as a gateway to possible employment and migration to other Member States may find their prospects limited: unless other arrangements are made, UK issued degrees will have the status of “third-country diploma” after Brexit, as a result of which the recognition of such degrees will be substantially more difficult in the remaining EU Member States.5 Conversely, the other Member States of the EU seem to have increased in popularity and are actively pursuing greater numbers of Indian students.6Recent figures indicate that the attraction is mutual

The new student migration regime 161 in that India is the overall single largest beneficiary, outside of Europe, of the flagship EU Erasmus programme.7 There are good reasons for investing in becoming an attractive study destination. Such students can contribute to the financing of higher education, generate revenues for local economies and, most importantly, constitute a potential pool from which to draw highly skilled labour after completion of the studies.8 In addition, their migration profile (young, adaptable, highly educated) is advantageous.9 Finally, educating students also Member States and/or the EU a way to promote their reputation abroad, to share knowledge and to disseminate certain (European) values.10 Much of the continued attractiveness of the EU will however depend – as the UK example shows – on the EU creating and maintaining an attractive migration regime. The newest innovation in this respect is Directive 2016/801,11 adopted on 11 May 2016 and which must be implemented by the Member States by 24 May 2018. This Directive recasts earlier attempts at regulation in Directive 2004/11412 as well as Directive 2005/71.13 This article will review the new state of affairs as to the rights and possibilities of Indian nationals, hereafter referred to under the general term ‘third-country national’ (TCN). Entry and residence under directive 2016/801: material conditions The application for admission under the Directive is either submitted by the student him or herself or by the host entity (here: the higher education institute)14.15 In either case, the application is made subject to the fulfilment of a set of general (applying to all categories covered by the Directive) and specific requirements (tailored to the specific category to be admitted, here the “student”), which are listed in Articles 7 and 11 respectively in Directive 2016/801.16 Article 5(3) Directive 2016/801 provides, in line with the judgement of the Court of Justice in Ben Alaya,17 that once these conditions are satisfied the applicant shall be entitled to an “authorisation”, which is defined as a long-stay visa and/or residence permit.18 Article 6 Directive 2016/801 confirms this, by excluding students from the right of Member States to determine to volumes of admission of TCNs. Article 7 provides that students must be in possession of a valid travel document as determined by national legislation (usually a passport),19 comprehensive medical insurance covering all risks normally covered for the host Member State’s own nationals20 and, where the student is a minor, parental authorisation for the duration of the

162  Alexander Hoogenboom studies.21 In addition, he or she must provide evidence that he or she will have sufficient resources to cover subsistence, training and return travel costs – subject to individual examination of each case.22 Finally, he or she must moreover not be regarded as a threat to public policy, public security or public health.23 Unlike in Directive 2004/114,24 none of the recitals provide for a definition of these concepts. However, the Court in Fahimian took a relatively restrictive view, suggesting that the concepts are less broad than those used in the context of the free movement of Union citizens. Indeed, whereas the authorities are to ‘perform an overall assessment of all the elements of that person’s situation’, it sufficient for them to find that he or she is a potential25 threat to public policy, security or health; furthermore, the authorities have wide discretion in this assessment and national courts can only intervene in case of manifest error.26 The specific requirements laid down in Article 11 provide that students must have been accepted for a course of study at a (accredited)27 higher education establishment.28 Optionally, a Member State may also require proof of payment of the fees charged by the establishment offering the course of study and oblige the student to submit proof that he or she has sufficient knowledge of the language of instruction.29 In addition, Article 11(1)(d) also somewhat confusingly reiterates that a Member State can request evidence that the student possesses sufficient resources to cover study costs. It is not clear why this assessment could not be made part of the general conditions (‘sufficient resources for the purpose of stay’). Where the conditions set out in these two articles are fulfilled, the student shall be issued a residency permit valid for at least one year30 which is renewable insofar these conditions continue to be satisfied.31 Member States can, however, set the condition that total residence shall not exceed the maximum duration of studies as defined in national law.32 An application must be refused where the conditions are not satisfied, in case of fraud or where the host entity (the higher education institute) was not an approved entity (where the Member State requires applications to be submitted by an approved entity). In addition, Member States can refuse applications for various defects of the host entity (e.g. when legal obligations have not been complied with) or where it suspects that the migration route is being abused by the host entity (e.g. by operating mainly to facilitate immigration rather than as an education institute) or the student.33 Largely the same grounds apply where the Member States contemplates withdrawing or not renewing the residence permits. In addition,

The new student migration regime 163 however, such action may also be taken where the student does not make acceptable study progress or does not respect the limits imposed by Article 24 as regards the pursuit of economic activities ancillary to the studies.34 Entry and residence under directive 2016/801: procedural elements In procedural terms, after an application for admission has been made, a decision as to whether to grant a long-stay visa and/or residence permit in accordance with the provisions of the Directive shall be adopted as soon as possible and any case within 90 days.35 The applicant shall be notified of the outcome of the procedure.36 In case the application is rejected or an authorisation withdrawn, the applicant must be able to challenge the decision in a legal procedure.37 Member States can optionally set fees to cover the processing costs of the applications, but these may not be disproportionate or excessive.38 In that latter context, in Commission v the Netherlands39 the Court had to rule on the issue of excessive fees for visas and permits levied on long-term resident TCN in the context of Directive 2003/109.40 It found that the discretion of Member States to set such fees must be exercised with due regard to EU law, and in particular may not undermine the object and purpose of Directive 2003/109 (which concerns the integration of long-term resident TCN). In the context of Directive 2016/801, this would lead one to the conclusion that Member States cannot set processing fees at such a high level as to constitute a negation of right to be admitted for study purposes or at such a level as to constitute an impediment to the overarching goal of promoting student mobility.41 Rights not directly related to entry and residence The first additional right was not yet present in Directive 2004/114: Article 22 provides that students have a (limited) right of equal treatment as specified in Article 12 of Directive 2011/98/EU.42 This includes inter alia a right to equal treatment as regards working conditions, education and vocational training, social security and tax benefits. However, this should not be taken to be an extensive guarantee: Member States can limit the rights which relate to education in accordance with Article 12(2)(a) Directive 2011/98/EU. A second important right specifies concerns the right to pursue an economic activity as a worker for at least 15 hours a week in the

164  Alexander Hoogenboom Member State in which he has been admitted for the purposes of study.43 Additionally, a Member State can also allow the student to engage in self-employed activity. However, neither possibility is without its limitations. In particular, Article 24(3) allows the host Member State to take into account ‘the situation in the labour market’ which suggests a certain freedom on the part of the Member State to condition labour market access (in certain sectors) by third-country national students in times of unemployment. Nonetheless, under the old Directive 2004/114, the Court of Justice strictly circumscribed this freedom in the case of Sommer. It held that in the light of the system of the Directive following which Member States had a blanket right to limit access to the labour market initially and could, beyond that first year, limit the scope of economic activity to 10 hours of employment per week, the possibility to take into account the labour market situation to deny access must be limitedly interpreted: restrictions may only be imposed in exceptional circumstances and must comply with the principle of proportionality.44 In the new recast Directive, the possibility to limit access in the first of years of studies has been removed and the cap on working hours increased. It is nonetheless submitted here that the Sommer ruling (market access limitation only in exceptional circumstances and the application of the principle of proportionality) should continue to apply despite this: in the end the impact on the labour market of a part-time working student cannot be considered such extensive as to raise concerns, unless indeed exceptional circumstances are present in the host Member State. Moreover, in the context of an objective-andpurpose oriented interpretation of the Directive (a point of departure also adopted by the Court in both Sommer45 and Ben Alaya),46 it must be stressed that the right to work constitutes an important means by which the TCN student is capable of supporting him or herself, without access to which plans to study in the EU could be seriously hampered. A third innovation is introduced in Article 25 in the form of a poststudy work opportunity:47 upon completion of studies, third-country nationals shall be entitled to stay for a period of at least nine months with a view to look for a job or to start a business,48 insofar they continue to fulfil the “general conditions” set out in Article 7 of the Directive and they submit the appropriate evidence (e.g. diploma).49 Monitoring provisions apply, however: after three months, these thirdcountry nationals must show that they continue to seek employment and/or in the process of setting up a business.50 Member States may set a certain minimum educational attainment as a condition for this

The new student migration regime 165 post-study work opportunity, which may not be higher than a master’s diploma,51 as well as require that the employment or business engaged in corresponds to the level of studies completed.52 Finally, Article 27 of the Directive also provides for a limited right of mobility. Once a student has been admitted, he or she can carry out part of his studies in a second Member State. For those students covered by a Union programme or multilateral programme that comprises mobility measures, or by an agreement between two or more higher education institute (hereafter: interinstitutional agreement), a period of study in a second Member State is possible for up to 360 days. Where, however, a student is not covered by such programmes, he or she must submit an application on the basis of Article 7 and 11 of the Directive (in essence a fully new application). However, even for those students covered by a programme or an interinstitutional agreement, the right is relatively cumbersome: no fewer than nine additional paragraphs append additional qualifications and procedures to the mobility right. First, the second Member State may require to be notified in case of intended mobility (either at the outset, or when the intended mobility to the second Member State is known).53 This notification must further include the valid travel document (e.g. a passport) and residence permit or long-stay visa provided in the first Member State54 and may include evidence of acceptance into the programme and evidence of comprehensive sickness insurance and sufficient resources.55 The second Member State can furthermore object to the mobility in case these conditions are not complied with, the period of 360 days has run out, or for the reasons set out in Article 20 of the Directive. Combining migration rights Directive 2016/801 is the direct route into the EU for study purposes. However, scattered around the other EU migration instruments, studyrelated rights may be found which may be of interest to Indian nationals. It goes beyond the scope of this paper to look at these instruments in detail. Suffice it to say here that by combining certain migration statuses, or having the status of “family member” of a person who holds a particular status, additional rights may be claimed. These individuals cannot be expelled due to insufficient study progress or for failing to meet other conditions peculiar to Directive 2016/801. In addition, they may be able to claim more rights where it concerns tuition fees and/or access to student loans or grants.

166  Alexander Hoogenboom Table 9.1 Review of articles on student migration envisaged in the European Union Directives Type of student

Relevant article

Type of right

Persons who are long–term residents in the sense of Directive 2003/10956 Blue card holders in the sense of Directive 2009/5057

Article 11 (1) (b) jo. 21(1) Directive 2003/109

Equal treatment as regards tuition fees and student loans/grants.

Article 14(1) (c) Directive 2009/5058

3

Researchers admitted on the basis of Directive 2016/801

4

Persons admitted under national law for work purposes

12(1)(c) Directive 2011/98/EU59 (in combination with Article 22(1) Directive 2016/801) Article 12(1) (c) Directive 2011/98/EU

Equal treatment as regards tuition fees; equal treatment as regards student loans/grants may be excluded. Equal treatment as regards tuition fees; equal treatment as regards student loans/grants may be excluded.

5

Family members60 of the above categories

1

2

Article 14(1) (a) Directive 2003/86

Equal treatment as regards tuition fees; however, a Member State may provide that this equal treatment only applies for studies connected to the employment. Equal treatment as regards student loans/grants may be excluded. The rights of family members follow that of the sponsor.

Source: Compiled by the author

For the purpose of the analysis below, however, these possibilities will not be taken into account as they are not part of a typical student migration trajectory.

Critique: a missed opportunity It is submitted here that the aim of the recast of Directive 2004/114 in particular to promote further movement of students to the European Union is only limitedly borne out in the final text.

The new student migration regime 167 The lack of opportunities One of the main issues of Directive 2016/801 is a lack of overall opportunities and flexibility – rather it seems the EU is content to provide the absolute minimum of rights for students in this respect. First, whereas the Directive confirms that fulfilment of the provisions grants a right to reside in the EU, this right remains ancillary to study. Any attempt on the part of the student to convert to a different residence status within the host Member State is a prima facie ground for withdrawal of the residence permit.61 In addition, should the student make insufficient study progress as defined by national law or practice, this is also grounds for withdrawal. While it may be necessary to counter abuse of the ‘student route’ as a means to permanent migration, it is regrettable that the Directive does not oblige the Member States to consider legitimate reasons for delay, such as disability, illness, pregnancy and/ or care obligations or other life events.62 The instrument also lacks family-reunification rights: students do not enjoy the right to bring a spouse or children. Nor can they benefit from other legislation in this respect: the conditions set out by Directive 2003/8663 on the right to family-reunification are such that students, at least as a matter of Union law, are highly unlikely to fulfil them: the temporariness of the student residence permit means that there is little to no perspective under EU law that the student has ‘reasonable prospects of obtaining the right of permanent residence’.64 This limits the attractiveness of a(n) (extended) study period abroad, as prospective students might not want to part with their loved ones. Indeed, family reasons and/or inability to affect family-reunification has been shown as one of the major reasons for wanting to leave the EU after the completion of studies in a study covering five EU Member States.65 In addition, a spouse with the opportunity to access the labour market could have contributed to a better financial position for the student. The legislative context of the Directive confirms this critique. Indeed, Directive 2009/50 explicitly provides that there is no automatic connection between having studied in the host Member State and access to the Blue Card as a highly skilled person under the conditions of that Directive. There are thus no more favourable provisions for “homegrown talent”, although the new Blue Card proposal does seek to change this for “recent graduates” of higher education.66 Similarly, despite being within the same legislative instrument, there is no explicit link in the recast between the “student” category and the “researcher” position (in terms of “facilitated admission”) despite a certain overlap such as in the case of PhD students/researchers.67

168  Alexander Hoogenboom Nor is an explicit link made with Directive 2003/109 concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents. This Directive provides, under certain conditions, a right to long-term residents to applicants who, inter alia, have lawfully resided in a Member State for a continuous period of five years.68 However, Article 3(2)(a) provides that persons who reside to pursue studies or vocational training are explicitly excluded from applying for long-term residence. In addition, even if third-country national manages to acquire a qualifying residence permit, only half of the periods of (otherwise lawful) residence completed while having had the status of student may be taken into account for the purpose of calculating whether the 5-year period has been fulfilled.69 Lack of financial support An attractive study destination would do well to provide students with possibilities to finance their studies: financing concerns are at the top of the list for students considering education abroad.70 In this respect the Directive again disappoints: students benefit very limitedly from the right to equal treatment under the Directive. It follows that they may be subjected to significantly higher tuition fees than domestic students and that they may legitimately be excluded from student loan or grant facilities existing in the host Member State. This makes education abroad an expensive endeavour which may deter potential applicants. The Directive does provide for the possibility of (self)employment during the studies, and has raised the guaranteed number of hours that a student should be allowed to work to 15 hours per week (up from 10 in Directive 2004/114 but down from the 20 hours the Commission originally proposed). No provision is made for increased labour market access in recognised holiday periods however. In addition, whereas labour access is a right, it may be made subject to a prior issuing of an authorisation or labour market permit. This seemingly innocuous provision (after all, the Directive provides that it must be issued) can severely hamper practical labour market access: there is evidence that in countries where the labour market authorisation is organised as a permit system for employers, employers prefer “hassle-free” (EU) students over thirdcountry nationals for which they must hold (even a facilitated) permit.71 Lack of procedural guarantees As the section on labour market access shows, administrative hurdles can have an important impact on the exercise of material rights. This

The new student migration regime 169 can be further illustrated with the issue of processing times. The time it takes to issue a process an application non-trivial as there is evidence that the speed of the application process is relevant for the choice of study destinations.72 It may be that students prefer a seamless transition from undergraduate to graduate studies. Or other obligations may mean a tight schedule. Long processing times can mean that the visa or permit does not arrive in time for a student to commence their course of study, as a result of which they may forego the studies, risk making insufficient study progress which could affect their residence status (see above) or chose another study destination. Procedural guarantees can in this respect make a crucial contribution. However, also in this area the Directive can also be said to be lacking. Current processing times, under Directive 2004/114, range widely among the Member State of the EU: from seven working days in Spain to four months in France, with many Member States taking more than a month to process an application.73 The new deadline of a maximum of 90 days (60 days in case it concerns an approved host entity) is singularly unimpressive. Similarly, there are no hard limits to the fees that a Member State may charge for student admissions – the applicable provision simply provides that these may not be disproportionate or excessive. Whereas, as seen above, the Court of Justice of the EU has held that any fees must be weighed against the overall goal of the Directive, this in itself provides potential applicants with little information as to which fees are acceptable or not. Lack of capitalisation on potential strengths Directive 2016/801 introduces, for the first time, a guaranteed period of nine months in order to look for a job and/or to set up a business. However, after three months, reporting obligations become more stringent in that the student-turned-jobseeker must show that he or she has a genuine chance of being engaged or of launching a business. Moreover, Member States may limit the post-work period to master students only, and require that the student in question be engaged in an activity commensurate with his or her level of education. Whereas the search period is a welcome improvement, it may be wondered if it goes far enough. In addition to the limited months guaranteed, it is regrettable that the work period is subject to such rigid requirements. This does not make the EU competitive in the “study destination market”. Australia, for example, offers between two and four years of residence post-study.74 Seeing as career opportunities abroad are a major “selling point” for a potential study destination,75

170  Alexander Hoogenboom it is again regrettable that the Directive is not more expansive. Second, whereas the Directive provides for the possibility for such students to look for work after their studies, it says nothing about authorisation procedures that may be applicable to potential employers. For example, in the Netherlands an employer must pass inter alia a so-called “labour market test” and show that the vacancy in question cannot be fulfilled by Dutch national, a Union citizen or other preferred categories before being eligible to hire a third-country national.76 In practice, therefore, despite having authorisation to work on the supply side (the student-turned-worker), there may be insufficient demand due to stringent requirements applying to potential employers. Depending, thus, on the precise set up of the Member State in question, simply allowing a student to look for employment does not actually guarantee labour market access. A final point is the right of mobility as provided for in the Directive. This a relatively unique selling point of the EU in comparison with other major study destinations: the diversity of the Member States and their academic traditions could be attractive for students seeking a package deal (e.g. study, language, cultural experience). However, the conditions attached to this mobility are at best cumbersome: there is no mutual recognition of “student-status”, where the student does not participate in a pre-existing multilateral programme. In such cases, the student must undergo a full re-examination of the conditions for admission. Even when the study is part of a mobility programme the list of conditions to be complied with is extensive. Overall, the bureaucracy surrounding this secondary movement opportunity may make it cumbersome to exercise in practice.

Conclusion Whereas Directive 2016/801 can be said to be a step forward, it is a modest one. It provides Indian nationals seeking to study in the EU with a relatively secure residence status for the duration of their studies, provided they focus primarily on studying and make acceptable progress. Additionally, the instrument provides a set of flanking rights such as an enhanced access to the labour market, a (limited) right to equal treatment, some opportunities for secondary mobility within the EU and a right to reside post-study in order to look for (self)employment. Beyond this basic status however, the Directive offers only very limited protection and the practical effect of (some of) these rights will largely depend on the national legislation and administrative practice of the host Member State. This flexibility may appeal to individual

The new student migration regime 171 Member States but undermines the overall signalling capacity of the Directive: there is no “one-stop-shop” for the prospective student to know the full extent of his or her rights in the EU.

Notes 1 Eurostat (2017) ‘New high in first residence permits issued in the EU Member States in 2016’ (pp. 3), News release of 16 November 2017. Last visited 13.12.2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/8456381/316112017-BP-EN.pdf/e690a572-02d2-4530-a416-ab84a7fcbf22. 2 Eurostat, educ_enrl8, available at http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/ show.do?dataset=educ_enrl8&lang=en last visited 13.12.2017. 3 Eurostat, ‘New high in first residence permits issued in the EU Member States in 2016’, News release of 16 November 2017, p. 3. 4 BBC (2017). ‘Indian students turning away from the UK’. Last visited 13.12.2017. www.bbc.com/news/av/business-34800343/indian-studentsturning-away-from-uk. 5 See article 2 jo. 3 Directive 2005/36 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on the recognition of professional qualifications, OJ [2005] L 255/22. 6 The Economic Times (2017). From France and Germany to Poland and Scandinavia, education options for Indian students have exploded in the EU. 20 Augustus 2017. Last visited 13.12.2017. https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/from-france-and-germanyto-poland-and-scandinavia-education-options-for-indian-students-haveexploded-in-eu/articleshow/60135840.cms. 7 See https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/india_en/31330/India%20is%20the %20Largest%20Beneficiary%20of%20the%20EU%27s%20Eras mus+%20program%20for%20higher%20education%20scholar ships%20and%20university%20cooperations last visited 13.12.2017. 8 European Migration Network (2012).Immigration of International Students to the EU,(pp.  47), European Commission, K. Tremblay (2013), ‘Academic Mobility and Immigration’ (pp. 201–204), 9 Journal of Studies of International Education (2005) 196, COM(2013) 151 final, p. 3: ‘third-country national students and researchers can contribute to a pool of well-qualified potential workers and human capital that the EU needs to cope with the above-mentioned challenges’ and L. Hawthorne (2008), The Growing Global Demand for Students as Skilled Migrants,(pp. 5–9), Migration Policy Institute. 9 M. Kahanec and R. Králiková (2011), ‘Higher Education Policy and Migration: The Role of International Student Mobility’ (pp. 20), CESifo DICE Report 4/2011. 10 COM (2002) 548 final, Proposal for a Council Directive on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, vocational training or voluntary service, p. 3. 11 Directive (EU) 2016/801 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of research, studies, training, voluntary service, pupil exchange schemes or educational projects and au pairing, OJ [2016] L 132/21.

172  Alexander Hoogenboom 12 Directive 2004/114 on the conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, pupil exchange, unremunerated training or voluntary service, OJ [2004] L 375/12. 13 Directive 2005/71 on a specific procedure for admitting third-country nationals for the purposes of scientific research, OJ [2005] L 289/15. 14 See for a definition Article 3(14) Directive 2016/801. 15 Article 7(5) Directive 2016/801. 16 Article 5(1) Directive 2016/801. 17 Case C-491/13, Mohamed Ali Ben Alaya v Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ECLI:EU:C:2014:2187, para. 22–35. 18 See Article 3(21) Directive 2016/801. 19 And, if required, a (valid) visa: Article 7(1)(a) Directive 2016/801. 20 See however Article 11(2) Directive 2016/801, which provides that if host Member State nationals under the national system automatically qualify for comprehensive sickness insurance by reason of being enrolled in a higher education establishment then such insurance shall be extended to TCN students and be considered to fulfil the requirements of Article 7(1)(c). 21 Article 7(a-c) Directive 2016/801. A Member State can optionally also require proof of payment of the processing fee that Member States can choose to apply to applications made in accordance with the Directive: Article 7(d) Directive 2016/801. 22 Article 7(e) Directive 2016/801. 23 Article 7(6) of Directive 2016/801. 24 Recital 14 of Directive 2004/114 suggested that applicants could be refused if they had been convicted of a serious crime or otherwise had “extremist aspirations”. 25 See recital 36 of Directive 2016/801. 26 Case C-544/15, SaharFahimian v Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ECLI:EU:C:2017:255, para. 43–46. 27 Article 3(13) Directive 2016/801. 28 Article 11(1)(a) Directive 2016/801. 29 Article 11(1)(b-c) Directive 2016/801. 30 In case the course of study is shorter than one year, the residency permit shall be valid for the duration of the course. Where the student is admitted for the purpose of following an EU or multilateral programme, the duration of the permit shall be at least two years (or shorter, depending on the length of the programme). 31 Article 18(2) Directive 2016/801. 32 Article 18(3) Directive 2016/801. 33 Article 20(2) Directive 2016/801. 34 Article 21(2)(f) Directive 2016/801. 35 Article 34(1) Directive 2016/801; the maximum time limit is 30 days in the case where the student is covered by a Union programme. This only applies to a complete application, see Article 34(3) Directive 2016/801. 36 Article 34(1) Directive 2016/801. 37 Article 34(5) Directive 2016/801. 38 Article 36 Directive 2016/801. 39 Case C-508/10, ECLI:EU:C:2012:243. 40 Council Directive 2003/109/EC concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents, OJ [2004] L 16/44.

The new student migration regime 173 1 See recital 14 of Directive 2016/801. 4 42 See Article 22(3) Directive 2016/801. 43 Article 24(1) Directive 2016/801. Insofar a work permit is necessary for third-country nationals to be allowed access to the labour market, the Directive provides that these shall be granted: see Article 24 (2) Directive 2016/801. 44 Case C-15/11, Leopold Sommer v Landesgeschäftsstelle edes Arbeitsmarktservice Wien, ECLI:EU:C:2012:371, para. 40–44. 45 Case C-15/11, Sommer, ECLI:EU:C:2012:371, para. 39. 46 Case C-491/13, Ben Alaya, ECLI:EU:C:2014:2187, para. 22, 28ff. 47 See also COM (2011) 587 final, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the application of Directive 2004/114/EC on the conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, pupil exchange, unremunerated training or voluntary service, p. 11. 48 Article 25(1) Directive 2016/801. 49 Article 25(3) Directive 2016/801. 50 Article 25(7) Directive 2016/801. 51 Article 25(2) Directive 2016/801. 52 Article 25(7) Directive 2016/801. 53 Article 27(2) Directive 2016/801. 54 Article 27(5) Directive 2016/801. 55 Article 27(6) Directive 2016/801. 56 Council Directive 2003/109/EC concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents, OJ [2004] L 16/44. 57 Council Directive 2009/50/EC on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment, OJ [2009] L 155/17. 58 Directive 2009/50 betreffende de voorwaarden voor toegang en verblijf van onderdanen van derde landen met het oog op een hooggekwalificeerde baan, EU Publ. [2009] L 155/17. 59 Directive 2011/98/EU, of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on a single application procedure for a single permit for third-country nationals to reside and work in the territory of a Member State and on a common set of rights for third-country workers legally residing in a Member State, OJ [2011] L 343/1. See also recital 20. 60 Article 4 Directive 2003/86 on the right to family reunification, OJ [2003] L 251/12. 61 Article 21(1)(d) Directive 2016/801. 62 The only material standard that could be invoked is the principle of proportionality: Article 21(7) Directive 2016/801. 63 Council Directive 2003/86 on the right to family reunification, OJ [2003] L 251/12. 64 Article 3(1) Directive 2003/86. 65 B. Sykes and E. Ni Chaoimh (2012), Mobile talent? The Staying Intentions of International Students in Five EU Countries (pp. 51–52). SVR. 66 COM (2016) 378 final, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the conditions of entry and residence of thirdcountry nationals for the purposes of highly skilled employment, proposed Article 5(5).

174  Alexander Hoogenboom 7 See also recital 12 Directive 2016/801. 6 68 Article 4(1) Directive 2003/109. 69 Article 4(2), second paragraph Directive 2003/109. 70 OECD (2014), Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, (pp. 345– 349). OECD Publishing.ESU (2012), Bologna with Student Eyes 2012, (pp. 31–35) ESU. 71 A. Hoogenboom and J. Reinold (2017), ‘Cross-border (Im)mobility of Students from Third Countries in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine’, (pp. 112– 113) in M. Unfried (ed.), ITEM Cross-border impact assessment 2017, ITEM. 72 M. Knight (2011), Strategic Review of the Student Visa Program 2011, (pp. 35–36). Australian Government. 73 COM (2011) 587 final, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the application of Directive 2004/114/EC on the conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, pupil exchange, unremunerated training or voluntary service, p. 19. 74 See www.border.gov.au/Trav/Stud/Post last visited 13.12.2017. 75 B. Sykes and E. Ni Chaoimh (2012), Mobile talent? The Staying Intentions of International Students in Five EU Countries (pp. 37ff) SVR. 76 Article 8(1)(a) Wet Arbeid Vreemdelingen, Stb. 1995, 405.

10 Have the “London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria

Introduction Efficient health systems with an adequate supply of healthcare workers are of paramount importance for making the country more productive and achieve higher levels of income and development. Owing to this, international migration of doctors has been a subject of concern and debate since the 1960s. However, due to a steep rise in the rates of the brain drain of healthcare workers in the beginning of the 21st century, particularly from the Sub-Saharan region, this has acquired enhanced attention and importance. There has also been visible evidence of negative impact of this on healthcare outcomes of the population in the region (Haour-knipe, 2005). South Asia, in fact, is the most important source region for international recruitment of doctors in the OECD countries. About 36 percent of 213,485 foreign-born doctors living in the United States in 2015 originated from India, Pakistan, Philippines, China, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Similarly, 46 percent of the 50,177 foreigneducated doctors working in the UK in 2016 were Asian, of which majority were from India and Pakistan. About 28 percent of the foreign doctors in Australia and 17 percent in Canada in 2015 were also sourced from India, Pakistan, China, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In 2015–16, the foreign doctors constituted 25 percent of the US workforce of doctors, 28 percent in the UK, 24 percent in Canada, 32 percent in Australia and 42 percent in New Zealand (OECD.org). In terms of the percentage of doctors emigrated from the origin countries’ stocks (rate of emigration), South Asia with 10.7 percent stood second after Sub-Saharan Africa’s percentage of 13.9 percent (Mullan, 2005). Despite this high rate of emigration of doctors from South Asia and not so much behind the Sub-Saharan rate, only little has been emphasised in the international analyses on the impact of brain drain of healthcare workers in the South Asian region.

176  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria However, the recent stringent policy attempts of the developed countries to restrict immigration into their countries have turned the attention to the other side of the debate. That is, as a fall-out of these stricter immigration controls, there is already some evidence of decline in the annual entry of Indian doctors to the UK from about 3,640 in 2004 to merely 696 in 2016 (oecd.org). This has caused apprehensions if the “London Dreams” of young Indian doctors had come to an end. The chapter seeks to answer if these apprehensions were well founded or the declining trend in their immigration was only part of a cyclic downturn to come up again? The paper presents an in-depth analysis of the past trends of the entry of Indian medical graduates to the UK and their variations with respect to changes in policy. Understanding these variations should be helpful in anticipating future possible scenarios to plan and execute health human resources strategies both in India and the UK. The chapter is presented in 5 sections. Section 2 presents data trends, section 3 presents UK policy of staff expansion, section 4 outlines Indian policy on emigration of doctors and section 5 concludes by anticipating future possible scenario.

Data and trends Healthcare in the UK is delivered through the National Health Service (NHS) – a publicly funded healthcare system covering all its legal residents. Apart from the NHS care, there is private sector health provision present mainly in care homes and nursing homes that provide elective care (Buchan et al., 2008). However, all doctors who intend to practice in the UK, either in the NHS or in the private sector, need to register with the General Medical Council (GMC), UK. Therefore, for our analysis, we primarily depended on the physician registration data availed from the General Medical Council (GMC), UK and the NHS workforce data collected from the Information Centre, NHS, UK. A substantial amount of data was obtained by directly contacting the GMC and the Information Centre, NHS, UK, which were otherwise not available publicly due to the UK Data Protection Act of 1998. Apart from these, data also collected from the OECD Statistics available online. A closer look at the registered stock of doctors in the UK between 1980 and 2014 (Figure 10.1) reflects that the total stock has constantly grown at an average annual growth rate of about 2.6 percent between 1980 and 1990, and thereafter, followed a fluctuating trend till 1996 experiencing a decline by little more than 1 percent in 1992 and 1993

Non-UK

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Figure 10.1 Registered Doctors (stock) in the UK by Primary Medical Qualification, 1980–2014

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178  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria before the growth picked up during 1994–1995, but again declined sharply by 5 percent in 1996. Henceforth, it came back to its natural growth path of 2–3 percent annually during 1997–2002. From 2002, the number of registered doctors however took a leap and peaked at 247,532 in 2008, thereafter declined sharply by 6.5 percent in 2009 before it recovered from 2010 to attain a steady growth of average 3 percent until 2014 to reach 267,305 doctors on register. The corresponding trends of the UK and non-UK doctors separately shows that overall there has been a steady relationship of the growth of UK and non-UK doctors except that during 2002–2004 when the nonUK doctors increased much rapidly than the growth of UK doctors. Figure 10.2 shows the top-10 country doctors registered in the UK. Indian doctors constitute the largest and dominant stock of international medical graduates. They accounted for 25.6 percent of the foreign medical graduates stock in the UK in 2014, followed by Pakistan with about 10 percent, South Africa at third position with 5.4 percent, Nigeria at 5th position with 4.2 percent, Ireland (4.1 percent), Egypt (3.4 percent), Germany (3.3 percent), Sri Lanka (2.5 percent), Iraq (2.4 percent) and Australia (2.0 percent). It may be noted that the golden period for pursuing “London dreams” of Indian youth was 1996–2006, when the Indian doctors stock increased rapidly, in fact, much rapidly during 2002–2005. At the peak in 2005, there were 28,170 Indian doctors in the UK constituting about 31 percent of all foreign doctors. Thereafter it declined marginally to 27,587 in 2008 but dropped significantly to 25,647 in 2009 perhaps due to the recession. During 2009–2014, however, registration stock of Indian medical graduates in the UK stagnated at around 25,000. Since 2009, when the number of Indian doctors in the UK stabilised or declined marginally, there has been a steady growth of Pakistani doctors from 7,525 in 2009 to 9,749 in 2014, almost a 30 percent increase in five years. During this period the number of South African doctors, who were the second largest till 2008, too has declined slowly and slipped to the third position. Figure 10.3 shows the number of doctors practicing in the NHS from top-10 countries. During the period 1997–2016, the number of Indian medical graduates employed by NHS has increased rapidly and remained distinctively high compared to other countries. It has increased from 6,765 doctors (25 percent of all foreign-born) practicing in the NHS in 1997 to 8,853 in 2001 and further much rapidly to 17,045 in 2006. However, the number of Indian doctors engaged with NHS since then has been more or less stagnated at around 16,500 doctors constituting about 32 percent of foreign medical graduates in the

Egypt

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Figure 10.2 Top-10 countries’ doctors registered in the UK, 1996–2014

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Figure 10.3 FMGs stock from top-10 countries in the NHS, 1997–2016

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“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 181 NHS in 2016. Pakistan at the second position has continued to grow steadily from 1,523 in 2001 to 5,637 in 2016 accounting for about 11 percent of all foreign medical graduates in the NHS. Both these countries’ medical graduates together constituted 43 percent of total FMGs. If we add up the percentages of the rest of the South Asian doctors, i.e. Sri Lankan (2.5), Bangladeshi (1.1) and Nepalese (0.4) in the NHS, it turns out to be 47.2 percent, which would be the highest ever since 1960. While these trends in the NHS presented in Figure 10.3 do resemble the trends of GMC registration presented in Figure 10.1, there exists a wide gap between the two, showing only about half of those registered with GMC are working for the NHS. The rest perhaps are practicing in the private sector, some of them may be unemployed or underemployed or may have migrated temporarily to another country retaining the GMC registration.

UK policy of staff expansion The shortage of doctors in the UK was well-established as early as the late 1950s, especially in rural and deprived urban areas, and in some specialties like mental health and care of the elderly (Cooper, 2003). In 1944, the Goodenough Committee recommended expansion of medical schools in anticipation of a future shortage of doctors in the UK. But, in contrast, the Willink Committee in 1957 wrongly assumed an overproduction of doctors and decided to reduce the intake of students. As a result, shortages appeared immediately thereafter (Snow and Jones, 2010). Moreover, in the 1950s, when a significant number of British doctors migrated to the United States, the resulting shortages in the UK were filled by the Asian doctors, particularly from the Indian subcontinent (Khadria, 2004). Since then, Indian qualified doctors, in particular, constituted a significant proportion of the NHS workforce. Mejia and Pizurki (1976) reported that about 21,000 foreign medical graduates were present in the UK in 1970, representing 25 percent of its physician workforce. Nearly half of them were from the Indian subcontinent and a majority of them from India alone. In the 1990s, the UK and other OECD countries resorted to sharper contraction of training places (OECD, 2010). The inflow of foreign medical graduates has also been restricted through entry restrictions and tighter immigration policies during this period. For example, in 1995, the UK extended the work permit requirement for the postgraduate trainees in general practice to the employment of assistants and locums (see MWSAC, 1997), abolishing their free entry to employment. This is evident in the sharp decline in the growth of physician

182  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria stock to almost zero between 1991 and 1997 compared to significant and steady growth in the 1980s (Figure 10.1). Thus, in the early 21st century, UK faced critical shortages of doctors. The Health Committee on ‘Future NHS Staffing Requirements’ (Health Committee Report, 1999: xi) has concluded that the NHS was ‘in the midst of a staffing crisis’ (Wanless, 2002). Increase in the longevity and demographic shift towards the expansion of elderly population led to the increased requirement of healthcare provisions, and the inadequacy of domestic training personnel caused the staff shortfalls. Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committee (1997: 2) pointed out that, ‘Under current circumstances, training too many doctors is highly unlikely. An increase of 1,000 in the annual medical student intake would not even produce a domestic oversupply by the year 2020 under any realistic scenario’. The availability of doctors of 1.8 per 1,000 population in the UK in the 1990s was much lower than other comparable EU countries, such as Italy with 5.5, Germany with 3.4, and France with 2.9 per 1,000 people (Raghuram and Kofman, 2002). There were also acute shortages in the specialists’ categories as Department of Health, UK registered high vacancy rates for consultants in accident and emergency, palliative medicine, psychiatry, paediatric surgery and radiology areas (Department of Health, UK, 2001). In response to these acute shortages and following the recommendations of Health Committee (1999), the NHS Plan 2000 set ambitious targets to achieve staff expansion of an additional 7,500 consultants, 2,000 GPs and 20,000 nurses by 2004 (Department of Health, UK, 2001). The government of the UK planned both short-term and long-term staff expansion measures. Under the long-term measures, five new medical schools have been opened in 2000 and the capacity expanded in the existing medical schools to increase medical graduate training (Health Committee, 2007). Since there was a time lag in converting these new entrants into the workforce, the NHS had to resort to actively recruiting the foreign medical graduates as an immediate remedy. This resulted in a rapid increase in the number of doctors on GMC register as well as in NHS employment during the period 2001– 2005 (Figures 10.1–10.3). The Health Committee (2007) opined that funding availability and active international recruitment fuelled the staff increase in the early 2000s. However, funding difficulties since 2005 have led to recruitment freezes and reversal of policy, despite the fact that there existed 1.8 percent ‘vacancy rate’ for doctors/dentists in England in 2006 (Buchan et al., 2008). Also, in anticipation of the availability of more number of home-trained doctors due to the

“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 183 measures are undertaken to increase the intake of medical schools in 2000, the government withdrew permit-free immigration for medical specialists in April 2006 (Hann et al., 2008).1 The effects of these measures have led to a general decline in the entry of foreign doctors after 2005. The entry of Indian doctors, in particular, experienced considerable decline since then as is evident in our analysis in the preceding section (Figures 10.2 and 10.3). The Department of Health officials defended the new regulations to restrict the entry of foreign medical graduates by stating that it was necessary to protect jobs for UK trained doctors. Because there have been serious concerns regarding the fund deficits and staff contractions, the newly qualified medical graduates had not been able to find jobs. Health Committee (2007) reported that 68 percent of 2006 physiotherapy graduates had been unable to find NHS physiotherapy work. Similar problems observed among midwifery, speech therapy, occupational therapy and diabetics graduates. The Committee also reported about the probability of future unemployment among UK medical graduates and junior doctors, particularly due to the shortage of training capacity. In the drive to achieve financial balance, all NHS organisations resorted to downsizing the training capacity.2 The rapid expansion of medical seats and training places was evident between 1999 and 2005, but thereafter, the training places have been dropped considerably in 2006. The number of students entering medical schools in the UK has increased by 66.5 percent from 4,894 in 1996 to 8,148 in 2008, and those beginning training after completing pre-medical degree increased by 48.8 percent from 4,619 in 1999 to 6,873 in 2008 (Potnuru, 2014). However, this contractionary approach of the NHS has been criticised sharply. The Health Committee (2007) opined that the recent redundancies and cuts in education and training capacities were in complete disregard to long-term planning and had reduced the flexibility of future workforce. The major criticism was made for lack of integration between different parts of the planning system, for example, between workforce planning and financial planning, etc. (Health Committee, 2007). To plan future supply of health staff, the Committee suggested understanding the future impact of the following aspects: First, changing demographic trends, i.e., the impact of future retirement patterns, as described by some as retirement “time bomb”. Second, legal commitments, such as European Working Time Directive Regulations, 2009, that reduced the working hours to 48 hours per week for junior doctors. Third, changes in the domestic labour market, say for example, if there was an increase in the number of people entering higher education in the UK. Fourth, changes in international

Sri Lanka

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Figure 10.4 Top-10 countries’ annual inflow of doctors to the UK, 2000–2016

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“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 185 labour markets like an increase in the import of health professionals by Australia and the US. And finally, the combined impact of all these factors. If one analyses the future requirement of health staff in the UK, keeping the above-listed factors in mind, it is quite apparent that shortages of health professionals are inevitable in future. The problem of graduate unemployment may be a short-term phenomenon due to the financial difficulties of the NHS and availability of the increased number of domestic graduates since 2006, owing to the expansion of about 1,000 medical seats in the year 2000. However, keeping in mind the long-term staff requirements as outlined by Health Committee (2007) and relative inelasticity of domestic supply of doctors to the rising needs of healthcare in the UK, it may be anticipated that the current sluggish growth in the workforce recruitment of the NHS would be inadequate to meet long-term requirement of healthcare in the UK. However, the recent trends, both in the GMC registration as well as NHS employment, show no recovery in the growth of stocks and flows of Indian medical graduates in the UK. Starting from 2005, there has been a significant decline in the entry of Indian Medical graduates to the UK. The number of Indian doctors entered annually into the UK dropped from 3,640 in 2004 to 696 in 2016 (Figure 10.4). Figure 10.4 depicting the annual inflow of doctors from the top-10 countries show that by 2008, the entry of Indian medical doctors has been brought down to the levels of other source countries. Recently, the countries experienced significant growth in inflows (Figure 10.4) and stocks (Figures 10.2 and 10.3) in the UK are Pakistan, Italy, Nigeria, Egypt, etc.

Indian policy to restrict emigration India is facing an acute shortage of doctors, especially in the rural areas. Based on the registration stock of doctors accumulated since the 1950s, today India has seven doctors per 10,000 population. However, considering the attrition of the stock due to retirement and emigration, there are only 4.8 practicing doctors available in India per 10,000 population in 2014 (Potnuru, 2017). Among other BRICS nations, Brazil has 21 doctors, Russia has 49 doctors, China has 15 doctors and South Africa has 8 doctors per 10,000 population. There were about 90,537 Indian doctors working in the OECD and Gulf countries in 2014. Despite the domestic shortages and significant emigration of doctors, India generally does not have a concerted restrictive policy for emigration. It tried to address the problem of emigration through strengthening

186  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria domestic supply by expanding and improving educational and employment opportunities and conditions in India (Khadria, 2010). This policy of expansion of supply to enhance the domestic availability, however, has led to a mistaken understanding in some quarters of the international academic and policy discourses that India actively pursues a strategy of overproduction and export of professionals.3 Indian policy, however, has demonstrated a series of actions to stem emigration of doctors, though not effectively. For example, in the past, the Ministry of Health has introduced a ban on emigration of doctors from the country. The ban required the immigrant medical students to seek a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) and sign a bond with an agreement to return after completion of studies (Khadria, 2004). There were many loopholes in the scheme to bypass the purpose. The MHFW renewed such measures introducing a similar ban on emigration of doctors to the US on 23 April 2012.4 The ban requires the Indian medical students going to the US for higher studies to sign a bond promising to return to India after completion of studies (The Hindu, April 23, 2012, New Delhi). A bilateral agreement with the UK prohibits the recruitment of health workers from four Indian States, viz Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal receiving Department for International Development (DFID) aid (Department of Health, UK). Similarly, the Government of India earlier had de-recognised the medical Postgraduate (PG) degrees earned abroad to discourage emigration. It was only in March 2008, the government announced the recognition of PG medical degrees earned from five major countries of immigration such as the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (The Times of India, March 28, 2008). This was aimed at easing barriers for the temporary and permanent return of its doctors from abroad for teaching in the newly established medical colleges and institutions in India. More stringent restrictive measures like denying passport and a compulsory rural service for emigrating doctors have also been discussed from time to time, though have never been implemented (Jeffery, 1976).5 Thus, given the fact that the government of India is inclined to restrict emigration of doctors and not being able to do so because of lack of consensus on any particular measure, the recent reduction in the outflow of doctors to the UK would give a sigh of relief to the Government of India, at least temporarily.

Conclusion Thus, it follows from our discussion that the generic reasons of international recruitment of doctors in the UK, apart from increased demand for healthcare due to ageing and shrinking medical workforce,

“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 187 primarily include irregular medical manpower planning and underproduction of doctors. Even since the 1960s, the UK has profoundly depended on foreign medical graduates to deliver its healthcare services. In the beginning of the 21st century, this dependence has increased considerably both in volume and in proportion. Since the 1960s, the demand for healthcare workers in the UK and other OECD countries has increased rapidly due to a rise in income, new medical technology, specialisation in health-care services and population ageing (Cooper, 2003). This induced increase in the supply of physicians in the 1970s and 1980s both through domestic expansion of medical school education and international recruitment. However, due to inaccurate planning and misplaced fears of a glut of medical doctors, the expansion of training places has been halted, slowed down and sometimes curtailed. The staff contractionary policies have always turned into aggressive international recruitment drives later when large-scale shortages were realised. The NHS policy of staff expansion, especially during 2002–2004 has led to a dramatic increase and overshooting the target of recruitment of overseas doctors. We anticipate that the current phase of recruitment halts or slowdowns would contribute to growing shortages in the future and hence would lead to another policy reversal to accommodate international recruitment of doctors. However, the current intention of the NHS does not reflect anything on aggressive overseas recruitment anytime sooner for the obvious reasons of languishing economic recovery, continued financial difficulties in the NHS, emotions surrounded by Brexit, etc. Instead, the current focus of the NHS is to reorient the medical technology and healthcare delivery services through innovation in skill-mix and clinical roles so as to reduce the dependence and workload on the physician staff. The current strategic mood of the NHS may be well put quoting the expression of Health Committee (2012: 25), ‘We believe that the openness of the UK to clinical staff trained overseas, and the ability of UK-trained staff to work overseas, is a continuing source of strength to UK healthcare and that this openness should continue to be reflected in workforce planning’. However, the NHS also appreciated the UK government’s view that planning of the UK health and care workforce should not be dependent on significant future flows of trained staff from overseas, both in order to improve “security of supply” and in order to avoid “poaching” skilled staff from developing countries. The NHS further stressed the point that this approach should apply to public and private healthcare employers.

188  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria For these reasons, the prospects of an increase in the flow of Indian medical doctors to the UK from the current levels looks uncertain in the near future. Even if the NHS, UK revives its current policy of restraint of recruiting non-EU doctors to that of rapid overseas recruitment drive later, Indian medical doctors may not be picked up in large numbers as it used to be earlier. Instead, UK might prefer to recruit from other countries of South Asia such as Pakistan and possibly Bangladesh too, as is already evident from our discussion in the preceding sections that the inflow and stock of Pakistani doctors in the UK increased rapidly in the last few years. This belief also stands vindicated by the fact that the UK’s policy commitment to reduce its excessive dependence on overseas doctors would definitely impact the entry permissions to Indian doctors as they already dominate the overseas stock of doctors in the UK. Also, the growing reluctance if not resistance of the Indian government to allow overseas recruitment of its doctors might act as a dampener for the UK and other countries inactively pursuing ambitious recruitment plans in India. Thus, innovations in global partnerships of the kind suggested by Khadria (2012) to share the medical services of the doctors as “global commons” are the call of the day in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda of 2016–2030. Short of that, the mobility of globally scarce and critical skills of doctors is likely to continue being driven by the cobwebs of cyclical ups and downs, leading to coexistence of glut and brain drain at the macro level on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the dashing of the so-called “London Dreams” and the likes of many an aspiring doctor preparing to enter the “greener pastures” of the global healthcare markets in the developed countries at the micro level to the ground.

Acknowledgement The Financial and Infrastructural support provided by FORE School of Management, New Delhi is greatly appreciated.

Notes 1 It implies that, in order to obtain a work permit or recruit an overseas doctor qualified outside EEA, the employer has to ensure that no UK or EEA qualified medical graduate is available to fill the position. 2 Many Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) have cut education and training provisions. The Council of Deans and Heads of UK University Faculties for Nursing and Health Professions highlighted significant reductions in

“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 189 the number of non-medical training places commissioned by SHAs for the 2006–07 academic year. The Council stated that 10–15 percent cuts had been requested by ‘nearly all’ SHAs and that cuts were as high as 30 percent in some areas. Detailed evidence from the University of the West of England showed cuts of more than 30 percent to physiotherapy and occupational therapy courses in this area (Health Committee, 2007). 3 For example, Buchan (2008: 15) argued that policymakers in India encourage out-migration, either to reduce an oversupply of specific types of health professional or to encourage some workers to acquire additional skills or qualifications abroad before their return. Also, see Eastwood et al. (2005), and Ruten (2007). 4 According to MH&FW, 3000 doctors migrated to the US for higher education in the last three years and did not return to India (Indiarealtime, 2012). 5 For example, see The Outlook (2012), Mindovermedicine (2008) and MHFW (2010).

References Buchan, J. (2008). “How Can the Migration of Health Service Professionals be Managed so as to Reduce any Negative Effects on Supply”, Policy Brief, Health Systems and Policy Analysis, WHO European Ministerial Conference on Health Systems, Tallinn, Estonia, June 25–27. Buchan, J., Baldwin, S., and Munro, M. (2008). “Migration of Health Workers: The UK Perspective to 2006”, OECD Health Working Paper No. 38, DELSA/ELSA/WP2/HEA(5). Cooper, R. A. (2003). “Medical Schools and their Applicants: An Analysis”, Health Affairs, 22 (4), 71–84. Department of Health, UK (2001). Statistical Bulletin – Medical and Dental Staff in England 1990–2000, Department of Health, Richmond House, London, UK. Eastwood, J. B., Conroy, R. E., Naicker, S., West, P. A., Tutt, R. C., and Rhule, J. P. (2005). “Loss of Health Professionals from Sub-Saharan Africa: The Pivotal Role of the UK”, The Lancet, 365, May 28, 1893–1900. General Medical Council, UK. www.gmc-uk.org/. Hann, M., Sibbald, B., and Yung, R. (2008). “Workforce Participation Among International Medical Graduates in the National Health Service of England: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study”, Human Resources for Health, 6, 9. https://human-resources-health.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/14784491-6-9 [Accessed on 13.10.2017]. Haour-knipe, M. (2005). “Global Mobility, HIV and AIDS”, Chapter 20, in World Migration Report 2005: Costs and Benefits of International Migration, IOM, Geneva, pp. 339–349. Health Committee (1999). “Future NHS Staffing Requirement”, Third Report, Vol. 1, HC 38-I, March 3, House of Commons, UK. www.publications. parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmhealth/38/3802.htm [Accessed on 13.10.2017].

190  Basant Potnuru and Binod Khadria Health Committee (2007). “Workforce Planning: Fourth Report of Session 2006–07”, Vol. I, HC 171–1, March 22, House of Commons, London, UK. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmhealth/171/ 17102.htm [Accessed on 10.05.2010]. Health Committee (2012). “Education, Training and Workforce Planning”, First Report of Session 2012–13, Vol. 1, May 23, House of Commons, UK. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhealth/6/6i. pdf. [Accessed on 13.10.2017]. Indiarealtime (2012). “Economics Journal: Why Azad’s Plan Won’t Solve India’s Healthcare Woes”, by Rupa Subramanya, April 25. http://blogs.wsj. com/indiarealtime/2012/04/25/economics-journal-why-azads-plan-wontsolve-indias-healthcare-woes/ [Accessed on 13.10.2017]. Jeffery, R. (1976). “Migration of Doctors from India”, Economic Political Weekly, 11 (13), March 27, 502–507. Khadria, B. (2004). “Skilled Labour Migration from Developing Countries: Study on India”, International Migration Papers No. 49, International Migration Programme, ILO, Geneva. Khadria, B. (2010). “The Future of Health Worker Migration”, Background Paper, World Migration Report 2010, International Organization for Migration, Geneva. Khadria, B. (2012). “Migration of Health Workers and Health of International Migrants: Framework for Bridging Some Knowledge Disjoints Between Brain Drain and Brawn Drain”, International Journal of Public Policy, 8 (4/5/6), 266–280. Mejia, A., and Pizurki, H. (1976). “World migration of health manpower”. WHO Chronical, 30 (11), 455–460. MHFW (2010). “Shri Azad Allays Fears on Proposed Rural Medicine Course”, Press Information Bureau, February 4, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Mindovermedicine (2008). “Rural Stint before PG Medicine”, July 26. http:// mindovermedicine.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/rural-stint-before-pg-medi cine/ [Accessed on 14.01.2013]. Mullan, F. (2005). “The Metrics of Physician Brain Drain”, New England Journal of Medicine, 353 (17), October 27, 1810–1814. www.nejm.org. MWSAC (1997). “Planning the Medical Workforce”, Third Report, Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committee (MWSAC), December, UK. www. nhshistory.net/mwfsac3.pdf [Accessed on 13.10.2017]. OECD (2010). “International Migration of Health Workers: Improving International Co-operation to Address the Global Health Workforce Crisis”, Policy Brief, February, OECD Observer. OECD.Stat. Health Workforce Migration. http://stats.oecd.org [Accessed on 01.10.2017]. Potnuru, B. (2014). “Implication of International Migration of Doctors: A Comparative Study of India and South Africa”, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

“London dreams” of Indian doctors come to an end? 191 Potnuru, B. (2017). “Aggregate Availability of Doctors in India: 2014–2030”, Indian Journal of Public Health, 61(3), July–September, 182–187. Raghuram, P., and Kofman, E. (2002). “The State Skilled Labour Markets, and Immigration: The Case of Doctors in England”, Environment and Planning, 34, 2071–2089. Ruten, M. (2007). “The Economic Impact of Medical Migration: A Receiving Country’s Perspective”, IIDE Discussion Paper, 200708–04, August. Snow, S., and Jones, E. (2010). “Immigration and the National Health Service: Putting History to the Forefront”, History and Policy Papers 118. www.his toryandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-118.html [Accessed on 11.10.2012]. The Hindu, April 23, 2012, New Delhi. The Outlook (2012). “One-year Rural Stint for Doctors to be Made Compulsory”, May 18. http://test.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/one-yearrural-stint-for-doctors-to-be-made-compulsory/762964/?next [Accessed on 14.10.2013]. The Times of India, March 28, 2008. Wanless, D. (2002). “Securing Our Future Health: Taking a Long-Term View”, Final Report, April, The Public Enquiry Unit, HM Treasury, Parliament Street, London. http://si.easp.es/derechosciudadania/wp-content/ uploads/2009/10/4.Informe-Wanless.pdf.

11 Indians in Italy Barbara Bertolani

Introduction While interviewing an amritdhari1 Sikh man nearby the gurdwara of Novellara, northern Italy, we were talking about what he remembered about his arrival in Italy and the challenges faced afterwards to integrate in the local context. His words highlight the experiences, hopes and feelings of many other Indian first-comers to Italy: he arrived during the 1980s because of the civil war in Punjab, his parents had ‘paid a lot of money, as everybody does . . . to let me go “out” ’. Therefore, his migration to Italy was a family project with very high economic costs, to be repaid through remittances, and his goal was to act as the first ring of a migratory chain and to reunite as soon as possible with other family members. Although he was very proud of his religious identity, initially he had to suit to the local Italian context, still unprepared to deal with migrants’ cultural specificities, so that ‘when I gave my passport to the broker, he told me that I should cut my hair and beard and make new photos and papers to come to Europe. . . [and so did I]’. These words introduce the arguments of this chapter, which deals with Indian migration processes in Italy. The essay addresses different topics; it provides a general overview, framing the main characteristics of Indian citizens in Italy: their number, the places of stabilisation, the productive sectors they are engaged in and their degree of economic integration. Then, it draws the stages of migration from India to Italy, identifying two prevailing periods: the origins since the late 1970s and the subsequent arrivals, characterised by family reunions since the late 1980s. We will use this time scanning for narrative convenience, even if migration from India continues today and includes new arrivals, reunions, and possible departures to other EU countries, as these are overlapping and contemporary processes. The chapter focuses as well on processes of progressive rooting, acquisition of visibility and institutionalisation on Italian territory of Sikhs, Hindus, Ravidasi

Indians in Italy 193 and other religious minorities. This process of religious and cultural redefinition also affects young Indian men and women, encouraging an intergenerational confrontation.2

General overview on Indian immigration to Italy According to the annual report on the presence of migrants in Italy by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, in early 2016 the Indian community is the fifth in number among non-EU citizens and, although not very large, is slowly but steadily growing. If we consider only residents, Indians are 150,456 or 3 percent of all residents of foreign origin in Italy. Most of them originates from Punjab and, to a much lesser extent, from other Indian regions, for example Kerala (Gallo 2013). Indians in Italy are altogether young: the average age is 30 years, lower than the other non-EU immigrants (32 years). Specifically, 72.1 percent of them is less than 40 years old (compared to 65 percent of total non-EU citizens), 44.2 percent is under 30 and 24.7 percent is underage (MLSP 2016). More than 70 percent of Indians resides in a few Italian regions: Lombardy, Lazio, Emilia Romagna and Veneto, as shown in Table 11.1. Table 11.1 Percentage distribution of Indian residents in Italian regions at 31 December 2015 Region

% distribution of Indian residents

Trentino Alto Adige Valle d’Aosta Friuli Venezia Giulia Lombardy Piedmont Veneto Emilia Romagna Liguria Tuscany The Marche Umbria Abruzzo Lazio Molise Campania Puglia Basilicata Calabria Sardinia Sicily

1.3 0.1 1.5 32.9 3.1 10.4 11.6 1.2 4.2 2.8 1 0.5 16.5 0.4 4.8 2.4 0.7 2.9 0.4 1.4

Source: Author’s Calculation based on ISTAT data and maps created by the author (accessible from http://demo.istat.it/).

194  Barbara Bertolani Settlement areas and socio-demographic characteristics In general, the Indian presence is anything but homogeneous and it is possible to speak about a leopard stain pattern of settlement (Bertolani, Ferraris, and Perocco 2011). In the regions where Indians are more numerous, and their settlement is traditionally stable, they reside mainly in some specific and economically thriving provinces as for example Reggio Emilia (Emilia-Romagna region), Cremona (Lombardy), Vicenza (Veneto) and Latina (Lazio), where they also reach the 20 percent on non-Italian citizens, as shown in Table 11.2. Although Lombardy, Lazio, Emilia Romagna and Veneto continue to be the regions with the highest concentration of Indian residents, in recent years there has been a slow reversal of the trend: with the exception of Lazio, migration from India has grown much more slowly towards these traditional destinations and much faster in southern Italy. Table 11.3 compares the data of 2002 and 2015 and shows the changes of the percentage distribution of the Indian residents among the principal Italian regions, while Figure 11.1 shows the year by year trend of this same variable. Comparing the 2010 and the 2015 data, regions that have experienced the highest increase in percentage of Indian residents are Campania (159 percent) and Puglia (85 percent). Lazio continues to attract many Indians too (69.9 percent) along with Calabria (60.8 percent), while the regions of the historic settlement of Indian population in Italy show a much smaller increase: Lombardy grows only by 6.8 percent, Emilia Romagna by 8.2 percent and Veneto by 5.9 percent (Table 11. 4). Table 11.2 Percentage of Indian residents on total foreigners in 2015 Regions

Lombardy

Provinces

Cremona

% of Indians on foreigners

16.8

Lazio

Emilia Romagna

Veneto

Mantua

Latina

Reggio Emilia

Vicenza

17.9

20.7

9

7.1

Table 11.3  Percentage distribution of Indian residents in principal Italian regions in 2002 and 2015 Years

Lazio

Lombardy

Emilia Romagna

Veneto

Other regions

2002 2015

% 11.3 16.5

% 38.3 32.9

% 14.9 11.6

% 12.9 10.4

% 22.6 28.6

Indians in Italy 195 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2002

2004

2006

2008

Lazio

2010

2011

2012

Lombardy

2013

2014

2015

Emilia-Romagna

Other Regions

Veneto

Figure 11.1 Percentage distribution of Indian residents in Italian regions at 31 December 2015. Table 11.4 Percentage increase of Indian residents in some Italian regions in 2010 and 2015

Lombardy Veneto Emilia Romagna Lazio Campania Puglia Calabria

2010

2015

Percentage increase

46,372 14,746 16,123 14,586 2,762 1,917 2,683

49,529 15,620 17,453 24,777 7,155 3,547 4,315

6.8 5.9 8.2 69.9 159.1 85.0 60.8

Source: Author’s calculation on ISTAT data, accessible from http://demo.istat.it/

Until about 10 years ago, Lazio and in general the southern regions of Italy were considered mostly transit-paths or temporary settlement’s zones (Bertolani 2015a). They were important above all in a first phase of the migratory process, for example when migrants were still illegal, or before family reunion. Indians tended to establish themselves at a later stage in economically more prosperous zones in the North – where

196  Barbara Bertolani they could count on the presence of relatives and ethnic networks – and then to ask for family-reunion. The economic crisis that hit Italy since 2008 and the saturation of some economic “niches” traditionally occupied by Indian workers in north Italy has heavily modified their patterns of settlement. Family reunions are still more numerous in the north of the peninsula. The presence of stable kin-networks fosters a certain residential concentration, facilitating the inclusion and the reception of newcomers from India. The southern regions continue to attract especially the new immigration flows, consisting mainly of men who have not reunited their families yet, who may be irregular or illegal and may be in precarious working, living and economic conditions. However, these regions have become a destination even for those who – after having lived in Italy for many years with their families – have lost their jobs because of the crisis and are no longer able to reintegrate economically. Indeed, the failure of the migration project may force some wives and children to go back to India and some men to re-settle in southern Italy, in the regions of their first settlement. Here the labour market in some production areas is characterised by greater instability, exploitation and illegal work, but the cost of living is lower, and it is easier to live with few resources. So for some, the crisis may signify a kind of “leap” back to living conditions similar to those that had characterised the early years of their immigration in Italy. These considerations are also confirmed by the percentage of men and women in the regions of the north, central and southern Italy. Generally, this variable is considered to be an indicator of stability and maturity of migratory flows, as a gender balance may indicate the existence of family reunion processes and hence the economic integration and territorial stabilisation. Table 11.5 compares data from Table 11.5 Indian residents in 2010 and 2015: percentage distribution of men and women in some Italian regions 2010

Lombardy Veneto Emilia Romagna Lazio Campania Puglia Calabria

2015

Numbers

%M

%W

Numbers

%M

%W

46,372 14,746 16,123 14,586 2,762 1,917 2,683

59.4 60.3 58.5 63.0 70.1 75.8 80.7

40.6 39.7 41.5 37.0 29.9 24.2 19.3

49,529 15,620 17,453 24,777 7,155 3,547 4,315

56.7 57.3 56.2 64.5 71.3 72.2 73.7

43.3 42.7 43.8 35.5 28.7 27.8 26.3

Source: Author’s calculation on ISTAT data, accessible from http://demo.istat.it/

Indians in Italy 197 2010 and 2015. Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna are territories where there is a greater balance between Indian males and females and an increasing presence of women in 2015. The percentage distribution in southern regions, such as Campania, Puglia and Calabria, is quite different: the gender imbalance is clear, albeit slowly decreasing overtime. Lazio and Campania have a masculine prevalence that tends to grow overtime, rather than diminishing. Residence permits and economic integration processes Despite the difficulties so far described, the overall presence of Indians tends to stabilise overtime (MLSP 2016). In fact, 54.8 percent of Indian citizens who regularly stay in Italy in 2015 is the holder of a long-term permit (an increase of 8 percent compared to the previous year), while 45.2 percent has a permit which has to be renewed. Therefore, the number of residence permits that has an expiration date is decreasing, and also the Italian citizenship acquisitions are increasing of 23.2 percent. If we consider only the Indian citizens who have a residence permit to be renewed, 49.9 percent of them is in Italy for work purposes and 40.6 percent for family reasons. In 2016, permits of stay for work reasons decreased by 19.4 percent compared to 2015, while those for family reasons increased by 18.1 percent, confirming a common tendency to many other foreign communities, for reasons related to the familyreunification, and to the economic crisis. In general, the duration of the labour contract affects the expiry date of permits of stay and also the access to specific rights such as, for example, family reunion, thus affecting the processes of social integration (Bertolani, Rinaldini, and Tognetti Bordogna 2014). In 2015, Indians were the largest foreign community (almost 26 percent) among those who obtained residence permits and entry visas for seasonal work. This determined precarious socioeconomic integration processes. As discussed below, this feature corresponds to the precise needs of the Italian labour market, especially in the agricultural sector of growing vegetables, and it combines with ethnic brokering aimed at providing immigration possibilities and employment. If we consider the employment status of the Indians as a whole in 2015, 52.5 percent of Indians between 15 and 64 years is regularly occupied. This percentage is lower if compared to the average of nonEU foreigners (about 57 percent), and it is explained considering the difference between the male (69.7 percent) and female (21.4 percent) employment rate. Indian women are, in fact, much less present on the labour market, even compared to other foreign communities (MLSP

198  Barbara Bertolani 2016). In any case, economic inclusion generates a huge cash flow in terms of official remittances to India, moving from 133.2 million euros in 2010 to 248.4 in 2015, an increase of 86.4 percent. In 2015, remittances sent by Indians were equal to 6 percent of the total outgoing remittances from Italy. This is even more significant considering that most Indians has medium-low pay levels and education levels (34 percent perceive a lower wage to 1,200 euros and 31 percent perceive higher wages). If we look at the sectors of employment, 36 percent of Indian citizens is employed in industry, 14 percent in public services, 12 percent in commerce or catering and 9 percent work instead in other services (transport or business services such as drivers or porters). In some regions they find a job in some local specific activities, like the tanning and the manufacturing of skins in Veneto or the bread-making in Lazio. To a much greater extent than other non-EU workers (reaching 5 percent), 29 percent of Indians works in agriculture, i.e. vegetable growing in Lazio, Puglia, Calabria and Campania, and bovine breeding in Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. In fact, in 2015, 56.5 percent of newly hired Indians works in agriculture compared to 21.2 percent of other non-EU workers (MLSP 2016). Most Indians works as employees, however in the last few years there is a growing change, as alongside the “ethnic” activities (restaurants, grocery stores and sale and packaging of traditional clothing) a new business class is emerging in specific and sometimes very characteristic sectors of local production. Indians increasingly run small metal-mechanical companies, or are agricultural entrepreneurs engaged in typical activities such as vegetable cultivation (especially in Lazio, Puglia and Calabria), cattle breeding and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese production (mainly in Emilia Romagna). The role of ethnic intermediation in economic integration processes The fact that a large percentage of Indians work in agriculture is often referred to as a “professional vocation” which mainly concerns the zootechnical sector (MLSP 2016). Actually, this is the outcome of specific functioning processes of the Italian labour market that are well-connected with ethnic brokering dynamics within the Indian community, which favour economic inclusion in “ethnic niches”. According to research conducted in northern Italy (Bertolani 2015a), the access to certain occupational fields or to companies considered particularly favourable is often largely controlled from the inside by those Indians who already work there: if needed, they provide further

Indians in Italy 199 labour for their own employers or for other ones with whom they are in contact; they oversee the behaviour of those they have recommended (often presented as “relatives” to the employers), acting as guarantors. In this way, the most desirable occupational chances are preserved within the network of the “ethnic brokers” (Boissevain 1974). An emblematic example is that of the work in the cowshed as milker, considered an attractive position because, even though physically demanding, it offers a good salary and sometimes even a free or low-cost accommodation on the farm. Even if farm houses are often very cold, crumbling and isolated in the countryside, they are precious opportunities to accommodate one’s family. On the other hand, cattle farming, milking and milk processing are economically important activities in Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, especially because connected to the local and typical production of the “Grana Padano” and of “Parmesan”, which are famous Italian cheeses. In this general situation, mechanisms of intermediation among Indians have combined themselves with the existing tendency of the Italian labour market to operate processes of ethnic segmentation (Ferrero and Perocco 2011), with the result that this productive field has become an “ethnic niche” (Waldinger 1994), to which access takes place almost exclusively as members of a network and through the brokers’ help. This result would not have been possible without the help of Italians too. Indeed, the intermediation practice is generally stimulated by the employers as well, who believe they can have greater control of their employees. Moreover, in some working sectors like cows-farming and milking, Italians prefer Indians as they think that cows are holy animals for them, and that they will therefore treat them better than anyone else. Of course this particular cultural stereotype, acting like an including and facilitating mechanism, is skilfully exploited and reinforced by Indians. Even if the majority of them are Punjabi Sikhs and if it is doubtful that cows are holy to all of them, they continue exploiting this preconception. As a consequence, there is a concentration in north Italy of Punjabis that work in agriculture in stable (not seasonal) activities; they live in the countryside recreating extended kin-networks and enjoy the positive stereotype generally shared by Italians towards Indians, represented like a harmless and homogeneous ethnic group of farmers, completely dipped in a religious dimension of life (Bertolani 2015a). The dark side of ethnic intermediation Ethnic brokering can, however, also be considered as a genuine semi-illegal or illegal economic activity for profit. Again it favours

200  Barbara Bertolani the encounter between demand and supply of labour, responding to migratory pressures of transnational labour market and to the needs of local production activities. Especially in central and southern regions of Italy, the dynamics of ethnic brokering and labour market segmentation described so far may combine with unlawful practices of illegal hiring, labour exploitation, illegal and precarious work. Some research carried out in Lazio, in the province of Latina, showed a well-structured and widespread system of mistreatment of Indian workers, mostly Punjabi Sikhs, who are employed in the cultivation of vegetables (Omizzolo 2017a). The recruiter of day labourers is often a Punjabi himself: he acts as ethnic broker, recruiting manpower for the agricultural entrepreneur, organising workers’ transport on fields, providing food and water during the day and mediating any conflicts. For these services he is paid half of the real wage earned by workers, about 30 euros per day, for an average of at least 10 hours of work. In some cases the farmhands can be hired regularly, but in fact they are paid much less and forced to work many more hours than agreed in the contract; in other cases they are hired without a contract. Workers with residence permit may wish to have a regular and better paid contract but are however compelled to undergo this general exploitation system because they are competing with irregular or illegal immigrants who are willing to accept these working conditions. In this way, the seasonal activity of vegetables cultivation responds to its needs, basing its profits on the unskilled and low-cost labour of easily interchangeable workers. These forms of exploitation may also intertwine with the illegal sales of entry visas for seasonal employment in agriculture, and also with a transnational trafficking of workers from India for labour exploitation, managed by these same ethnic brokers in collaboration with local entrepreneurs and corrupt Italian public officers. In these cases, the activity of intermediation becomes completely illegal, and includes access to employment and also immigration itself to Italy. According to research conducted in Lazio (Omizzolo 2017b), these Punjabi brokers are turning to family in India to recruit, often among their extended kin-networks, people (young men) who wish to immigrate to Italy illegally. At the time of recruitment, the migrant pays an amount of money that includes transfer costs, hospitality, housing in Italy and job placement, as well as monitoring and accompanying workers in the relationships with employers. This is an effective system that guarantees the migrant a job even before leaving, often in the agri-food sector, but which is based on abuse and illegality. For each recruited worker, the employer pays to the mediator an amount

Indians in Italy 201 of about 2,000 euros, while the migrant pays from 5,000 to 12,000 euros in various tranches, depending on his economic availability. This variability, also linked to the kind of relationship between brokers and clients, reinforces the idea that the intermediary is a benefactor rather than an exploiter. This recruiting system appears to be an opportunity for migrants and the ethnic broker is often regarded as a respectable person and a prominent exponent of the local Punjabi community. The prestige that the broker enjoys makes it even more difficult for Indian workers involved to emancipate themselves from exploitation (Bertolani 2015a).The illegal trafficking system described is difficult to quantify, it appears fairly widespread and structured but limited to specific geographical areas, such as the province of Latina in Lazio. Considering that normally every “arrival” from India affects between 5 and 20 workers, the average illegal revenue from the deal ranges between 25,000 and 240,000 euros per trip for each broker, an amount that includes cost coverage and illicit broker’s profit. From 2005 to 2016 it is estimated that about 20,000 workers have arrived from Punjab in Italy through this system, for a turnover of approximately 170 million euros (Omizzolo 2017b).

The immigration of Indian citizens to Italy: past and present processes The immigration from India to Italy seems to be a quite recent thing and, at least for the first arrivals, it is by chance. Certainly, many Punjabi soldiers have died among the ranks of the English army during World War II, but this presence does not seem to have created outposts for the next immigration. The first immigrants arrived in the late 1970s and were above all “pioneers”, who separately tried the luck with the hope to be able sooner or later to enter the UK, Canada or the US. They embarked on ships or travelled from India land routes through the Middle East, Turkey, Greece and Balkans, often without a fixed goal and with an itinerant migratory project. In this period Italy had open frontiers and had no adequate immigration laws; it became above all a transit path, while migratory flows tended to be oriented elsewhere. Things started changing shortly later, in the 1980s, in concomitance with a series of general factors, like the closing of the frontiers in many English-speaking and North-European countries, the civil war in Punjab that pushed many young people to look for refuge abroad and the consolidation of a specific migration channel from India (especially form Punjab) to Italy: the circus (Bertolani 2015a).

202  Barbara Bertolani Historically, one of the privileged ways to immigrate legally to Italy has been working in the circus. In fact in Italy, laws which regulate the contracts of workers in the show business enable to hire artists also from abroad in an independent way from all the foreseen entry shares of foreign people applying for work in other productive sectors. Therefore, above all during the first years of Indian immigration to Italy, the circus was a concrete possibility to migrate regularly and to get a job. This opportunity was compatible with the demands and the characteristics of first migrants, who were young male adults seeking their fortune abroad. Indians who worked there were formally employed as tiger and elephant tamers or dancers, but in reality they performed low-paid and worker duties. Everyday life was characterised by difficult living conditions and by hard work, sometimes by real exploitation. Many of them tried to improve their living and work conditions as soon as possible, settling down and finding other jobs. Some were able to find out right chances and to create outposts to support the migration of their family members. Others became ethnic brokers, as they kept on exploiting the “migration-channel” of the circus from the outside to their personal advantage, providing labour from India among their male-relatives and assisting the newcomers, in exchange for some form of symbolic or material compensation (Bertolani 2005, 2015a). With time, besides this legal activity, also an illicit one started as “travel agencies” came up in Punjab which – on payment of always heavier money sums – provided visa, ticket and a job contract in the circus to young migrants. These contracts were often fake, just a mean to get a visa to migrate to Europe or Italy. With time, the circus has become just one among many other possibilities to migrate legally to Italy, depending on the changing opportunities offered by immigration laws. Starting from the late 1980s many Indians men have reunited their wives, children and sometimes their parents; others have sponsored the immigration of other family members and fellow citizens, sometimes acting as their “employers”. In Italy as elsewhere, even transnational arranged marriages have proved to be a useful means to support further immigration of relatives (Charsley and Shaw 2006; Bertolani 2017a). The current migration from India therefore sees the constant rise of the female presence and the birth and growth of their children. Moreover, the rise of Indian presence has also favoured in recent years the progressive acquisition of visibility and institutionalisation on the Italian territory of Sikhs, Hindus, Ravidasi and other religious minorities and also the growing diffusion of places of worship.

Indians in Italy 203 Processes of religious institutionalisation If we consider the case of Sikhs, the first gurdwara(Sikh temple) in Italy dates back to 1991 and was opened in an abandoned flourmill in the province of Reggio Emilia (Emilia Romagna region) for Sunday worship. Since the late 20th century, the growth of the Italian Sikh community has been rapid and constant, and in 2015 there were more than 40 gurdwaras, mainly concentrated in the northern and central parts of Italy. Researchers have estimated that in 2013 there were about 60,000 Sikhs (including Radhasoamis) among the migrants in Italy, as well as about 6,000 Sikh Italian citizens, including those who have been naturalised (Zoccatelli 2013). Other researchers have estimated that the Sikh community in Italy comprises between 25,000 and 70,000 habitants, while the Sikhs themselves estimate their number to be approximately 70 percent of all Indians in Italy, that is, about 90,000 people (Bertolani 2017b). In the process of defining Sikh identities in relation to Italian society, some aspects of the Sikh religious culture have been presented to Italians as “harmless ethnic features”, Sikhism has been ethnicised and reduced to folklore in public representations in order to be more easily recognised and acknowledged by native Italians and to present it in a familiar and nonthreatening way (Gallo and Sai 2013). Local communities have tried to achieve recognition of the Sikh religion by the Italian republic, to enter into agreements with Italian institutions and to have access to contributions and tax shares that the Italian State distributes among religious denominations that have signed a specific convention. The recognition request by Sikhs has so far given only negative results; it seems to be mostly hindered by the diversity and divisions within the community rather than by insurmountable theological issues. In any case, the actual politics for recognition focus primarily on exterior symbols of “one” Sikh identity and tend to represent the Sikhs as a uniform and simplified community, thus emphasising the normative aspects rather than internal pluralism (Bertolani 2017b). Instead, the process of recognition by the Italian state has been successful for the “Unione induista italiana” (Italian Hindu Union or UII). Part of the Hindus of Italian and foreign origin (mostly Tamils and, to a lesser extent, Indians) recognises itself in this body. In 2000, the UII was recognised as a “religious confession” and in 2007 it signed an agreement with the Italian Republic, approved by Parliament in 2012. Currently, UII is a reference point for about 5,000 faithful, of whom

204  Barbara Bertolani half are Italians, but maintains relations with at least about 50,000 Hindus of foreign origin. Hindus have opened at least 16 mandirs (hindu temples) throughout Italy (Introvigne and Zoccatelli 2017). Among Ravidasias there have been as well attempts to institutionalise religion by the creation of a national association which is in charge of liaising with the Italian institutions to achieve recognition and to access public funding. This process is still in progress. Currently there are about 15 deras (Ravidasias place of worship) across Italy (Bertolani 2017b). In general, processes of institutionalisation of religious distinctiveness generated prevailing and simplified narratives that defined a dominant identity. This result is functional to the dialogue with the Italian institutions and is the outcome of a relationship with the local context. At the same time, however, these dynamics of identity redefinition do not disregard confrontation with the transnational religious community. In addition, research has shown the existence of internal pluralism within the religious groups, partly supported by the growing presence of young people of Indian origin (Bertolani 2015b). The growing presence of young Italians of Indian origin Young Italians of foreign origin are youths who were often born, raised and educated in Italy but who are still “foreigners” by law. The current legislation on citizenship perpetrates in fact a condition of social and political foreignness, based on a presumed cultural difference. The acquisition of citizenship is based on the ius sanguinis and does not allow the automatic obtaining of citizenship in case of birth on Italian soil if not at the age of 18 years and upon explicit request. Young immigrants can acquire citizenship only by naturalisation or transmission by their naturalised parents. In 2016, the Indian minors in Italy are 41,911, and they constitute 24.7 percent of their countrymen and represent 4.4 percent of the total of non-EU minors (MLSP 2016).These young people are included in the Italian education system at all levels of school, but to a greater degree in lower-level schools. This may be the consequence of the more numerous presence of certain age groups, but it could also be the result of a greater difficulty in social and scholastic integration of those who arrive in Italy during their “teens”. 9.9 percent of Indians are in fact in the category of the so-called NEET, which includes boys and girls between 15 and 29 years old that are “Not in employment, Education and Training”. They are 6.5 percent of non-EU youth, and are increasing compared to previous years (MLSP 2016). The young

Indians in Italy 205 Indian women represent 63.4 per cent of the category (while on the total of non-EU NEET women are 46 percent); this may be an evidence of particularly difficult social integration processes, or of a lack of family investment in favour of Secondary and professional training courses, to encourage girls’ economic autonomy. This is especially true when Italy is not considered the final goal of the personal and family migration path, but simply a transit country. In general, the achievement of Italian citizenship does not always correspond to a real desire for territorial settlement in the country of election. The acquisition of long-term documents or Italian citizenship by Indians may be functional for further migration to other Western countries, in particular to other EU or English-speaking countries (especially UK, Switzerland and Germany). A multiple-step migration can occur when family-reunification from India is not followed by a local rooting process. Although there are no quantitative data on this type of migration (which still remains a minority), empirical observation suggests that it does not concern those who have lost their jobs and suffer from the effects of the crisis, but rather those who wish to further improve their status, migrating towards destinations which are considered more prestigious. In this sense, the migratory processes from India to Italy appear increasingly diachronic and transnational, and the presence of a relatively high percentage of NEET among young Indians may reflect a disinvestment towards Italy in view of a further family migration process. Research conducted on young Punjabis in Italy analysed the existence of intergenerational processes of cultural reinterpretation. Not without any ambiguity, young people try to combine some aspects of the cultural heritage of their families with behavioural patterns and cultural narratives prevailing both in the local Italian and in the transnational context. The most debated themes relate to religious identity, castes and arranged marriages. These issues relate to family reproductive processes, gender identity, family roles and power relationships between men and women. Referring to discourses about love/convenience, right/duty and control/autonomy, young people try to practice unprecedented forms of agency, to re-signify traditional behaviours and to build new narratives of “modernity” in a transnational context (Bonfanti 2015, 2017; Bertolani 2017a).

Conclusions Immigration from India to Italy is a recent phenomenon since the mid1980s. It would be improper to compare it to the first decades of Indian

206  Barbara Bertolani migration to other Western countries because the economic, social and temporal context is completely different and migration processes are increasingly transnational. In the case of the Indians in Italy, the transnational character is reflected for example in the dynamics of ethnic intermediation (aimed at illegal immigration and economic inclusion in ethnic niches), in the practices of family reproduction (through transnational combined marriages) and in what we called the multiple-step migration. On the other hand, from the economic point of view, the Indians find increasingly often employment in characteristic economic sectors, also important from a cultural and symbolic point of view (such as the production chain of Parmigiano Reggiano), allowing the transmission of knowledge and traditions closely connected with local identities. In these complex processes, the second generations try to redefine their own cultural and religious affiliations, building narratives that combine personal identity, desires and one’s own relational belonging. At the same time, in the Italian public space, religious minorities including Sikhs, Hindus, Ravidasi build their own places of worship. They shall establish relations with the public institutions and the local communities and, at the same time, they may redefine their identity in relation to the transnational religious community. In the case of Indians, it seems that concepts like “migration” and cultural, religious, social and economic “rooting” take the character of multi-sited and plural processes.

Notes 1 Amritdharis are those who – following the words of the tenth Sikh guru Gobind Singh – have been initiated to the Khalsa (the community of the pure ones) by taking amrit (nectar water) through the ceremony of the Amrit Sanchar. They have to follow certain rules of conduct (Rehat Maryada) and wear the five symbols of Sikhism. They are a politically active minority in Italy, positioning themselves as the depositories of Sikh orthodoxy. 2 This chapter discusses and further elaborates some reflections drawn from previous qualitative and ethnographic research, which I conducted since 2003 to present on Indian migration to Italy. I will also refer to second-level sources; the data reported in the chapter is drawn from the annual report of 2016 by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies (MLSP) on the presence of migrants in Italy (available at: www.integrazionemigranti.gov.it/rappor tiricercaimmigrazione/Pagine/default.aspx accessed: September 2017) and are elaborated from the website of the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT, available at: www.demo.istat.it accessed: June 2017).

References Bertolani, Barbara. 2005. ‘Gli indiani in Emilia: tra reti di relazioni e specializzazione del mercato del lavoro’, in Denti Domenica, Ferrari Mauro, and

Indians in Italy 207 Perocco Fabio (eds), I Sikh, storia e immigrazione, pp. 163–176. Milano: Franco Angeli. Bertolani, Barbara. 2015a. ‘Punjabis in Italy: The Role of Ethnic and Family Networks in Immigration and Social Integration’, in Rajan S. I., Varghese V. J., and Nanda A. K. (eds), Migrations, Mobility and Multple Affiliations: Punjabis in a Transnational World, pp. 319–337. Cambridge: University Press. Bertolani, Barbara. 2015b. ‘Young Sikhs in Italy: A Plural Presence for an Intergenerational Dialogue’, in Jacobsen K. A. and Myrvold K. (eds), Young Sikhs in a Global World. Negotiating Traditions, Identities and Authorities, pp. 209–230. Farnam, Surrey: Ashgate. Bertolani, Barbara. 2017a. ‘Structural Restrictions and Personal Desires: Arranged Marriages Between Punjab and Italy’, in Decimo Francesca and Gribaldo Alessandra (eds), Boundaries Within: Nation, Kinship and Identity Among Migrants and Minorities, IMISCOE, pp. 161–180. Cham: Springer. Bertolani, Barbara. 2017b. ‘Italy’, in Jacobsen K. A., Singh Mann G., Myrvold K., and Nesbitt E. (eds), Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism, I, pp. 503–508. Leiden: Brill. Bertolani, Barbara, Ferraris, Federica and Perocco, Fabio. 2011. ‘Mirror Games: A Fresco of Sikh Settlements Among Italian Local Societies’, in Myrvold K. and Jacobsen K. (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations, pp. 133–161. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Bertolani, Barbara, Rinaldini, Matteo and Tognetti Bordogna, Mara. 2014. ‘Combining Civic Stratification and Transnational Approaches for Reunited Families: The Case of Moroccans, Indians and Pakistanis in Reggio Emilia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(9): 1470–1487. Boissevain, Jeremy. 1974. Friends of Friends. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bonfanti, Sara. 2015. ‘The “Marriage Market” Among Punjabi Migrant Families in Italy: Designs, Resistances and Gateways’, Human Affaris, 25: 16–27. Bonfanti, Sara. 2017. ‘A Taste of “Brownies”: Shifting Color Lines Among Indian Diasporas in Southern Europe’, Transnational Social Review. DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1360034. Charsley, Katharine and Shaw, Alison. 2006. ‘South Asian Transnational Marriages in Comparative Perspective’, Global Networks, 6(4): 331–344. Ferrero, Marco and Perocco, Fabio. 2011. Razzismo al lavoro. Il sistema della discriminazione sul lavoro, la cornice giuridica e gli strumenti di tutela. Milano: Franco Angeli. Gallo, Ester. 2013. ‘L’Italie n’est pas un bon endroit pour les hommes: réseaux transnationaux, mariage et masculinité chez les migrants Malayali’, in Verschuur C. and Catarino C. (eds), Genre, Migrations et Globalisation de la Reproduction Sociale, pp. 267–281. Paris: L’Harmattan. Gallo, Ester and Sai, Silvia. 2013. ‘Should We Talk About Religions? Migrant Associations, Local Politics and Representations of Religious Diversity in Central Italy’, in Blanes R. and Mapril J. (eds), The Best of All Gods. The Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe, pp. 279–308. Leiden: Brill.

208  Barbara Bertolani Introvigne, Massimo and Zoccatelli, Pier Luigi. 2017. ‘L’unione Induista in Italia e i centri affiliati’, in Introvigne M. and Zoccatelli P. L. (eds), Le religioni in Italia. CESNUR. Available at: www.cesnur.com/linduismo-e-imovimenti-di-origine-induista/lunione-induista-italiana-e-i-centri-affiliati/ (Accessed September 2017). MLSP. 2016. La comunità indiana in Italia. Rapporto annuale sulla presenza dei migranti, Anpal servizi. Available at: www.integrazionemigranti.gov.it (Accessed September 2017). Omizzolo, Marco. 2017a. ‘La comunità indiana in provincia di Latina tra sfruttamento lavorativo, nuova legge contro il caporalato e il ruolo essenziale dei servizi sociali: il caso del progetto Bella Farnia’, in Omizzolo M. (ed), Migranti e Diritti. Tra mutamento sociale e buone pratiche, pp. 53–74. Tempi Moderni, Macerata: Edizioni Simple. Omizzolo, Marco. 2017b. ‘Tratta internazionale nell’area del Mediterraneo e sfruttamento lavorativo: il caso della comunità indiana in provincia di Latina”, in Baldin S. and Zago M. (eds), Europe of Migrations: Policies, Legal Issues and Experiences, pp. 307–328. Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. Waldinger, Roger. 1994. ‘The Making of an Immigrant Niche’, International Migration Review, 28(1):3–30. Zoccatelli, Pier Luigi. 2013. ‘Changing Religious Movements in a Changing World’. Available at: www.cesnur.org/2013/swe-plz.htm (Accessed September 2017).

12 Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano

Introduction This chapter focuses on the elements of international trafficking that the Indian community is subjected to with particular attention on the Sikh Punjabi in the province of Latina (Italy). The chapter aims to link aspects of international trafficking to labour exploitation. It is approached through an ethnographic study by the authors as a result of direct participation while working as a day labourer in the fields and then following an Indian trafficker to Punjab to observe and study his methods to fully understand the origins and routes of this particular type of trafficking in human beings, how Indians are recruited as day labourers in the Pontina Marshes and their social-economic situation. Furthermore, the In Migrazione Coop’s Bella Farina project is also analysed. In Migrazione organises innovative services within the Indian community in the Pontina Marshes with the aim of fighting against international trafficking and the grievous exploitation of labour in the fields by using the limited knowledge the Indian population day labourers have of their rights, administrative procedures and the role the Italian government plays on procedures. The project was inductive to the development of the strike held on 18 April 2016 organised by In Migrazione and the Flai CGIL labour union (Federation of Agricultural Workers – a syndicate category of the Italian General Confederation of Labour) and the participation of over 2,000 Indians. The supervising procedures and methods used in organising the strike will be examined as well as the results obtained.

Introduction to international trafficking of human beings and the borderline legalities in the Indian community in the province of Latina Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the issue of the international trafficking of large groups of male and female immigrant

210  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano workers from Punjab1 for the purpose of labour exploitation. It is a specific form of international trafficking of human beings that involves criminal organisations that use trafficking to manage their business plans (Paoli 2007). It is a proven system characterised by coercive and non-coercive means to gain the consent of those using its services. Organised crime, as defined by current Italian law, particularly Italian law of 13 September 1982 n. 646 (including Art. 416 bis and further amendments), is a group composed of three or more people who use ‘intimidation and various forms of subjugation for unjust gain’. This includes transnational criminal organisations that traffic in Indian (Punjabi) workers and are organised through migratory chains operated by criminals that offer a full range of services, including transfer costs, reception on arrival (including housing), integration into the agro-food sector for work and the necessary legal advice to prevent the migrants from finding themselves in illegal conditions. Two subsystems of delinquency are annexed to the organisation: gangmasters of Punjabi origin and corrupt/corruptible employees and officials who supply necessary administrative advantages at the request of a few local dishonest farmers.

Organised crime and the grey area legalities of trafficking in human beings from Punjab The system of international trafficking in human beings for the purpose of forced labour in the past 30 years in the province of Latina presents characteristics that make it unique as a case study. There is a grey area in the system of trafficking in human beings supported by organised structures that work together with contacts (entrepreneurs, local administrators, professionals, gangmasters and migrant workers) without the initial coercive and violent characteristics typical of other systems of trafficking in human beings for sexual or labour exploitation (such as in Nigeria). The front office deals with information and contacts while the back office conducts abusive economic corruption through an advantageous system that procures appropriate functions for the leading figures of the organisation; such as the Indian trafficker, the Italian entrepreneur and the recruited Indians who want to come to Italy (Omizzolo and Sodano 2016). The collaborative and consensual appearance conceals a criminal act equal to other organisations that specialise in trafficking in human beings, the difference being that violence and abuse are not generally disclosed. The leading members of these criminal organisations are of the same nationality as the Punjabi migrants and able to govern the cycle of

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 211 trafficking. Some organisations are structured for recruitment others specialise in travel and the transnational transfer of migrants. The ones in the Pontina Marshes handle labour placement as well as the monitoring/tracking of the relationships established with employers (Omizzolo 2017). These relationships determine the peculiarity of Punjabi organisations. Before migrants depart from their country of origin, they are guaranteed employment on farms in the province of Latina looking for low-cost labour in various stages of production. The Punjabi traffickers, perhaps equal to Chinese traffickers, forge structured relationships with Italian business sectors for the procurement of manpower. Basically, the entrepreneur contacts (consciously and unconsciously) the international labour market through these specialised organisations in order to meet its particular employment needs. There is an interdependent and strictly operative relationship between the overseers of trafficking in human beings and a few entrepreneurs in the province of Latina. This peculiarity is clearly evident only in the province of Latina and particularly in the municipalities of Sabaudia, Pontinia, San Felice Circeo, Terracina, Fondi, Formia and the city of Latina. This combination is perceived as an opportunity, at least in the way the Punjabi workers and their families speak about it. Once they arrive in the Pontina Marshes, the labourers are guaranteed immediate employment and housing nearby or cohabitation with other compatriots already living there to whom they are usually related.2 Punjabi trafficking in human beings is ultimately established through an initial and structured relationship between a local farmer and a prominent member of the Indian community in the Pontina Marshes. The latter (also known as a sponsor) has the economic and social resources to allow him to play a key role in the criminal system that governs the different phases of trafficking, and he is often a representative of the local Punjabi community.

Connections between Indian sponsors and entrepreneurs The preferential relationship that sponsors have with a few of the agricultural entrepreneurs in the Pontina Marshes is essentially based on trust, the shared desire of making a profit, the de-privatisation of their business and relationships and actions that support their fiduciary relationship. The partnership between the entrepreneurs and the local Indian sponsors is based on the needs of both to find effective solutions to

212  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano labour requirements for local companies. In this sense, the entrepreneur, in addition to meeting his own labour requirements, also meets those of the companies he offers illegal services to (through one or more trusted gangmasters). The reasons related to the activities and objectives pertaining to the company’s (seasonal or annual) production are undertaken by the sponsor on the entrepreneur’s instructions. They use the workforce already in the area or avail themselves of their international relationship with Punjab to recruit farmhands in short order for the entrepreneur. The pre-arranged arrival of new workers does not always correspond to the immediate needs of the entrepreneur. Manpower without immediate employment will serve as reserve labour for the local labour market. It is readily available and on call, so it can be mobilised in just a few hours as reinforcement and casual labour for particularly strenuous activities and paid partial wages, often under the counter. The entrepreneur recognises the economic advantages of the illegal intermediary nature of the sponsor’s work and pays the middleman between EUR 1,000 and EUR 3,000 for each illegally recruited Punjabi labourer. The revenues as a whole make up the profits for the sponsors/leaders of the criminal organisation for their role as international labour providers. The entrepreneur’s profits, on the other hand, are determined by the arrival of new Punjabi migrants from their country of origin and the resulting capital gains acquired by using them in their own business depending on long working hours, the pace of the work and by paying them ridiculously low wages.

The illegal and criminal network There are not many Punjabi criminal organisations that operate on a transnational level (Sciacchitano 2015). They seem to associate a variable number of people on the basis of available economic power and the power that derives from the calibre of the relationships they establish with dishonest local businessmen. They have easily interchangeable structures so that they can organise networks with relative flexibility, especially when variances accidentally occur that hinder the performance of the prefigured illegal business. Furthermore, their strength increases based on the quality of the relationship they establish with other active collaborators in the areas of recruitment as well as in transit areas. In the countries of origin, associates typically belong to the sponsor’s family whether they are closely or loosely related. In collaboration with them the sponsor

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 213 handles the initial phases of the overall trafficking of their fellow countrymen and women. In the transit areas, on the other hand, the predominant figures are unrelated to the family-based clans, although there are structured relationships with Punjabi immigrants who have settled in these areas previously. The logistic structures not only guarantee practical services for the purposes requested (a transnational criminal associative link) but also use the necessary discretion and omertà (code of honour) by raising awareness of the fact that they are involved in illegal activities. This information emerges from the many interviews conducted with Punjabi workers employed on the farms in the Pontina Marshes and with Punjabi residents in the transit countries (Omizzolo 2010, 2014, 2015). The leader or leaders of the organisations are generally people who have been residing in Italy, particularly in the Pontina Marshes, for a long time. They possess considerable experience on illegal entry procedures for migrants, official and non-official procedures for recruiting labour for companies, as well as extensive knowhow on the complicated administrative and bureaucratic procedures. They also speak fluent Italian, an element that distinguishes them from the rest of the community that often does not speak the language very well or at all, even though a few of them have lived in the area for over 15 or 20 years. Knowing Italian is crucial in playing the role of benefactor-service provider in the Punjabi community and masking their criminal identity. The organisation provides services that include filling out the paperwork for residence permits or for renewing documents, and completing applications to facilitate family-reunification. The sponsors, most likely in collaboration with their Italian cohorts (lawyers, labour consultants, professionals from various professional backgrounds) are familiar with the regulations and know how to circumvent them if necessary. The result is that the sponsor is able to create a composite network of contacts that accept their collaboration (even if illegal) for monetary compensation. Among these, as discovered by the judicial authorities of Latina, public administration employees and law enforcement officers carry out corrupt illegal acts in exchange for ill-gotten gains. Nevertheless, the sponsors represent an essential point of reference for the entire Punjabi community. They are looked upon as facilitators/specialists by the Punjabi community even though they are making money from them behind their backs. They are also regarded as

214  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano benefactors even though they resort to illegal practices. This conduct as a whole acts as a dividing line between what is metaphorically deemed legal and illegal and is therefore located within the grey area.

Payment in cash, the subdivision of parties and money laundering Every economic transaction between the organisation (including the Punjabi and Italian entrepreneurial components)3 and its customers (i.e., other entrepreneurs who purchase services and the migrant workers involved) is carried out immediately in cash unless other arrangements have been specifically established between the parties. Workers are given special terms for payment. The most common is the division of the total amount into rates paid at regular deadlines. Among other things, the rates are calculated according to the total amount so as not to seem disproportionate and arouse the suspicion of the police. This suggests a skilful ability on the part of the criminal organisation to plan the recovery of credit as well as the evident knowledge that both parties are conducting illegal activities. Once employers have given the sponsor the “go ahead” to recruit labourers, the active members of its networks throughout Punjab recruit Indians willing to emigrate according to the required conditions. This type of recruitment has always been successful because it is reinforced by the promise of future work placement and related benefits, starting with residency/accommodation. The organisation can earn as much as EUR 5,000 to EUR 12,000 per person from the entire operation.4 This wide variation in costs allows the organisation to have a broader range of potential customers, considering the economic status of the applicants for emigration, and still be regarded as an esteemed benefactor. Thus, there is room for negotiation between the parties with the aim of finding a satisfactory solution for both. In fact, the recruiters assess the financial resources of the potential migrants and customise the costs of migration accordingly. Furthermore, recruiters also evaluate the degree of kinship with the sponsor/head of the organisation or its close collaborators. A first instalment is paid in advance and the other instalments are paid later and are of different values, especially once the migrant has arrived at the destination. The cost per migrant – between EUR 5,000 and EUR 12,000 – is kept by the sponsor/Indian trafficker in full who uses it to pay the actual costs of the trip while the remainder is his illegal profit. Considering that each arrival includes a number of workers that varies from five to 20 individuals, the Indian sponsor/trafficker develops

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 215 a volume of illegal business resulting from trafficking in human beings (in this particular historical phase) ranging from EUR 25,000 to EUR 240,000, tax-free. These significant figures make this a particularly favourable activity.5

The function of mediators in the organisation: avoid conflicts and perpetuate illicit business The organisations governed by sponsors receive large sums of money for emigration and work placement in Italy. Profits are guaranteed, as is the prestige of the criminal organisation and the ability to conduct similar operations. An economic partnership’s main interest (legal or illegal) is in the perpetuation of income for the business and a possible increase overtime. It seems clear that the relationships that develop between the Indian sponsors and the migrants who work in the fields in the Pontina Marshes are varied and trust is not a secondary feature. These relationships are forged without threat, violence or blackmail, at least in close relationships in the absence of conflicts and latent conflicts. The same type of relationship is maintained between entrepreneurs and the organisation. Regarding workers who are not coerced, the organisation displays shared values by which the entire community is identified. This inevitably produces favourable relationships that guarantee the success of the “deals”.6 By using these strategies, the criminal organisations prevent disputes, enmities and complaints. From this point of view, they consider themselves immune from criminal prosecution even though the bond within the Punjabi community in this respect is beginning to fray (in the summer of 2011 there were demonstrations against the exploitative practices of gangmasters and entrepreneurs and the first strike by Indian farmhands in the Pontina Marshes was held on 18 April 2016 with the commitment of the In Migration Coop. There were also other major demonstrations organised by In Migration such as the one in front of the Centro Lazio Agriculture Coop). The sponsor and organisation’s power as mediators who communicate with both internal associates and external sources (primarily workers and entrepreneurs)7 are threefold and directly or indirectly involve just as many social and professional figures. The first social figure is local businesses that are usually more structured and have medium-to-high food production and quality. The entrepreneur requires a replaceable workforce and so the continuous labour turnover implies a close relationship with the sponsor/organisation of traffickers who are willing to cooperate and supply seasonal

216  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano labourers for the employer. The teams of labourers who come from Punjab have not been alerted about the employment dynamics in the Pontina Marshes and they are unaware of labour rights and legal administrative practices. In other words, they are easier to use, exploit and remove if the employers default on the agreement or if their needs have been satisfied. Alongside the entrepreneurs, and not in a secondary position, there is one or more gang master, primarily of Punjabi origin although there are widespread cases of gangmasters from Bangladesh, Romanian-born women and, in some cases, even female Indian gangmasters. The second figure directly involved is that of the workers. In the Pontina Marshes, there are estimated to be about 30,000 workers (of which almost two-thirds have arrived in the last 10 years) as a result of an efficient “migration chain” focused on extended families. The migration chain is fed through contacts with members of other families and a clear willingness to migrate to Italy. They are divided and separated families: some of them remain in their homeland, while others live in the Pontina Marshes. Exchanges and communication between members of the family are continuous, feeding the propensity of emigration to younger members and revenues for criminal organisations. In the early stages, as explained above, a peaceful relationship between the workers and sponsors is formed because they promise them work. Sometime after arriving in Latina, they discover the unethical working conditions contrary to those promised before the settlement, which subsequently causes conflict. The sponsor and their affiliates then start a process of significant mediation so as not to destroy the fiduciary relationship and avoid small internal conflicts.

Fraud, threats and labour exploitation of Punjabi labourers in the Pontina Marshes farmland The “black Marshes” of Punjabi criminal organisations are antithetical to the “grey Marshes”. They are illegal and reveal the true nature of the sponsors and their entrepreneurs. Illegal profit through labour exploitation is the official “mission statement” of a criminal organisation. Over the years, the arrival of many immigrants from Punjab has produced a bracket of workers with few opportunities to pursue the immigration prospects that prompted them to emigrate. Therefore, the presence of these groups of impoverished workers has led criminal organisations to use gangmasters of Italian (to a lesser extent) and

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 217 Punjabi (to a greater extent) nationality that report directly to the sponsor/leader of the structure. They form the backbone of the criminal organisation that operates in collaboration with local dishonest entrepreneurs. The organisation takes on a dual personality taking into consideration the duality of its expertise and operative specialisation: one is as a transnational company practised in the recruitment and transfer of migrants and their relatives through operative structures outside Italian borders; the other is a local structure focused on daily labour brokerage. Profits for the organisation come from both business sectors, and in both cases there is an operative combination of Punjabi and Italian criminals: transnational businesses (sponsors and entrepreneurs who recruit workers directly from abroad) and local ones (Italian and Indian gangmasters who act as intermediaries at a regional level). The Indian gangmaster plays an important role in the interests of the employer urging his fellow countrymen to work at the pace and intensity demanded by the employer. The gangmaster is pressured into exploiting the workers through the entrepreneur or the mere threat of coercive power corroborated by the employer. Gangmasters are socially ambiguous and complex figures because they have to maintain and preserve disparate, potentially conflicting relationships simultaneously. They run the risk of generating violent confrontations that can only be handled through force and material violence. It is evident that there is a connection between this grey/black system of trafficking and the dynamics of the exploitation of Indian workers in the province of Latina. Labourers are often forced to work 10 to 14 hours days (including Saturdays and Sundays) for about EUR 3.50 per hour whereas a national provincial contract pays EUR 9.00 gross per hour for 6.5 hours a day. An example of this is an interview conducted by In Migrazione for the dossier “Sfruttati a tempo indeterminato” (“Openended Labour Exploitation”), where a 30-year-old Indian day labourer, who has lived in the province of Latina for seven years, states, My job is terrible. I work every day for very little money. . . . I go to the field by bicycle and work from 7.00 in the morning to 5 or 6:00 in the evening, depending on the owner [employer]. It’s exhausting. My owner . . . is always very strict with me. I don’t understand Italian very well so he takes advantage of it. My contract says I should earn 8 euros an hour but he only gives me 3 or 4 euros. How can anyone live on that? . . . I’m a good Indian

218  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano and worker. I work in silence and never create problems. I never protest about the work but I never get more money. Why is that? I’m tired. I have worked two, three even five months without pay. What kind of life is that? Day labourers are subjected to the constant threat of dismissal by the employer and as an extreme form of subordination they are often obliged to call the employer “Master” and lower their heads when speaking to him. In addition, there are fraudulent scams of various kinds: from illegal practices for the renewal of residence permits to false payslips and contracts, from yo-yo wages (paid electronically and then returned in part by the worker to the employer in cash) to fraudulent procedures to renew documentation (some Indians have paid up to EUR 800 to renew their identity cards), and from late wage payment of up to a year, and in some cases never paid at all, to physical violence and continued intimidation including the sexual harassment of the female Indian and Romanian workers. The underpaid work, blackmail, harassment and, in some cases, enslavement practised with systematic perseverance by the traffickers, gangmasters and masters contribute to creating a “production system” and distribution system based on organised exploitation and subjugation practices. This permits some employers to obtain a substantial reduction in production costs and restructure their production system by means of a sort of “on site relocation”. There was an interesting case of a farm in the Pontina Marshes that employed all its Punjabi workers legally but hired them with the illegal practice of non-salaried piecework at EUR 3,00 per 100 bunches of radishes harvested (excluding waste). After a small wage claim upon payment, often increased in time, they received an hourly piece rate of EUR 2.90 for the same amount of product harvested. Furthermore, a new contractual practice was implemented between the employers and labourers that stipulated that every claim had to be submitted in writing, signed and placed in a specific box; each day it was taken out and disposed of. Illegal labour brokerage and gangmasters were introduced. Older Punjabi labourers were laid off and replaced by new labourers who had just arrived from Punjab and therefore were less likely to claim legal rights and better wages. Illegal brokerage took on some of the typical characteristics similar in part to the general procedures used by Italian criminal organisations. It established the uncommon practice of direct labour recruitment in town squares or streets that was commonplace in other Italian regions.

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 219 The gangmaster contacts selected labourers through text messages or WhatsApp thereby camouflaging illegal recruitment and avoiding law enforcement checks. A labourer is selected to benefit the employer who is compliant with forced exploitation. In addition to these cases there are on-the-job injuries or accidents that are almost never reported. They take place during working hours and are often concealed in order to spare the employer from inspections and legal charges. Punjabi labourers are often taken to a nearby hospital or emergency room by the employer and advised or blackmailed not to report the actual dynamics of the accident. Punjabi labourers are frequently subjected to thefts on payday. At times their salary is paid in cash. While returning to their places of residence, gangs of Italian youths, often on bicycles or scooters, wait for them on the side of the road, attack them and steal their hard-earned money. This widespread practice has created a climate of distrust among labourers who are convinced of their persecutors’ impunity. This has been confirmed by the difficulties the workers face when they report the incident to the police and by the difficulty many officers have in understanding the worker’s conditions, anxieties and fears. There have also been very disturbing reports of incidents where Italian criminals have tried to set Punjabi labourers on fire or broken their legs in order to punish or intimidate them. Even more tragic is the number of suicides among Punjabi labourers in the Pontina Marshes: Men who after years of exploitation consider suicide the only escape from that hell. This happened once near the town of Sabaudia where a Punjabi labourer hung himself inside the greenhouse where he worked. His employer paid him only EUR 300 per month for 26 working days. The working conditions led to a state of frustration and severe depression that probably induced him to carry out the extreme act. Sexual blackmail also exists on some farms; practices of further subjection based on abuse and gender violence that affect Indian and Romanian women labourers. This practice is observed in other Italian regions, particularly in the farmlands of Ragusa in Sicily. According to a study conducted by MEDU (Doctors for Human Rights) in collaboration with ASGI (The Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration) and the LEGAL CLINIC at Roma Tre University, over 80 percent of the people surveyed said the most common method of payment in the province of Latina for Punjabi labourers is hourly rates. Of the workers interviewed, 67 percent stated they were paid directly by the employer, 7 percent by an Indian intermediary, and 24 percent preferred not to answer.

220  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano Payslips and employment contracts are often legal but almost always contain inaccurate information to benefit the employer. Labourers work 12 to 14 hours a day every day of the month but the payslip only declares three or four days of work per month while the rest of the hours are buried or marked in pencil on paper (exploitation hush money). A Punjabi worker in the Pontina Marshes declared, My master owes me 26 thousand euros. I have been working in a cooperative near Sabaudia for seven years and for seven years I have been getting 200 to 300 euros a month. I don’t know why. I work all week, six days a week, and half a day on Sundays for only 300 euros a month. The rest of the money is kept by the master. (interview by In Migrazione) The practice of false payslips is widespread and represents the stratagem for avoiding inspections and entering a system where the definition of legality and illegality is foggy; it constitutes the primary instrument used to avoid inspections and determines conditions of illegality and exploitation of Punjabi men and women labourers.8 Equally tragic is the case of the Punjabis in the Pontina Marshes who were induced by the employer/owner/gangmaster to take drugs to work as slaves at an imposed work pace; threatened by having compatriots ready to take their place (replacement process) and by the obligations of commitments made to their families in Punjab. They took methamphetamine, opium and antispasmodics in order to withstand the daily physical and psychological fatigue and the social pressure they were subjected to every day. K. Singh, a Punjabi worker who lives in the province of Latina, stated, We are exploited and we cannot tell the boss “that’s enough!” because he’ll send us away. So, some Indians pay for a little substance so they don’t feel pain in their arms, legs and back. The owner tells us to work, work, work, come on, come on, and after fourteen hours of work in the fields, how is it possible to keep this up? In the fields to pick radishes, the Indians work bent over on their knees all day; the substance helps us to live and work better. This is the most evident expression of a structural and structured relationship between international trafficking in human beings, labour exploitation and illegal labour brokerage with significant social and

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 221 often decisive consequences on the lives of the Indian men and women labourers in the province of Latina.

The In Migrazione Coop’s “Bella Farnia” project: best practice policies against labour exploitation and the international human trafficking of Indian labourers in the province of Latina At the end of this analysis on the Indian community in the province of Latina and the methods of exploitation and international trafficking of human beings it is subjected to, it is important to analyse the organisation and the results obtained through the “Bella Farnia” project coordinated and developed by the coop. In Migrazione was founded to achieve new forms of autonomy for the Indian community and led the Indian population in the province of Latina at the strike of Indian labourers on 18 April 2016. It wasn’t a random strike but rather the outcome of social work carried out in the Pontina Marshes including the analysis, condemnation and educational and communicative relationship with the day labourers, their families and the entire Indian community. The “Bella Farnia” project was developed with contributions from the Regione Lazio and ARSIAL (Regional Agency for the Development and Innovation of Agriculture in Lazio). It established a Centro Polifunzionale d’Informazione e Orientamento (Multifunctional Centre for Information and Orientation) to provide free services aimed at severing the isolation of the Indian community and promoting social inclusion. It was the first project of its kind to determine how to organise a multifunctional structure within one of the residential areas of the Indian community in the Pontina Marshes that included pertinent social and training services. Specific objectives were instituted for the “Bella Farnia” project. In addition to other services it created a programme to improve the Indian residents’ understanding of the Italian language and the local institutions; raised awareness on the protection of labour rights; raised awareness pertaining to gender rights, in particular women’s rights; raised awareness for accessing services in the area; the development of partnerships with institutions and organisations that carry out roles in processing programs in support of Indian migrants; a detailed study of the Indian social structure, in particular the Sikh community; and continuous monitoring of said social structure by involving its privileged observers.

222  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano In order to reach these goals the centre developed an intercultural aggregate unit including Italian language classes; an information desk to access social and registry office certificate services; improved access to accurate information; social-legal assistance with particular (but not exclusive) attention to worker’s rights and dealing with the gangmaster system and international trafficking of human beings; and monitoring, overseeing and research documenting the living conditions of the Indian community. The services were available three days a week (Tuesday, Friday and Saturday) and an Indian social advisor was always present to assist the migrants in completing the forms necessary for daily life and their legal residence in Italy (Social Security Number, health insurance card, access to specialised medical visits, the choice of general practitioner, opening bank and/or postal accounts, residency permit renewals, etc.). It also offered a 120-hour crash course in Italian literacy for adults. The Italian school provided an educational context that developed the sharing of emotions, identifying their social presence and creating social identity. It became a comprehensive support tool in the development of the project for individuals and the community. An Italian teacher who specialises in teaching migrants held the Italian language classes and in collaboration with the Centre’s lawyer, also dealt with issues pertaining to citizenship, family-reunification and legal residency. A free legal aid service was provided later with a lawyer who specialises in migration rights and provided information and orientation activities on legal issues as well as support to those who lived in overwhelming exploitation conditions and expressed their desire to press charges against their exploiters. A linguistic and cultural mediator service was also added later with two Indian linguisticcultural mediators (Dr Sarbjit Chauhan and Harbhajan Singh) who supported and promoted the participation of the recipients of the activities and services. The new feature was particularly innovative. One Indian cultural mediator worked within the structure and knew how to facilitate the task of every worker who used the service, while the other carried out activities outside the centre disseminating information about the services at meeting points and where the Punjabi community gathered such as religious structures, Gurudwara. The service also provided support for the Punjabi migrants on specific issues that affected their quality of life (documents, family-reunification, educational acknowledgement, etc.). Throughout the project, 83 free legal advice services (about four legal consultations a week) were administered of which 62, about 78 percent, for labour cases, 9.5 percent, for family-reunification,

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 223 12.5 percent, for legal advice on visas, rent contracts and residency permits. Of the 62 labour cases, 90 percent were related to false payslips and the frauds connected to them. The remaining 10 percent were related to the phenomenon of illegal brokerage (the gangmaster system) including its ethnic extraction. The nine consultations for familyreunification focused particularly on reuniting children and wives from Punjab. The 12 consultations for visas examined the specifications for apartment rental contracts, residency permit procedures and visas. About 30 percent of the legal advice was requested by Indian women proving the effectiveness of the project that aimed to overcome the marginalisation of migrant Punjabi women and intercepting their needs, requirements and their requests for legal residency. The Italian language course had 25 students, eight of which were youths (three of whom were female) under the age of 18 and had arrived from the Punjab about six months previously. Ten other students were Indian workers who had been in Italy for about 10 years but had little knowledge of Italian, and seven women who were housewives. The results obtained produced a formal commitment from central police headquarters in Latina to acknowledge the Punjabi worker’s charges in the cases of exploitation, reduce slavery, the gangmaster system as a precautionary act and the benefits of Italian employment regulations by applying Art. 18 of the Worker’s Statute: the acknowledgement of immediate legal residency status for reasons of justice. Other results were also obtained such as starting a prefect roundtable on the issue and an increase in the capacity of the community, or part of it, to represent themselves, to determine their own social and working conditions, to act independently on the methods of exploitation they submit to, and begin emancipation procedures. The breakthrough conclusions of the project was surprising considering the results obtained such as identifying Indians responsible for illegal, threatening and brokerage practices, and putting them under investigation by law enforcement agencies. It has been accepted as best practice by Eurispes (Institute for Political, Social and Economic studies) and the NRC (National Research Council), two of the most important study and research centres in Italy and the world.

The Indian workers strike in the province of Latina on 18 April 2016: a turning point The procedures for raising awareness and the education of the Indian workers and their families generated a significant series of encounters

224  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano and assemblies held in local temples (Gurudwara) particularly those in Borgo Hermada (Terracina), Sabaudia and Fondi. At the end of these extremely popular religious services, representatives of In Migrazione would speak with the Indians and inform them of their rights, the possibility of taking legal action, the characteristics of their employment contracts (often translated into Punjab and circulated within the community), and any issues provided for by Italian law but never recognised to them. This method of intervention and information in meeting places gave way to a wide distribution of information that would have otherwise been inaccessible. A positive and continuous collaboration with the leaders of the Indian community, a clear explanation of the role of the gangmaster and his relationship with the employer who is in part responsible for labour exploitation, a continuous (often available 24/7) relationship with the head coordinator of In Migrazione, national newspaper stories that gave detailed accounts of the working conditions of the Indian day labourers that were often translated in Punjabi by the mediators and circulated throughout the community, reinforced and persuaded the Indian workers to adhere to the general strike: a courageous sign of moving forward towards emancipation and of cultural and personal identity. The strike held on 18 April 2016 was made possible thanks to the fundamental organisation of Flai CGIL. Its organisational skills, experience and operational and coordination skills resulted in a successful outcome. The strike also acted as an extraordinary and significant initiative in the province of Latina. About two thousand workers (perhaps as much as four thousand) and their families came from all over the province and peacefully demonstrated in Piazza della Libertà in front of the Prefecture (The Central Governmental Institution). The legal execution of the event revealed the Indian worker’s great sense of civic duty and who for the first time spoke publicly and freely expressed the goals of the strike and denounced, often in their own language, the conditions of exploitation to which they have been forced to accept for years. The strike changed the narrative of the province of Latina due to the numbers, relevance and content. It also changed the regime of the experiences of the respective Indian workers now more conscious than ever of the need to strengthen their structural relationships with the labour union and associations and of the possibility of organising union and judiciary disputes through which they can demand their legal rights and wages. It also made them aware of the evidence of their working and living conditions through the advantages of the

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 225 media and political policies that marked a turning point even in the institutions that have virtually ignored the issue, perhaps conditioned by prejudice, and limited their commitment to it. For this reason the Punjabi day labourer’s strike in Latina was a moment of change of extraordinary political and cultural value. The In Migrazione Coop has a lawyer who continues to provide legal and social services in the Pontina countryside and in the residential locations of Indian workers in the province of Latina. Following the strike the number of legal charges presented against Indian gangmasters, Italian employers and human traffickers has increased considerably. In fact, from two or three charges in previous years, there have been 70 charges in the past year and a half.

Conclusion The chapter illustrates the well-structured relationship between countries on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and proves the vastness of the system of international trafficking in human beings and its relationship with the legal and illegal labour markets in the Mediterranean. At the same time, it reveals the various loopholes in the Italian and European institutional systems in handling international trafficking in human beings and labour exploitation, including the illegal practice of gangmasters. For example, the divided nature of the Italian labour market, both legal and illegal, receives the victims of trafficking (women and children included) and by virtue of their conditions of social, cultural and economic vulnerability, it is often the origin of long-term exploitation and in some cases, enslavement. This includes both the south and the north of Italy, albeit with different quantitative and organisational systems. The relationship between labour exploitation and migrants, particularly victims of trafficking, is an important source for collecting sufficient data on the main characteristics of the said relationship that have been briefly reconstructed in this paper. Among the various systems of trafficking in human beings and labour exploitation, the system in the Pontina Marshes was analysed with particular focus on the Indian community and above all the Punjabi Sikh community. Its characteristics facilitate camouflage, and this makes every research study, especially if conducted in the field through an ethnographic approach, particularly valuable. The grey area in this type of trafficking in human beings, an example of the particular methods used by Indian recruiters, their criminal network and their Italian clients (agricultural entrepreneurs), represents a

226  Marco Omizzolo and Pina Sodano strategic form of self-defence for the purpose of reproducing itself and is based on social consensus research carried out in primis on Indian labourers who were trafficked and their families. The interweaving of widespread economic advantages, the relative ease of recruitment of Punjabi victims in the trafficking in human beings, their induced subordination, the instrumental collaboration of a vast network of professionals and entrepreneurs that more or less conscious support this system, along with the simultaneous subordination of the trafficked Indian’s family to brokerage and the financial debt they take on, constitute the core elements of this specific case. It should be kept in mind for the process of any action to oppose it. Its inevitable connection to grievous forms of labour exploitation and illegal recruitment, which exceed the relationship between the employer and employee until they become a binding social model, determines the creation of an illegal and transnational organised system responsible for the systematic violation of human rights that involve new forms of organised crime as well as traditional ones. In addition to this analysis, an observation about the “Bella Farnia” project was added as proof of a concrete project and the social and best practice experiences aimed at obstructing the international trafficking of human beings and the grievous issue of the exploitation of labour. It included the organisational stages and results obtained by the strike held on 18 April 2016 that permitted the Indian community of the Pontina Marshes to press charges against Indian human traffickers and gangmasters, as well as working relationships with Italian employers for the first time.

Notes 1 Punjab is an Indian state (located in the Northeast, Chandigarh is the capital city) with a territorial extension of about 40,000 km. 2 In particular many trafficked Punjabis are housed at the Bella Farnia Mare consortium in Sabaudia (LT) and near Borgo Hermada, a small rural town in the municipality of Terracina (LT). 3 This close collaboration between some of the sponsors/leaders of the organisation and local entrepreneurs is included in the crimes alleged by the antimafia prosecutor in Lecce in the so-called “Sabr Operation”. 4 Each employer provides the sponsor with a sum between EUR 1,000 and EUR 3,000 for each worker to be added or subtracted, depending on the ties the entrepreneurs have with the sponsor: in case of a close link between the parties the numbers are subtracted, if the link is wider, the numbers tend to add up. 5 As of 2005, it is estimated that about 20,000 workers from Punjab have arrived (almost half of them arrived in the previous decade). By multiplying

Trafficking and exploitation of Indian labourers in Italy 227 20,000 by EUR 8,500 (the average value is between EUR 500 and 12,000, which is the disbursement of each employee for expatriation), the figure adds up to EUR 170 million (i.e., 17 million per year). 6 This does not mean that it is a harmless organisation; it strategically takes on a low profile so as not to risk police raids. 7 Attention to the internal and external dynamics of the organisation are determined not only in the Pontina Marshes, but also in places where there is a support structure for the criminal organisation and therefore in transit countries and recruitment areas. 8 In Migrazione presented a dossier called “Sfruttati a tempo indeterminato” (“Open-ended Labour Exploitation”) that described the methods through which exploitation, reduced to slavery and labour brokerage, lends a guise of legality (www.inmigrazione.it).

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13 Skilled migration and the IT sector A gendered analysis Gunjan Sondhi, Parvati Raghuram, Clem Herman and Esther Ruiz Ben Introduction Women make up 48 percent of all international migrants (IOM 2017). In recent years there has been increasing interest in female migration as this proportion increased before falling back. The increase was due to the growth in the number of female labour migrants especially in order to work in so-called “less skilled” feminised sectors such as domestic work and care. On the other hand, highly skilled migrants (HSM) are often assumed to be men. Women also play an important part in skilled migration (Raghuram and Kofman 2004) although their presence in these streams remains less visible. Given the trend in many countries to privilege highly skilled migration in order to address the needs of a knowledge economy it is important to focus on gendered patterns in skilled migration. Between 1990 and 2010, there was a 130 percent increase to 28 million highly skilled migrants residing in OECD countries (Kerr et al. 2016), with nearly 70 percent located within four Anglophone countries: the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Interestingly, in 2010, the stock of highly skilled women migrants was higher than the stock of highly skilled male migrants (Kerr et al.2016). Migration to feminised sectors such as nursing (Percot and Rajan 2007; Walton-Roberts 2012) and teaching account for some of this rebalancing (Ghosh and Chanda 2015. One key source country for highly skilled migrant labour is India (Kerr et al.2016). Significant numbers of Indian women skilled migrants take part in a range of sectors including medicine, nursing and teaching. However, one of the sectors which has become synonymous with India, and Indian skilled migration, is the IT sector where women too are an important, albeit, smaller part of migrant flows. Women in the IT sector have garnered significant attention both in India and when they move transnationally (Amrute 2016; Kou and

230  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. Bailey 2017; Kou et al. 2017; Radhakrishnan 2011; Raghuram 2004). Very often they are seen through their class position – as those who reproduce class privilege and in fact, accentuate it. However, there are three specific aspects in which existing research can be usefully augmented. First, there are few studies which compare the position of men and women within the sector. A gendered analysis has often remained an analysis of women (Kou and Bailey 2017; Poster 2013; Radhakrishnan 2011). Second, none of the existing studies have explored gender patterns and experiences through systematic quantitative data analysis (Amrute 2016; Kou and Bailey 2017; Kou et al. 2017; Radhakrishnan 2011). Rather they have drawn primarily on ethnographic research, which although valuable, requires bolstering with understandings of demographic and socio-economic patterns which quantitative data often provides. Finally, the emphasis of most existing research because of the nature of the fieldwork underpinning it, remains at the level of individual experiences. The positive role that men and women play in the IT sector, i.e. their labour market positions and how these vary by gender, are rarely explored. This chapter aims to address those gaps. This following discussion explores how the experiences of migrant women and men in the IT sector compare with regard to key indicators. The paper draws on insights from an ESRC funded project (2016–18) Gender and skilled migration in the IT sector: a comparative study of India and the UK. The rest of the chapter is organised into three further sections. The first contextualises the data sources available and how the data collected for this project fills a gap in existing datasets. The second section presents some of the findings from the study while the final section explores the implications of these findings for theoretical and policy research.

Situating the data There is very little systematic data available on skilled migrants and that which exists have various limitations. One body of research draws on various global and national population data sources to generate estimates of stocks of highly skilled migrants (Kerr et al. 2016). Such sources include databases such as the OECD International Migration Database (Ghosh and Chanda 2015) or SOPEMI databases (Kofman and Raghuram 2009), many of which collate data from individual censuses or other large data sources. They suffer from incompleteness of data, the differences between census years, definitions and data collection methods and therefore limitations to comparability. Another

Skilled migration and IT sector 231 source is the labour force surveys that are more or less routinely conducted within different countries. They may have sampling bias and moreover, they very often focus on those who are at work. These too may be collated such as in the European Labour Force Survey to provide some information on migration patterns. A third method is more country-specific but also more reliable. It involves entry data for countries and are therefore based on migrant flows rather than stocks. Where they are obtained from immigration departments they are often reliable but in some cases these flows may be based on sampling rather than complete data coverage (e.g. International Passenger Survey in the UK, whereby only 10 percent of the travellers are surveyed). While these types of data are useful, they provide an insufficient picture of HSM as gendered. Part of the issue is that only a handful of countries provide visa entry data disaggregated by gender. Second, the data that is available, such as the OECD data that Ghosh and Chanda (2015) draw upon, is limited in scope of what it can tell about this population. Because of their breadth and coverage they do not offer the demographic details which can help us to understand this group. On the other hand, the ethnographic research that exists has begun with particular theoretical takes. One significant body of work focuses on women managers and leaders across industries. The emphasis here is on women from countries in the Global North in managerial or other leadership roles moving for international assignments to countries of the Global North or the Global South (Adler 1997; Fischlmayr 2002; Harrison and Michailova 2012; Napier and Taylor 2002). Less visible is the experience of such women moving from the Global South to the Global North (Pio and Essers 2014) or within the Global South (c. f. Simy Joy). However, research on Indian migrant women in the IT sector does exist (Amrute 2016; Kou and Bailey 2017; Kou et al. 2017; Radhakrishnan 2011; Raghuram 2004). There are several important ethnographic studies, many of which highlight the importance of globalisation and neo-liberal regimes in how gender and class come together in the IT sector (Amrute 2016; Radhakrishnan 2011). This is an important contribution, but the nature of work and the labour market factors have not yet been fully explored. Given that the basis of these studies remains women’s participation in these labour market sectors, this is somewhat surprising. The rich work on IT workers in India addresses the question of work and of women’s experiences in the labour market (James and Vira 2012; Poster 2013; Radhakrishnan 2011; Upadhya 2016). They have provided detailed analysis of how men and women come into and experience the labour market, but these studies have not really

232  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. extended to the study of migrants. Moreover, they begin with a gender pall – the assumption that the presence of women in the IT sector reflects and reproduces the rather negative gender outlooks for India on other indicators. This is understandable given the negativity that surrounds gender issues in India more generally. However, a more outward looking exploration of women in the IT sector offers a very different picture. India is seen as an outlier in the extent to which women participate in the sector, especially if IT enabled services is included. The Indian tech sector has reached a critical mass with women’s participation at over 30 percent (Raghuram et al. 2017). By comparison, the UK has only 17 percent women as part of its IT/Computing labour force (BCS 2016). For migrant women therefore the world they enter is often more masculine than the one they inhabited at home. Given this, it is important to understand who these women are and where they are placed within the IT labour market. This chapter does just that. This chapter therefore breaks new ground in its presentation of data on Indian HSM men and women working within the tech sector in the UK. The discussion paints a broad demographic picture of highly skilled migrant tech workers from India in the UK, family social class as a factor in shaping who goes abroad, the nature of international assignments, and the perceived impact of undertaking international mobility on career trajectory. In doing so it provides a firm basis on which to build a fuller picture of migrant Indian women and men in the IT sector. It makes three contributions to the current literature: it offers a meso-level analysis, which sits between the large-scale migration data sources and the ethnographic research. Unusually, it provides a comparative picture of both men and women and it also focuses on the labour market characteristics of these men and women in order to situate their lives within, what is an important aspect of the lives of such workers. Empirically, this paper contributes to the growing body of research that makes women visible within the highly skilled labour migration, particularly in male-dominated sectors such as IT. The research presented in this chapter was organised around three variables: gender (male and female), migration status (migrant and non-migrant), and country of fieldwork (the UK and India). This resulted in four cohorts: non-migrant IT workers in (A) the UK and (B) India; (C) Indian migrant women and men in the UK and (D) UK women and men who are visiting India [hereafter A, B, C and D]. India and the UK have been chosen because each has distinctive cultures of gendered entry, participation and progression opportunities for IT workers. The discussion in this chapter draws on one methodology – a bespoke survey, which was administered online, to 415

Skilled migration and IT sector 233 respondents. The sample was comprised of the four cohorts identified above. The sample sizes were the following: Group A (M:F)

Group B (M:F)

Group C (M:F)

Group D (M:F)

Total (M:F)

Actual 122 (65:57) 182 (90:92) 88 (45:43) 25 (15:10) 415 (215:202)

The results presented here focus on Indian men and women migrants in the UK – Group C (n = 88) – who, at the time, were residing in the UK for work, of which 45 were men and 43 women. An individual survey was administered online using a proprietary platform.1 A migrant Indian IT worker was identified as those who completed their secondary and tertiary level of education in India and were living in the UK for minimum six months. It is important to mention that the data collected through individual survey was done so with the aim to be illustrative rather than representative. In addition to the survey, the project also included in-depth interviews to contextualise and explain the data. Overall 90 interviews were conducted with respondents in the UK (50 interviews) and India (40 interviews). Of the 50 UK interviews, 20 interviews were conducted with Indian migrants (men and women), and 30 interviews with British workers. However, due to limitations of space, the analysis of the ethnographic material falls outside the purview of this chapter.

Discussion The discussion is divided into five key sections. The first section presents the individual respondents’ demographic details such as age, education, marital status and children; followed by a review of educational and occupational background of respondents’ mother and father in section two. The following sections highlight how demographic characteristics, particularly marital status and children, are crucial for understanding the gendered patterns across career levels in the IT sector (section three), the nature of international assignments (section four) and their impact on women’s career mobility (section five). Demographics Age India has a relatively large youthful population – nearly two-thirds of India’s population is below the age of 35 years. The largest group of

234  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. women (in the survey sample) is aged between 31 and 35 years (30 percent), and men is between the ages of 26–30 years (31.1 percent). Usually, these tech workers are required to have minimum 2–3 years of experience before they can undertake international assignments (Table 13.1). Hence, it is unsurprising that the 20–25 years cohort is the smallest age cohort in this sample. There is a clear gender difference between the 26–30 years age cohort of men and 31–35 years cohort for women. The lower participation in international travel for women aged between 26 and 30 years could be attributed to childcare responsibilities. Education The focus of this project is on high-skilled tech workers. Therefore it is unsurprising to see that all respondents have at least a bachelor’s degree, in STEM fields such as Engineering, computer science, IT, natural sciences, Electronics and Mathematics. Nearly 40 percent of the sample also indicated that they possess a master’s degree. There is no evident gender difference in this variable. Overall, this finding mirrors the existing statistics of women’s participation in STEM education in India. Over 40 percent of the STEM graduates in India are women. This is in contrast to the already low and diminishing numbers of women enrolled in STEM education in many Western countries (BCS 2016; Raghuram et al. 2017). Marital status A majority of the sample is over the age of 25 years, are married and have children. A minority of women (20 percent) are single. The number of single men is even smaller (8.9 percent), with a majority (75.6 percent) Table 13.1 Age groupings of Indian migrants residing in the UK

20–25 years 26–30 years 31–35 years 36–40 years 41–45 years >= 46 Total Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

M (%)

F (%)

13.3 31.1 22.2 24.4 6.7 2.2 100

11.6 23.3 30.2 23.3 11.6 0 100

Skilled migration and IT sector 235 Table 13.2 Marital status

Single Married Engaged Living with partner In a relationship Widowed Divorced Total

M (%)

F (%)

8.9 75.6 2.2 11.1 2.2 0 0 100

18.6 53.5 4.7 14 4.7 2.3 2.3 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

married, thus highlighting that there are more women than men, who are single, take on international assignment and mobility (Table 13.2). We are unable to say how this impacts the timeline of the single women’s life course, particularly with respect to their age of marriage, and age they have children. Marital status is an important indicator for women in India and other contexts where marriage also reflects a significant change of living arrangements and additions of increased participation in social reproduction such as managing and running of the household and care of elderly members of the household. Hence, women are more likely to take up international assignments outside of their reproductive ages, which in India is very often between 26 and 30. Children Fifty-five percent of the men and 46.5 percent of the female respondents indicated they had children (Table 13.3). Motherhood has been shown to have a detrimental impact on women’s careers (Adda et al. 2017; Herman and Lewis 2012; Kahn et al. 2014) in many parts of the world and India is no exception. Marriage and having children have implications for the ability of women to take on international assignments, and the length of those assignments. Some women are primary carers of children, as well as of other member of the family. Hence, in their decision to take on international assignments, several decisions need to be examined, including education and care of their children. Work on Indian nurses overseas has highlighted the burden that mothers have to manage in caring for the children transnationally (Percot and Rajan 2007). For professional tech workers, if there are no options for children to accompany parents on international assignments, then local care options need to be examined. For many women in India, at

236  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. Table 13.3 Indian migrants residing in the UK with children

Yes No Missing Total

M (%)

F (%)

55.6 35.6 8.9 100

46.5 30.2 23.3 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

times, that responsibility is shared by grandparents of the children. In other cases, albeit a minority, where the mobility is for shorter periods (see section below), and the father is not travelling, the childcare responsibilities are shared between the father and a nanny (or live-in caregiver). If neither of those arrangements can be made, then women with children are unable to take on international assignments. Social class of parents Support and encouragement from family is considered a key factor for the high participation of women and men in the tech sector in India (Table 13.4). The passion for technology is fostered and maintained within this social unit. It is therefore helpful to examine the social class of the respondents’ parents, through indicators such as parents’ education and occupation. Education A body of research on HSM and international student migration (ISM) focuses on the role these migrations play in securing and reproducing social class through cultural and social capital accumulation (Radhakrishnan 2011). However, in order to be able to commence that accumulation, researchers also need to be mindful of existing historical class positionalities (Table 13.5). In this study, the women’s class positions are less heterogeneous than the men’s. This finding echoes other works, such as by Sondhi (2016), Sondhi and King (2017). In particular, more of the women respondents than men, had mothers who were highly educated. Similarly, more women’s fathers have tertiary level education than men. Occupation Looking at the second identifier of class – parent’s occupation – there is no significant correlation between parents’ occupation and gender.

Skilled migration and IT sector 237 Table 13.4 Parents’ university educational attainment

Both parents Mother only Father only Neither Total

M (%)

F (%)

37.78 4.44 15.56 42.22 100

65.12 2.33 4.65 27.91 100

Note: Pearson chi2 (3) = 7.3390, P-value = 0.062 Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Table 13.5 Mothers’ university educational attainment

University–educated Not university–educated Total

M (%)

F (%)

42.22 57.78 100

67.44 32.56 100

Note: Pearson chi2(1) = 5.6408, P-value = 0.018 Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Table 13.6 Parents’ occupation. Occupation

M (%)

F (%)

Both parents working Only father works Only mother works Neither work Total

40 35.56 4.44 20 100

46.51 34.88 2.33 16.28 100

Note: Pearson χ2(3) = 0.6757, p-value = 0.879; (Source: GSM-IT survey 2017)

Forty percent of the men and 47 percent of women have both mothers and fathers working (Table 13.6). Additionally, the data showed that more women’s than men’s fathers work in professional roles or own their own businesses. The fathers of men were distributed more widely across a range of job roles. Hence, men’s class positions are more heterogeneous than women’s. Career level and motivation to work abroad Career Level The image of an Indian coder is often cast against that of the “western” coder. Whereas the Indian coder undertakes the lower-level “drudge”

238  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. Table 13.7 Career level of Indian migrants residing in the UK

Entry Level Individual Contributors Middle Manager Level Senior Management Top Level/C–Suite Total

M (%)

F (%)

6.7 22.2 51.1 17.8 2.2 100

7 32.6 51.2 9.3 0 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

coding providing service and support for existing or legacy systems, the “western” coder is the one who programmes the new and innovate applications (Amrute 2016; Radhakrishnan 2011; Upadhya 2016). An important finding of this survey is that the women in this survey are not the ones doing the “drudge, or lower-end” work (Table 13.7). The younger cohort of this sample does perform that work. However, the majority of the sample of this survey is in their mid-career with over 10 years of experience, holding managerial positions. Hence, the breakdown of this sample also highlights the shifting roles of women and men as the Indian tech industry matures overtime. This crucial finding suggests the need to think differently about women’s and men’s experiences in the Indian tech sector. Motivation to work abroad The factors that influenced respondents’ decision to undertake international mobility were divided into two key categories: professional and personal. The top three professional factors cited by both men and women were career progression, gaining and improving managerial skills, and improving technical skills. This lack of gender difference is reflective of gender equality in Indian’s women’s and men’s focus and ambition regarding their careers. Amongst the personal factors there were two key differences (Table 13.8). First, for men, partners/spouses were a key factor in the decision to move abroad (73 percent of male respondents strongly agreed or agreed, compared to less than 60 percent of the women respondents). The role of spouse in this decision can be read as involved in the decision to undertake the international opportunity either in the capacity of a potential “trailing spouse”, “left-behind” or also involved in undertaking their respective international assignment. This is crucial

Skilled migration and IT sector 239 Table 13.8 Professional motivations to work abroad Professional factors

M (%)

F (%)

Gain/improve managerial skills Career progression Global exposure Improve technical skills Establish networks

80.00 73.33 66.67 86.67 62.22

79.07 76.74 67.44 79.07 72.09

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Table 13.9 Personal motivations to work abroad Personal factors

M (%)

F (%)

Partner/spouse Caring for elderly family members Better childcare Travel/adventure

73.33 55.56 53.33 66.67

58.14 46.51 58.14 76.74

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

since for the majority of respondents (both men and women), their spouses were employed in either a different company or a different industry. The interviews mirrored this sentiment, in which respondents spoke of the discussions men had with their partners in those cases where their partner’s career might be disrupted. This discussion also occurred in cases where women were the primary movers. And in some cases, respondents shared that their husbands were happy to take leave of absence from work for a few months to accompany them abroad. Undertaking a period of work abroad, which may impact the other partner’s career, is a key factor in the decision-making. A key finding is that men are also taking on the role of “trailing spouses” – following their partners to the location of their international assignments. The IT sector provides opportunities for women to be the primary international movers with husbands as the followers. A noticeable gender difference in personal motivations is the opportunity to travel for women in their decision to take international assignment (over 75 percent of women respondents strongly agreed or agreed, compared to approximately 65 percent of the men). International work travel affords people, particularly women, with opportunities to travel and explore new places (Table 13.9). International assignments mean that people can navigate the various visa and border control regimes through their organisations rather than individually. Getting a tourist permit for

240  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. certain countries can be an arduous and complex undertaking, requiring a financial investment with no guarantee of success. Having a work permit minimises the bureaucracy around receiving permission to enter a country. It also gives the individual more time to explore each place when compared to those who are travelling on a tourist visa with a time limitation. Lastly, for women, travelling alone in European or North American contexts is perceived to be safer than doing so in India. Nature of international assignments Type of mobility Of this sample subset (men and women migrants working in the UK), all respondents have a history of undertaking prior mobility for work – either national or international (Table 13.10). The largest group had undertaken international mobility previously in their role, while a minority had undertaken only national (within Indian) mobility for work. It is evident that there is experience and knowledge of how to work in different settings outside of the main office. Job role As section three above hinted, the nature of work undertaken by Indian tech workers on international assignments is now more varied than existing research highlights (James and Vira 2012; Radhakrishnan 2011). The respondents indicated that their work expands across several of the broad categories mentioned in Table 13.11. While majority of the work is in service and support (38.7 percent) of existing systems, there is also growing work in consulting (30.7 percent), in advising clients on what potential solutions exist to resolve their digital and technical needs. There is also an increasing group working on building new solutions – applications (18.2 percent) to meet the Table 13.10 Previous migration experience  

M (%)

F (%)

National International Both Total

22.2 44.4 33.3 100

16.3 48.8 34.9 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Skilled migration and IT sector 241 Table 13.11 Job roles on international assignment

IT Consulting Application Service & Support Data Service Testing Sales Total

M (%)

F (%)

40 13.3 31.1 2.2 11.1 2.2 100

20.9 23.3 46.5 2.3 7 – 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

needs of the clients. Hence, no longer is the Indian tech industry the one that a consultant outsources to. Instead, all the functions – from the consulting to application production, to service and support have been brought in-house under one umbrella of India’s major MNCs. There is a gender difference in the type of work women and men are conducting. For women the most important single role is providing service and support (46.5 percent) while men were primarily involved in consulting (40.0 percent), which requires more client interaction roles. This gendered division of labour in IT mirrors other research (Patel and Parmentier 2005) which indicates women are more likely to be in customer service and support roles. However, the higher percentage of women in technical roles in Table 13.11 (Application development) is surprising and bucks the trend found in most Western countries. Purpose of international assignments The top three types of work undertaken while on international assignments were short-term projects, long-term projects and client meeting/business development. Short-term and long-term projects implies either coding or support/service type work, and is dominated by women as indicated in the section above. Nearly 50 percent of women respondents reported that they travelled for short or long-term assignments (Table 13.12). Mirroring the gendered nature of the type of work revealed stated earlier, most men said that their primary reason for travel was short-term travel and business development. Duration of international assignments Each type of work undertaken during international assignments is associated with particular durations of time abroad. With a few exceptions

242  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. Table 13.12 Most common purpose for travel for work

Client meeting Business development Short–term projects Long–term projects Receiving training Provide training For better opportunities Missing Total

M (%)

F (%)

13.3 20 20 13.3 4.4 0 0 28.9 100

16.3 7 25.6 23.3 0 9.3 2.3 16.3 100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Table 13.13 Duration of international assignment for women Women

15 days >1 month >3 months >6 months Missing Total to 1 to 3 to 6 months to 1 year month months

  Client meeting Business development Short–term projects Long–term projects Receiving training Provide training

% 25.6 9.3

% 7 14

% 4.7 2.3

% 0 2.3

% 62.8 72.1

% 100 100

14

11.6

7

7

60.5

100

9.3

11.6

2.3

2.3

74.4

100

9.3

0

2.3

0

88.4

100

11.6

2.3

0

72.1

100

14

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

of men, all respondents undertook international mobility for duration of up to a maximum of one year (Table 13.13). One reason for this is that the length of each project is limited; the other is limitations of period of stay as imposed by the visa regimes of the destination country, in this case the UK. However, this does not mean that the person leaves at the end of each assignment. Some people are likely to be moved to a new project as one comes to completion, which may then require them to extend their existing permit, or apply for a new one. However, it is unlikely that employees would stay for more than three years (Table 13.14). This again is undoubtedly influenced by UK migration policies.

Skilled migration and IT sector 243 Table 13.14 Duration of international assignment for men Men

15 days >1 month >3 months >6 months >1 year Missing Total to 1 to 3 to 6 to 1 year to month months months 3 years

  Client meeting Business development Short–term projects Long–term projects Receiving training Provide training

% 33.3

% 2.2

% 2.2

% 0

% 0

% 62.2

% 100

17.8

8.9

8.9

0

2.2

62.2

100

15.6

13.6

6.7

4.4

0

60

100

8

11.1

6.3

6.7

8.9

66.7

100

4.4

2.2

4.4

4.4

0

88.4

100

11.1

4.4

2.2

2.2

0

80

100

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Table 13.15 Impact of international mobility on professional and personal development  

M (%)

F (%)

Managerial skills development Technical skills development Global exposure Career progression Establishing networks Maintaining relationship with partners Caring for children Caring for ageing family members

46.67 51.11 44.44 48.89 42.22 42.22 35.56 37.78

60.00 53.33 46.67 53.33 53.33 42.22 28.89 40.00

Source: GSM-IT survey 2017

Impact of international mobility Given the nature of transnational IT work provided by Indian companies, there has been a tendency to focus on how such work benefits the client firms. There has been little exploration of the role that IT plays in individual careers (Table 13.15). This project shows that for many migrant workers, men and women, international travel was an important means by which to learn and expand their skills: managerial, technical and networking. Mirroring

244  Gunjan Sondhi, et al. the interviews, the data also showed that international mobility also played a part in redefining their roles within the family which they found useful in navigating their life.

Conclusion This chapter has drawn on questionnaire data, adding to current literature on migrant women in the IT sector which has primarily been based on ethnographic work. In doing so it offers the ability to trace patterns of gendered differences between migrant women and men in the IT sector for the first time. The discussion on highly skilled mobility in this chapter is particularly unique in three ways. First, it gives meso-level insight on various components of the migration process that are gendered such as type of international work, motivations to work abroad and perceived impact on the career mobility of the respondents. Second, it provides a comparison between women and men to shows us where gender does not matter or where it is trumped by other factors. Through the meso-level comparative analysis, this discussion provides alternative narratives to open the discussion to more productive engagements within the body of work on gender and labour migration. So where does gender matter? Analysis of the data shows some important demographic differences between women and men. First, if class is understood as reproduction of educational advantage then there are clear differences between migrant women and men. Migrant women are more likely to have mothers who are university educated and work outside of the home in professional roles. This, taken in conjunction with the spouse as a factor in decision to undertake international assignments, makes family, a key site for inherited support including in decision-making which supports migration and career mobility. Employing a life-course lens, another demographic difference involves the age groups of migrants with women migrants more likely to be on either side of the reproductive age of 26–30, while that is the most important age group for men. This suggests the importance of biological reproduction in affecting migration prospects for women, rather than men. A second notable difference relates to work trajectories. Here, one significant difference is in the job roles that women and men take up which itself influences the migration process and the type of work and length of assignment which migrants take up. This component is, however, influenced not only by the client and service provider, but

Skilled migration and IT sector 245 also by the visa processes and requirements that control the length of time the work can be conducted. Lastly, the discussion also suggests the common experiences of women and men in the workplace, which relate to the changing nature of work conducted by Indian tech companies and the workers within. Our study makes visible the career progression and the industry maturation that is occurring with the tech sector in India. The international assignments that are being undertaken are no longer focused only on “grunt work” such as coding, but also show the shift into sectors that require greater creativity and complex problem solving. In this, clear gender differences emerge. However, the full service Indian tech multi-national corporations appear to allocate men to more client and business development activities and women to the “traditional” tech work. More work needs to be done to explore the gendered nature of this division of labour.

Acknowledgements This research project was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council UK.

Note 1 The survey was administered through the international survey firm IMRB Kantar. Respondents were recruited through panels by IMRB Kantar.

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14 “Being Indian” in the city of Oxford Shahana Purveen

Introduction India is a land of immense socio-cultural diversity; the variety of religions and sects, tribes and castes, family patterns and kinship systems, language and dialects, food systems and dietary practices, personal attires and dress styles, festival and feasts, music and dance, and customs and traditions has always attracted anthropologists and sociologists to India for centuries. According to Census of India (2011), the people of India constitute 8,635 communities across 6 million villages and 7,742 towns in 640 districts of the 29 states and seven union territories of India. The vibrant cultural patterns have created diversity among Indian communities in India as well as abroad. In India, inter-state migration from less-developed region to the more developed region has resulted in clashes between the migrants and the indigenous population. Although, Article 19(1)(e) in the Constitution of India grants its citizens to reside and settle in any part of Indian territory (Pandey 2007). Inter-state migration gives birth to subjects related to cultural identity and job opportunities between local population and migrants (Katzenstein et al. 1998). In occasions, local people feel that the presence of migrants may lead to loss of cultural, ethnic identity and economic opportunity and thereby generate social tension between groups. Despite the constitutional rights, migrant workers are more vulnerable in the state they migrated. To illustrate, recent incidents of attack on Uttar Pradesh migrant in Mumbai, Bihar migrants in Mumbai and Jharkhand, similarly, Bengali migrants were attacked in Assam and anti-migrant movement in Hyderabad against people of the same state resulted bifurcation of the state. In India, internal migrant workers were brutally attacked despite constitutional safeguard and legislation protection. In the similar way,

250  Shahana Purveen growing evidences indicated that Indians were faced same issues and prejudices in foreign countries by the citizens. It is widely assumed that Indian diaspora has the feeling of Indianness in foreign lands. However, the reality is different. Indian diaspora carries their internal division across the international boarder as well and create segregated diasporic identity such as Hindu diaspora, Muslim diaspora, Tamil diaspora, North Indian diaspora, Jain diaspora, Punjabi diaspora, etc. In fact, among diaspora practicing same religion does not make a homogenous community, as every religious section significantly differ in denominational, sectarian and cultural diversities. For instance, in Islam, there are unlike interpretations believed by different groups of Muslims: ‘the Traditionalists, the TablighJamaat, the Wahhabi Sunnis, the Modernists, and the Shias’ (Mustapha 1997: 253). Seventeen organisations of Muslims in Trinidad experienced more conflict and tension among themselves than with other religious denominations in their society (ibid). Likewise, based on caste hierarchy, Hindus in Trinidad formed segregated groups among themselves (Vertovec 1992). Caste, religion and language or region of origin are the three modes of self-identification used by Indian diaspora (Bhat 2000). Parekh (1994) discussed that caste and religion have lost much of its traditional importance among the early indentured immigrants of the old diaspora. Parekh further urged that the sense of hierarchy is weakened among this diaspora by absorption them into the plantation barracks. Therefore, now it is language or regional identity on which they are organised. With this background, present paper is an attempt to answer following two research questions 1) to know how Indians are connecting with other Indians living in Oxford and 2) to see how far their caste, religion, language and regional identities are influencing them while maintaining relation with fellow Indians. The paper is divided into four broad sections; first section, methodology: cover challenges faced in the fieldwork and the process of convincing the restaurant owner participated in this study. In section 2, it gives the idea of formation of restaurant; profile of employers and employees and their assimilation with each other. Section 3 records the different experiences of the migrants embedded in their everyday work and life in the city being Indian. The last section is the conclusion, which summarises the paper.

Methodology Ethnographic research usually requires long period of time as part of community or in a company or a group (Bryman, 2016). Due to the time

“Being Indian” in the city of Oxford 251 constrain, it was not possible to conduct a full-fledged ethnographic research. However, it may be possible to carry out a kind of microethnography (Wolcott 1990b cited in Bryman 2016: 433). DeSoucey (2010) conducted micro-ethnographic research and collected data for the period of four months as a non-participant observer (ibid.). Therefore, considering the feasibility, micro-ethnographic approach has been used to find answers for the framed two research questions along with in-depth interview and observation as methods for data collections. Qualitative analysis was the main method for analysing the experiences of interviewee. Therefore, micro-ethnographic approach has used to complete the research. The research was initiated during the time of my exchange programme (2014–2015) in University of Oxford and fieldwork was done in the months of May and July 2015. From time to time, various studies have been done on heterogeneous Indian diaspora in different cities of Britain. Oxford is one of the famous cities of Britain where several diverse people migrate. The 2011 Census showed that 28 percent of Oxford’s population was born outside the UK, and the majority of them are from Poland, the US Germany, India and Pakistan (Census, 2011). Among these countries, as reported in Labour Market Statistics 2011, 2,184 Indian migrants are living in Oxford and quite visible in various spaces of the city. Among Indian migrants, many of them are the students and staff associated with the university. Besides, migrants are also employed in different sectors like tourism, construction and hospitality.1 There are notable studies (For example, Hookoomsing 2003; Jayaram 2000; Vertovec 2000) on Indian diaspora, but little research was conducted on Indian diaspora in Oxford. Perhaps one reason for this is, in Oxford, Indians are not a large part of the population as compared with their presence in other big cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, etc. Although Indian diaspora in Oxford is small on the global scene, however, the issues of diversity and multiple identities are amply illustrated by this study. For the purpose of this research, the researcher purposively selected one restaurant, situated in the central part of the Oxford city. The restaurant is quite popular among foreigners and the Indian community, especially among the students. Initially, by having lunch and dinner at the restaurant along with friends, the researcher developed a rapport, building for fieldwork. However, to conduct research, formal permission is required to attain the objectives of this research. When approached, after considering the request, permission was granted by the restaurant receptionist. In fact, this restaurant was earlier approached for undertaking research by students from Said Business

252  Shahana Purveen School, University of Oxford. Finally, full access to restaurant workers was allowed to collect the data during working hours to the researcher. In the first meeting, the proprietor of the restaurant introduced the staff members and some regular Tamil customers to the researcher with whom she shared terms like “family”. To progress the fieldwork, regularly during lunch time the researcher visited the restaurant and became familiar with the staff members. Gradually, from morning to evening in intervals, data was gathered. Subsequently, it was easy to observe their everyday lives along with customers.

Findings In the following section, the key empirical findings of the study have been presented thematically.

Profile of the restaurant The restaurant is situated in the central part of the city. The restaurant’s ambience is simple but authentic and sumptuous south Indian food is served, from filter coffee to rasam, from masala dosa to lachhaparatha, from lemon rice to tamarind rice along with North Indian Food Tadka – palakpaneer and chicken masala for the taste buds of North Indian customers. It is the only restaurant where Tamil cuisines in its authentic form are served; hence this place is highly preferred among South Indian customers. The restaurant has seven employees. One chef (specialisation in all kinds of cuisines including Muglai cuisine, Chinese dishes, both North and South Indian food varieties), two waiters and two cleaners (one cleans the front part of the restaurant and the other the inside the restaurant) and two part-time employers. The majority of them are from Tamil Nadu, India. Two employees – one male employee from the Philippines and another female employee from Slovakia – do not know either Tamil or English. Salary is paid in monthly and per hour instalments to full-time and part-time employees respectively. The restaurant runs smoothly on a partnership deed between two partners: one male and the other female. Both employers and employees are first generation migrants in their family. They all strongly maintain ‘social formation of spanning borders’ (Vertovec 1999: 449) by contacting relatives and friends back home almost every week and sometimes every day. Before joining this restaurant, the chef of the restaurant worked in a king’s house as chef at Dubai. One of the cleaners worked for 20 years as a driver in Kuwait. Except the male owner, all

“Being Indian” in the city of Oxford 253 others live in Oxford without their family members. Everyone has one day off per week. The restaurant is managed by, and all employees are under the supervision of, a female employer (proprietor). Employees call her Chechi2 (sic) and share a close bond with each other. In the first floor of the restaurant, free accommodation is provided to the employees, where the female proprietor also stays. Irrespective of restaurant hierarchy, at lunch time they all sit together in a table and take a meal. During this time, if a customer comes, among themselves any one will serve the customer. In the restaurant there is no different treatment or hierarchy between employer and employees, as noted in the field observation by the researcher. This finding is further strengthened by the female proprietor’s words:‘we all work as a team and do not believe in professional hierarchy’.

Reconstruction of space: from eating-joint to Ethnoburb Indian cuisine has had an impact on British cuisine. Indeed, chicken tikka masala remains their most popular Indian dish. Almost all supermarkets in Oxford have Indian cookery, ingredients and ready-made meals. Along with Indian food, Bollywood actors like Dev Patel, Sharukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai also become wellknown faces in Britain and specifically among the Oxford university students. Twice a year, Indian students organise “Bollywood Bop”, and large number of students (Non-Indian3 and Indian, includes Tamil, Panjabi, Bengali, etc.) come to try their dance moves on Bollywood songs. The Bollywood Bop provides a platform for a ‘mode of cultural reproduction’ (Vertovec 1999: 451) in Oxford through music, especially for transnational youth. Sometimes the restaurant gets the opportunity to serve food during Bollywood Bop. The restaurant primarily provides Indian food to the Indian community and the lovers of Indian food around the world. However, it has converted to an Ethnoburb for the Tamil community in Oxford. Moreover, the restaurant premise acted as a beginning point to discuss and to initiate the Oxford Tamil Society. It has become the meeting point for all Tamilians to come closer over food and discuss daily happenings in their life. Over time, the restaurant proprietor realised a separate organisation from the Oxford India Society (OIS) for the people from the state of Tamil Nadu. The owner of the restaurant explained that OIS is for North Indians, who speak the Hindi language and the people who are from a more privileged class. The society is supposed to serve all Indians living in Oxford but failed to fulfil

254  Shahana Purveen everyone’s demand and its own goals. It is governed by North Indians. Therefore, we (the people of Tamil Nadu) made a separate organisation with the name Oxford Tamil Society to accomplish our people’s needs. The step to form the separate Society for Tamilians shows that it creates a singular identity that is contrary to a pan-Indian identity. Recently, the restaurant has undergone significant changes by involving and inviting customers from different ethnic backgrounds like non-Indian and non-Tamilian customers for the functions of the Society. Therefore, it has evolved into a sociospheres of community life. Further, in the restaurant customer diversity is also evident. Food served with a homey taste with additional student discounts are the special attraction for Indian students and for non-Indians, including university professors. It is an inevitable feature to avoid the presence of Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi customers. Many times, the restaurant was booked for birthday parties, Christmas parties and also for Diwali and Eid celebrations that make it a melting point for all cultural expressions. The restaurant space is also an Ethnoburb in terms of its staff. Although staff members follow different religions, geographically most of them are from same state, Tamil Nadu. Due to different religious practices, they celebrate all festivals and also make “Rangoli”4 (sic) on some occasions. As mentioned earlier, two employees have different national identities and do not have a common language to interact. But, during the day they are together and are able to understand instructions given by employers, customers and co-employees. Mujeeb, one of the employees noted: ‘we communicate with them through body language’.

Oxford India Society (OIS) OIS was established in 2003 to celebrate the diverse culture of India and to bring together all Indians at one platform. The OIS logo is inspired by the same elegant timelessness found in all things associated with the University of Oxford, including the square blue logos of the university and departments. The logo is adorned in Oxford Blue and features the Ashok Chakra pillared atop the tricolour OIS at the centre. The society has a mission to act as a bridge between Oxford and India, which is symbolised by the silhouette of the Taj Mahal and Oxford skyline in the logo. The membership is open to Indian students, people of Indian origin, as well as for non-Indians as OIS believes in the idea of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (“global oneness”). The activities involve promoting Indian culture, music, food

“Being Indian” in the city of Oxford 255 and contemporary intellectualism thought through organising a range of talks, debates and seminars. The society also holds events with joint efforts of other Oxford Societies to raise funds for various charitable institutions, notably “Asha for Education”, “Bhopal Medical Appeal”, “Give India” and “Jamghat”. Different societies and colleges of the University of Oxford organise bops, but Bollywood Bop is one of the well-known social events. The society’s social engagements also extend to topical events like Republic Day and Independence Day celebration. During special occasions like seminars and events, OIS invites dignitaries from India. In theory, the ideology of OIS is inclusive but in practice it is contradictory. Loden (1996) distinguishes between primary and secondary dimensions of diversity. Primary dimensions cover such core characteristics as race, age, gender and ethnicity that we cannot change and are more important to our construction of self. Secondary dimensions such as religion, language, education and income are viewed as more changeable and less influential to our self-identity. The segregation based on the “secondary dimension of diversity” can be seen in OIS. It visibly bifurcates members/students on the lines of class, region and education. Abdul, an employee of the restaurant in his late thirties, indicated about the social discrimination in OIS: Oxford Indian society celebrates festivals, but they never invite us. Recently I saw on Facebook page they celebrated Holi, but they did not inform us. They came and sit in the restaurant and discus all plans. Even they asked to serve the food in the function, but they never invited us to the festivity. They may feel that we are not educated and eligible to sit with them. There is no doubt that OIS is doing tremendous work to celebrate the diverse culture of India. However, by not assimilating certain classes of people into the society, they are creating a new identity of India in relation to “Indianness to otherness”.

Indian diaspora and trajectories of diversity Diversity among Indian diaspora has many dimensions. The first dimension is based on the initial immigration period of the Indians abroad (that is pre-colonial, colonial or post-independence) and the nature of their immigration (the indentured labour system or free migration). Second, it is based on “the old diaspora” (five or more generations old) and “the new diaspora” (which is hardly three generations old)

256  Shahana Purveen (Jayaram 1987). Lastly, the dimension is based on different facets of Indians, such as caste, religion, language and region, dietary habits and social class. In the restaurant, first generation migrants from Tamil Nadu are working. Ethnic identities are firmly affiliated with Tamils, so they are very close to their language and cultural practices. They too have a strong sense of belonging with their land of birth/origin and people. David (1999) found in his study that the third generation of Sindhis in Malaysia has replaced Sindhi language with English even for use within the home setting. But first generation Bihari migrants are more connected with their language. Similarly, findings indicated that Tamils are strongly associated and affectionate with their language, as they are first generation migrants in Oxford. In spite of hailing from a state (Tamil Nadu) they are not homogenous; in terms of dialect and religious practices, diversity can be observed within themselves. Basically, the Tamil language is spoken with different native slangs, like Kongu slang in west Tamil Nadu. Therefore it is heterogeneous. This slang differentiation reflects the dialectal variations of the different parts of Tamil Nadu. In due course, through a process of koineisation of different dialects, a new variant of Tamil was evolved as a reasonable homogeneous lingua franca in the restaurant. This variant can be called “Oxford Tamil” or “Restaurant Tamil”. Restaurant members developed a new version of English known as “Oxford English” to converse with North Indian and Non-Indian customers. The staff of the restaurant is heterogeneous in term of religious practices. Pongal,5a secular Tamil festival, is also celebrated along with religious festivals. A Pongal dish (prepared with rich, milk and jiggery) is cooked as a part of the Pongal festivities. Rama, another employee of the restaurant, acknowledges that it is the festival of Tamil people and we do not invite North Indian and even Keralites. They celebrate their festival separately and we celebrate ours separately. We do not mingle with them and they do the same. Class diversity is also a prominent feature among Indian diaspora. Financially and educationally better off migrants would not prefer to go along with middle class migrants and try to maintain the status quo. Working class migrants are assimilated into the life of upper class migrants on the of basis their requirements and needs. To some extent, class hierarchy is visible between Indian customers and the restaurant staff. On house warmings, birthday parties and festival celebrations,

“Being Indian” in the city of Oxford 257 restaurant staff were only allowed to serve the food, otherwise, they are restricted to take part in their social gathering. In fact, during celebrations organised at community centres both the groups avoid coming together. Even the behaviour of Indian customers is not pleasant with the staff. Indian customers complain about everything. Raji, the female owner of the restaurant shared that Indian customers call us so badly to place the orders, sometimes even they point out finger and ask to bring water. Last year a group of North Indians customers came here, they thought we are like their servants and treated us as slaves only. One day I got so annoyed with them and told, see this is not India, it is UK. So, you all should behave accordingly. I firmly believe that white customers are better than Indian customers. White customers always praise our food and give excellent feedback. So, it is very apparent that behaving and treating restaurant staff based on their social-economic status is significantly practised among Indian diaspora migrants.

Conclusions Unity in diversity is the core idea of India, but sadly, in the homeland, enrooted religious belief led to casteism or sections and stratified Indians. Astonishingly, diversity is perceived as superiority over others and this practice is carry forwarded by Indians irrespective of which country they live. The ethnographic illustration in the chapter demonstrates the life of migrants in Oxford by being Indian and heterogeneity within Indian diaspora. The narrations obtained from in-depth interviews tried to represent the layers of prejudices and hidden tussles within the Indian community. Findings from this research also acknowledged the similar pattern among Indians in Oxford. Additionally, from the above discussion it appears that antagonism exists on both sides. The people from all sects, religions, regions and languages want to maintain their identity, and in this process, they want to avoid mingling with other sections in certain spheres of life. The desire to maintain a pure identity across international borders enables Indian diaspora migrants to creates pan-Indianness. OIS is functioning for the welfare and protection of Indians in Oxford, but unfortunately, discrimination among society members based on their secondary dimensions of diversity is apparent. Finally, understanding and equally respecting cultural

258  Shahana Purveen diversity could be a step forward to form more Indianness within the diaspora. At the same time, this progress must begin from our homeland by equally treating fellow countrymen fairly. Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed. (Mary Parker Follet 1918: 39)

Notes www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decC/Migration.htm on 1/03/2015. 1 2 “Elder sister” in the Malayalam language. 3 The terms “non-Indian”, “foreigners” and “white people” are interchangeably used for the purpose of this chapter. 4 It is an Indian art. Usually people make it on the floor on occasions like festivals and weddings. 5 Pongal is a festival of the harvest in which people thank the God of Sun for a good harvest. The festival continues for four days.

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“Being Indian” in the city of Oxford 259 Katzenstein, Mary Fainod, Udai Singh Mehta and Usha Thakkar. 1998. ‘The Rebirth of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra: The Symbiosis of Discursive and Institutional Power’, in Ammrita Basu and Atul Kohli (eds), Community Conflict and the State in India, pp. 215–238. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Loden, M. 1996. Implementing Diversity. Chicago: Irwin. Mustapha, Nasser. 1997. ‘The Influence of Indian Islam on Fundamentalist Trends in Trinidad and Tobago’, Sociological Bulletin, 46(2): 245–265. Pandey, J.N. 2007. Constitutional Law of India. Allahabad: Central Law Agency. Parekh, B. 2010. ‘Some Reflections on the Hindu Diaspora’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 20(4): 603–620. Vertovec, Steven. 1992. Hindu Trinidad Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Change. London: Macmillan. Vertovec, Steven. 1999. ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationlism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2): 447–462. Vertovec, Steven. 2000. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London and New York: Routledge.

15 Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK Tilotama Pradhan

Introduction Reflecting on the conceptual framework of structuration, the present chapter reviews a constellation of mutually enforcing circumstances ranging from macro- through mezzo-level societal conditions, to micro-individual characteristics of human actors, which shape Indian students’ decisions about whether and where to travel for educational purposes. In the section on macro-level circumstances shaping this movement, I consider globalisation or the growing civic interconnectedness of the world, including internationalisation of education. This is followed by a discussion of mezzo-level conditions covering bilateral political agreements between sending receiving countries, regarding migrants’ rights of entry, social entitlements, interpersonal and institutional information and support networks. The last section of the chapter is devoted to migrant students’ and their families’ assessment of the micro-level situation, aspirations and decisions. Macro-level factors Globalisation is a social phenomenon that has an impact not only on world affairs but other facets of human development, like educational institutions. Inspired by Marijik van der Wende’s (Eggins, 2003) rationale for globalisation that resonates in higher education, identifies three different conditions in which globalisation has stimulated restructuration in higher education sector. First, the economic rationale which beds on the foundation of financial and commercial issues. Secondly, the cultural rationale, the consciousness among educational institutions to become a global platform and open their gates to a wider and diverse population of students. Third, the political rationale, which can be identified as the arrangement and agreement

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 261 in the form of country-level visa agreement among nations that let people travel and enter a country for education (Zammuto, 2008). In addition to this, the latest transport and communication amenities that enable people to transcend space with ease. According to Gribble (2008), the reduction in the cost of transportation and advances in communication technology have also contributed towards the accessibility of studying abroad. Without these development and alterations, travelling abroad for education would not have been such a popular phenomenon. In a wider understanding, the macro-level influences migration decisions. Orin other words individuals migrate as a result of factors that are beyond their control (Wolfel, 2002). In the case of Indian students’, academics, funding opportunities and career prospects are the motivations stimulated by the macro-level factors. It is important to state here that the choice for an Indian student to study abroad is available because of the internationalisation of education, which paved the way for education-related migration. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of education-related migration has existed for many years. The use of international language facilitated academic mobility in the ancient world, with records of international scholars from as early as 600 bc, existing across India, China, Persia, Greece, Rome and Western Europe (Brickman, 1961) – universities, then, were used to having students from all over Europe. Although this history of educational travel has a long past, it has assumed global characteristics and with internationalisation of education it has turned into a mass phenomenon. The concept of internationalisation of higher education as defined by Knight (2008) is the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, function or delivery of postsecondary education Building on Knight’s (2011) manifestation of internationalisation of education, Yeravdekar (2012) analyses four levels that denote the distinctive feature of cross-broader education. The first level is student mobility, and she refers to this as the earliest form of the cross-broader education, which occurs due to various factors: 1) the strength and status of the education system in the home country – they may not be able to accommodate the growing student population; 2) the quality of the educational institutions might be inquestion; 3) the students might be guided by their aspirations to add a foreign education degree to their profile for better career opportunities. The second level is on the basis of the programmes available like twining programmes, semesters abroad, joint research programmes and summer schools. The third level is characterised by the franchise of universities in various

262  Tilotama Pradhan locations and, lastly, the inception of education hubs (Yeravdekar and Tiwari, 2014). The present chapter will focus only on the first stage of the manifestation of internationalisation, which is the mobility of students across countries to acquire higher education and the mechanisms that initiate this mobility. The United Kingdom has always been the traditional choice for higher education; the UK has been attracting students from around the globe for decades (Lee & Tan, 1984). This is because many UK universities have an international reputation for the quality of their programmes. UK universities enjoy a high-profile position in the world of international research, with those who are researching and publishing in their specialist fields being therefore well-known internationally. British universities also have a long history compared to many. They have built up strong relationships with national governments, with schools, colleges and universities in many countries, and particularly with those countries that are a part of the Commonwealth. Indisputably, the United Kingdom is one of the popular choices for higher education for international students, especially for Indian students, who make up the second largest number of international students in the UK after Chinese students (Zheng, 2014) Indian students go abroad because of the limitations of the Indian universities at an undergraduate, master’s or doctoral level (see Choudaha, 2011; Baas, 2010; Mukherjee, 2010). The programmes offered by UK universities include combinations of modules from diverse theoretical backgrounds especially for social sciences, and they provide opportunities for original and innovative research. Such dimensions have made Indian students aware of the shortcomings of the Indian educational system. There is a need for Indian universities to reform and in certain ways modernise in order to regulate the flow of students travelling abroad for higher education. Being able to successfully secure funding is also an important contributing factor in influencing the Indian student’s movement to the UK. Historically, there were few students who came on government scholarships, but there were some parents who sent their children to study at a great cost and adversity (Visram, 2002). It was in the year 1867 that the Indian Government introduced scholarships for Indians to study in Britain. After the success of the scholar Satyendranath Tagore,1 there were two scholarships awarded annually from Indian universities, with scholars given £200 a year for fees and expenses. Later, in 1904, the Government introduced scholarships for £150 for technical subjects (Mukherjee, 2010).

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 263 The introduction of scholarships eased the passage of Indians to study in Britain. Over the years there have been a number of scholarships available for Indian students to pursue, including some high prestige Commonwealth scholarships – Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarships, Felix Scholarships, Goa Educational Trust Scholarships, Inlaks scholarships and Rhodes Scholarships to name few. There are also numbers of specific funding, fee waiver and partial funding only for Indian students offered by various UK universities. However, the eligibility to apply for these scholarships depends on the course, duration of the course and the level of study. Most of them are available for a master’s or doctoral degrees. Nonetheless, it would be oblivious to assume that Indian students today come to UK universities only on the basis of the scholarships/funding offered to them. It is essential to bear in mind that a large number of students attend these universities as self-funded students as well. The prospect of acquiring good jobs also serves as one of the contributing factors for Indian students to choose the UK. However, this factor seems to be most prominent among masters’ students. I consider two reasons why this is such a pressing issue amongst this group of students. The first reason is, some jobs require a level of expertise or knowledge that is not possible to acquire from an undergraduate degree, and insist on master’s or in some cases doctoral degree completion as an entry requirement. First, having a master’s on the curriculum vitae can improve job prospects substantially and give students leverage in a competitive job market. Second, a master’s programme in the UK is just one year, unlike in India, which is two years. Due to the short duration of the course, the students are ready to enter the job market sooner than they would have if they had completed their master’s degree in India. Hence, these students utilise the few months they have left on their student visa after completing their studies to look for jobs (even on a part-time basis), but in most of the cases the outcome is disappointing, with these students eventually returning back to India. Mezzo-level factors Political scientist Faist (1997, 2000) emphasises that the mezzo-level links the individual migration decision model to the macro structural model. This level is in between the macro- and micro-levels and can be utilised to explain the enabling and perpetuating factors in migration. In the case of Indian students in the UK, the mezzo-level factors I consider are 1) Tier 4 (student visa) and border entry requirements,

264  Tilotama Pradhan and 2) network in the country of destination. The first influence serves as the enabling factor and the second as the perpetuating factor. There are many theories that define the level of analysis at the mezzo level, to name a few – social capital theory, institutional theory, network theory and cumulative causation. For the present case under consideration, the best suited conceptual frameworks are the Institutional Theory for the enabling factor and the Network Theory for the perpetuating factor. I stress the enabling feature of the mezzo-level because it is important for the migrant students to fulfil certain conditions before coming to the UK, i.e. acquiring Tier 4 student visas and meeting the border entry requirements. Migration studies consider social relations, social capital in households, neighbours and more formal communities (Hagen-Zanker, 2008) as mezzo-level factors influencing the decision to migrate. However, for current study I propose that Tier 4 visa and border entry requirements are more appropriate mezzo-level factor, since, without fulfilment of these criterion students cannot lawfully enter the UK. Examining the enabling factor through the lenses of institutional theory suggests that institutions influence the process and flow of migration. To further underscore this, scholars Amenta and Ramsey (2010) state that the institutional theories claim to identify something at a higher level is utilised to explain a process and outcomes at a lower level of analysis (Clemens & Cook, 1999; Amenta, 2005). The current study will place the UK immigration rules at the higher level, which enables the migrant students to lawfully enter the UK that signifies the outcome at a lower level. Thus, making the student’s geographical movement from India to the UK possible. The duo further distinguishes between three kinds of institutional theories – sociological institutionalism, historical institutionalism and political institutionalism. I adopt elements of political institutionalism because it focuses on the actors (migrant students) at an inter-organisational level and the actors have to work within the institutional framework. The reason for this is because politics matter and so do immigration policies; therefore, the right to cross a border legally directly influences the number of students who come to the UK. This mezzo level structure enables (and in some cases impedes) the student to move to the country of destination (Hollifield, Martin, & Orrenius, 2014). The immigration policies for international students can be best explained with the arrival of the points-based tier system in the UK. One of the major changes the ruling Labour party in 1997 brought, as a measure to increase immigration, was the points-based system. This allowed people with the right to educational, linguistic and

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 265 professional skills to migrate to the UK. There were specific tier visas that people could apply for based on their purpose to come to the UK. This was tentatively introduced in 2002 and later fully implemented in 2006 (Hansen, 2000). After the introduction of the points-based system, the students entering the UK under Tier 4 had to prove their English proficiency; this was normally in the form of a written test and finally an interview with a UK Broader Agency official (de Lotbinere, 2011). The government also allowed the students who graduated with an undergraduate, a master’s or a doctoral degree a work permit after completing their studies; they could apply for the Tier 1 post-study work visa. However, in April 2012, the UK’s coalition government terminated the Tier 1 post-study work visa (Wright, 2010). Furthermore, in March 2015, the Foreign and Commonwealth office announced that from 6 April 2015 all nationals outside the EU would be required to pay a “health-surcharge” in order to gain access to the UK’s National Health Services (NHS), so international students had to pay £150 per year in order to meet the border entry requirement. Later the UK home office on 13 July 2015 notified that international students had to leave the country after their visa expires, and if they wished to work in the UK, they had to apply for a work permit visa from their home country. Since the termination of the Post-study work visa there has been an ongoing decline in the number of international students, especially Indian students, as they prefer to go to other countries like Australia and Canada that offer them opportunities to apply for a work visa after completion of their studies. Table 15.1 illustrates the gradual decline in the number of Indian students after the closure of the PostStudy Visa in 2012. Such decision made by the UK Government play a vital role in shaping the migrant student’s experience during their stay and prospective Table 15.1 Number of Indian students in the UK 2009–2016. Year

Number of students

2009–10 2010–11 2011–12 2012–13 2013–14 2014–15 2015–16

38,500 39,090 29,900 22,385 19,750 18,320 16,745

Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency 242 (2015–16) Table 9

266  Tilotama Pradhan future plans. Placing the UK immigration policies at a mezzo-level is vital in the case of Indian students’ migration, since this determines the flow of Indian students coming to the UK. Reflecting on the features of political institutionalism, the actors work within the institutional structure. This facet can be applied in this situation as the migrant students are bound to regulate within the Tier 4 visa rules (attendance monitoring or limited working hours during term times). Therefore, I recommend that the immigration policies in the form of Tier 4 (student visa) and border entry requirements should be placed at the mezzo-level that enables Indian students to migrate to the UK for higher education. As stated above, the Indian migrant student’s network in the country of destination will be deemed the perpetuating factor in their migration journey. This will be analysed by borrowing the theoretical structure of Network theory. Sociologist Massey states that the migrants’ networks ‘are sets of interpersonal ties that connect migrants, former migrants and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship and shared community origin’ (Massey, 1999, p. 448). This particular case acknowledges that these networks are prominent among employment related migration or family-reunification; nevertheless, this understanding is applicable for Indian migrant students as well. According to Massey et al. (1994), a migrant network increases the possibility of international movement as it would lower cost and minimise risk when migrants move to another country. This kind of network creates a sense of security and familiarity for the prospective students who aspire to go to the UK because of friends and family who already are in the UK. Such conditions encourage migration and eventually make it more widespread amongst aspiring students who wish to come to the UK. The social ties the prospective students have in the country of destination helps students’ lower their cost, their likelihood of locating in a different geographical area and reducing migration-related risk. Still, it is essential to mention here that the students cannot solely rely on this kind of network to come to the UK. I emphasise that this network is only a source of gaining useful information or knowing about life in the UK via somebody else’s experience. However, unlike family-reunification migration (or employment related migration in some cases), student migration can happen even if the student does not have any social or kinship contact in the country of destination. Additionally, I propose to include the role of educational agencies as the link between prospective students and country of destination. Therefore, I suggest that in the study of student migration, educational

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 267 agencies could be considered as a part of this network. According to Krasocki,‘educational agents/agencies are individuals, companies or organisations which provide services on a commercial basis to help students and their parents gain places into study programs overseas’ (2002, p.3). Moreover, educational agencies include a number of services including identifying study abroad opportunities, advice on course selection, English proficiency tests and educational centres, initial contact with the prospective college or university, admission conditions, visa requirements, travel and accommodation arrangement and employment opportunities (Heaney & Heaney, 2014). In some cases, institutions like The Chopras2 arrange a pre-departure event that is attended by the students, their families and the educational counsellors. In this event they are briefed about the UK education standards and expectations, cultural and social lifestyles, weather conditions, being polite and saying, “thank you” and “sorry”. Therefore, in some cases the prospective students are in a position to gain more insightful information from these agencies than from the interpersonal connections they depend on in the UK. Before 2010, the UK actively encouraged institutions to use educational agents (Hulme et al., 2013). However, after the dismissal of the post-study work visa and the subsequent decrease in the number of international students, there was a decline in the number of educational agencies recruiting students internationally to choose the UK for their higher education. Yet, due to the nature of services and assistance educational agencies provide the prospective students, educational agencies should be considered as a part of the network at the mezzolevel. This is because the educational agencies, like the interpersonal and social ties, perpetuate the student migration, these agencies provide as much information as other societal ties would provide the prospective students going to the UK. Thus, for Indian migrant students, the mezzo-level of influence comprises the Tier 4 student visa policy and border entry requirements and network at the country of destination. Political intuitionalism explains the enabling aspect and the network theory with the inclusion of educational agency clarifies the perpetuating factor of the mezzo-level influence amongst the migrant students. Micro-level factors In the case of Indian migrant students I consider their Personal and family motivations as the micro-level factors that initiate their sojourn. Johnson (2008) states that the individual’s actions provides

268  Tilotama Pradhan the foundation for the macro-level institutional structure, and the present case supports this claim, and intends that people’s actions such as and household relationships could be deemed micro-level influences. For a contextual understanding of micro-level factors in relation to this study, it is crucial to address the influence of the migration studies expert Everett S. Lee, while revising Ravenstein’s (1885) Laws of Migration as he draws attention towards the lack of connection between macro- and micro-level theories. This had an important contribution towards understanding of migration theory. According to Lee (1969), there are number of factors that initiate the migration process; he summarised this under four headings: 1 2 3 4

Factors associated with the areas of origin Factors associated with the area of destination Intervening obstacles Personal factors

Being one of the first scholars to formulate migration push and pull concepts on an individual level, Lee’s understanding was that the positive and negative factors at the origin and destination countries act as a push and pull factor, he further explains that these factors affect most people in almost the same way and may affect different people in different ways (Lee, 1966). Furthermore, the personal evaluation at the place of origin and the situation at the place of destination depend on the personal contact and information available. Lee further states that the decision to migrate therefore is never completely rational and for same persons the rational component is much less than the irrational. We must expect, therefore, to find many exceptions to our generalisations since transient emotions, mental disorder, and accidental occurrences account for a considerable proportion of the total migration. (1966, p. 51) Even though Lee’s understanding is criticised by many scholars, who state that the micro-level migration decisions are more than transient, accidental disorders that deviate from generalisation. The microlevel factor plays a vital part in the migration decision-making process (Wolfel, 2002). The present study borrows this idea to support the claim that the decision to migrate is rooted at the micro-level factors based on individual values, desires and expectations, however at the

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 269 same time rejects the homogenisation found in the push-pull analysis. By doing this, it allows the inclusion of social factors and the role of individuals, in further understanding the migration decision-making process. Often these micro-level factors have been discussed within various theoretical framework, some of them are Lee’s push and pull factors, Neo-classical micro-migration theory, behavioural models and theories of social systems. In the case of Indian students, there are individual factors that drive these students to make the decision to migrate. These factors are examined using the conceptual context of the Behaviour model. The behavioural approach considers non-economic factors and societal influences, although this notion has been criticised on the basis of the assumption of the rational decision-making and the idea being by and large vague (Hangen-Zanker, 2008). In the present context, the behaviour model provides the conceptual framework to place the decisions to migrate on household characteristics and societal norms. Therefore, on a micro-level, I consider societal divides like caste, gender and parents/family decision. Amongst the Indian migrant students in the UK, it is common for parents of the high caste to insist on getting an education abroad and how this can be transpired as a symbol of success, maintaining social status. From a sociological perspective, this factor is of high value since, as this consciousness of maintaining a social status is common only among students coming from high caste. This is at par Bourdieu’s (1986) understanding of cultural capital, where an individual is defined by his or her affiliation to their social class. Bourdieu refers to dominant culture as cultural capital since, via the educational system, it can be transferred into wealth and power (Haralambos & Heald, 2014). Thus, the reproduction of culture could be the factor that in some degree guided these students to travel to the UK for higher education (Waters, 2006) Whilst observing the Indian students’ educational journey to the UK from a gender perspective, it is necessary to state that this societal divide played a big role in the students’ decision-making processes. There was a prominent difference that stemmed from strong gender roles and expectations that grounded the students’ individual aspirations behind choosing to go to the UK. Hercog and Laar (2016) argue that individualist quests for international exposure and learning about new cultures are absent in the context of developing countries like India. I would argue instead that this is not the case amongst Indian students and especially among females. Female students are very clear why they choose to come to the UK and what they want

270  Tilotama Pradhan to achieve. Apart from academic reasoning, they are excited to experience an international environment, with a chance to live independently away from their traditional Indian household. This is similar to studies regarding European students and their individualistic decision to study abroad (Findlay et al., 2012; King & Ruiz-Gelices, 2003; De Grip et al., 2009). Furthermore, female students also came to the UK in order to escape from the pressure of getting married, societal judgement and in search of a partner to establish a romantic relationship, reconfirming Morokvasic’s (1984) claim that women migrate not only because of economic motives, but also to get married, and due to social constraints. In addition, Yakaboski, Sheridan, and Dade’s (2014) reflection states females might use their foreign education as a conscious strategy to delay marriage. Lastly, in the case of Indian migrant students, the parent’s decisions also shape their motivation to study abroad. Among Indian migrant students it is a common notion that a student with at least one working parent or parents who had achieved higher education encouraged their children to study abroad. The parents’ occupation can influence the migration decision of the students in terms of having the financial resources to support the expenses of their child/children (for selffunded students), eligibility to take out educational loans or mortgage properties. Findings of the global survey conducted by HSBC in 2015 titled The Value of Education: Learning for Life, show that Indian parents were willing to spend more than they would in their own country to give their child the experience of studying abroad, and nearly 60 percent of them would consider paying at least 50 percent more to get a degree from a foreign university. Therefore, families’ social capital may play a role by setting either opportunities or constraints (Ackers, 2015; Brooks & Waters, 2011; Findlay et al., 2012; Waters, 2006). Parents with high educational background also seem to influence students to achieve higher education outside India. In some cases where the parents did not have a chance to study abroad, they encouraged their children to do so and relived their dream.

Conclusion and recommendation This study on Indian migrant students in the UK proposes that a structuration model be employed to analyse the trajectory of educational migration. This process is first initiated by the motivations behind choosing the UK as the country of destination. Followed by the fulfilment of the requirements to lawfully enter the country with the

Mechanisms triggering Indian students to the UK 271 guidance by interpersonal ties and educational agencies and finally by being driven by individual motivation. The academic, funding opportunities and career prospects have been identified as the macro-level factors influencing the decision-making process amongst these migrant students. This has been further analysed by the conceptual framework of the internationalisation of education, establishing that education-related migration has been possible because of globalisation and the restructuration of higher education. The mezzo-level factors motivating the Indian migrant students to choose UK as their educational destination are Tier 4 (student visa) and border entry requirement and network in the country of destination. These points can be analysed under the theoretical lens of Institutional Theory and Network Theory respectively. The immigration polices explains the enabling aspect and the network in the country of destination, and with the inclusion of the educational agencies refines the perpetuating factor of the mezzo-level influence, amongst the migrant students. For the current case under consideration, this represents the next stage in the student migration process. Finally, personal and family motivations are identified as the microlevel influence further analysed under the Behavioural Model. The study recommends that there are various subjective factors that influence the decision-making process and can be further classified under the societal divide of caste, gender and parents’ decision, representing the last stage of the decision-making process. This chapter traces the educational trajectory of the Indian migrant students to the UK, as a flow from one migratory pathway to another. The macro-mezzo-micro circumstances systematically unfold each stage of their journey until the student arrives in the UK. However, this migratory process does not stop there – what happens to these students after coming to their country of destination? Thus, there is the need to address the experience of the migrant students after they come to the UK and during their stay.

Acknowledgement This study is based on the doctoral thesis that examines the intellectual, emotional and socio-cultural experience of Indian students who come to the UK to obtain higher education. The focus of the research examines the role of the symbolic homeland and the forms and intensities of the transnational attachments they maintain through these transformative journeys. The theoretical and conceptual framework discussed in this

272  Tilotama Pradhan chapter are based on the themes that have emerged after competently executed fieldwork and analysis of the collected data.

Notes 1 Satyendranath Tagore was the first Indian to successfully pass the open Indian Civil Service (ICS) exam in 1864. The ICS was considered a highly prestigious career path, informally known as “heaven-born service”. After the British formally took over India in 1858, the ICS was reformed and superior officers were selected through an open exam held annually in London (Mukherjee, 2010). 2 The Chopras is a renowned study abroad consultant that assists students who wish to go overseas to pursue higher education. The most popular overseas education destinations according to them are the UK, the US, Australia and Canada. They have several branches all over India and support students through recruitment, English language tests, visa processing, finding scholarships, funding assistance and in some cases accommodations.

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274  Tilotama Pradhan Krasocki, J. (2002) Education UK: Developing the UK’s International Education Agent Network. Promotions and Partnerships (ECS), The British Council, London. Lee, E. (1966) A theory of migration. Demography, 3(1): 47–57. Lee, Everett S. (1969) A Theory of Migration in Migration, J.A. Jackson. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 282–297. Lee, K.H. & Tan, J.P. (1984) The international flow of third level lesser developed country students to developed countries: Antecedents and implications. Higher Education, 13: 687–707. Massey, D. (1999) Why Does Immigration Occur? A Theoretical Synthesis, in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, C. Hirschman, P. Kaninitz and J. De Wind. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Massey, D., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A. & Taylor, J.E. (1994) Theories of international migration: A review and appraisal. Population and Development Review, 19(3). Morokvasic, A.R. (1984) Birds of passage are also women. International Migration Review, 18(4): 886–907. Mukherjee, S. (2010) Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities – The England Return. Routledge, Oxan. Ravenstein, E.G. (1885) The laws of migration. Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 48(2): 167–235. Visram, R. (2002) Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History. Pluto Press, London. Waters, J.L. (2006) Geographies of international education: Mobilities and the reproduction of social disadvantage. Geography Compass, 6: 121–136. Wolfel, R.L. (2002) Migration in the New World Order: Structuration Theory and Its Contribution to Explanations of Migration, NESTVAL Conference, New Bedford. Wright, C. (2010) Policy Legacies and the Politics of Labour Immigration Selection and Control. PhD dissertation, Cambridge University. Yakaboski, T., Sheridan, R.S. & Dade, K. (2014) US engineering degrees for improving South Indian graduate students’ marriage and dowry options. Journal of Studies in International Education, 18(1): 45–63. Yeravdekar, V.R. (2012) Internationalization of Higher Education in India. Doctoral dissertation, Symbiosis International University, Pune, India. Yeravdekar, V.R. & Tiwari, G. (2014) Internationalization of higher education in India: How primed is the country to take on education hubs? Procedia -Social and Behavioral Sciences, 157: 165–182. Zammuto, R.F. (2008) Accreditation and the globalization of business. The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 7(2): 256–268. Zheng, P. (2014) Antecedents to international student inflows to UK higher education: A comparative analysis. Journal of Business Research, 67: 136–143.

16 When international migration is a failure Panjabi undocumented migrants in France Christine Moliner This chapter discusses the impact of immigration policies on Panjabi labour migrants in France, particularly on their life prospects and on their patterns of upward mobility. European construction and the harmonisation of immigration policies of the member states have turned Europe into a fortress for migrants from the Global South. The creation of the Schengen space has led to the disappearance of internal borders and the tightening of external borders. Post 9/11, securitisation of immigration has resulted in the development of a border control industry and in the criminalisation of labour migration, which are disrupting long established patterns of upward mobility through international migration. In Punjab, these patterns entailed remitting money, building a house in the ancestral village, getting married and reuniting with one’s family in the host country, moving up the socio-professional ladder from low-paid jobs to self-employment and social respectability. Falling to secure documents of residence, a rising number of Panjabi migrants are relegated to what A.N. Ahmad has aptly termed a state of ontological insecurity1 characterised by the fear of deportation, precarious and low-paid jobs, very poor living conditions. Because of the huge amount of money needed to migrate irregularly, and then to try and regularise their status once in Europe, some of them find it increasingly difficult to send remittances home, and can even become a financial burden for their family. Through a particular case study, we will discuss their migration trajectories and regularisation strategies, once in Europe, that entail cross-border mobility and navigating national immigration policies and national labour market regimes. Recent research2 has questioned the relevance of the concept of transnationalism to account for some contemporary experiences of international mobility. While proponents of transnationalism have

276  Christine Moliner highlighted the connections, ties and networks sustained by migrants across borders, the lives of Pakistani migrants discussed by Ahmad and Qureshi are indeed bounded and constrained by material circumstances to on place and to a very precarious standard of living. They are unable to travel regularly back home, to shower their family and village of origin with remittances or philanthropic investments or to sponsor the emigration of members of their biradari – unable therefore to partake in this transnational habitus described in the literature. Similarly, a transnational lifestyle is beyond the reach of undocumented Punjabis in Paris, constrained as they are by their irregular status. In that respect, a major shift has occurred in the settlement history of Punjabis in France. Until the mid-2000s, the successive waves of first generation migrants had faced some form or another of irregularity, with respect to their journey, their entry, and work or residence status. Some of the early migrants benefited from a massive legalisation operation in 1982, those who came after 1984 were granted refugee status on the grounds of Khalistani militancy, while the next wave took advantage of another regularisation operation in 1997–98. The progressive erosion of border controls between EU member states also enabled migrants to move between France and neighbouring countries, in search of documents. These multiple crossborder movements are related to the segmentation of labour markets and to differing immigration regimes within the EU. As discussed by Ahmad, France and Germany constituted in the 1980s and 1990s the core of a hierarchically organised Panjabi migratory space in continental Europe. Both countries offered well paid full-time jobs, but little to no opportunity to regularise one’s residence status because of increasingly tough immigration and asylum policies. Southern Europe presented a contrasting picture: low-skilled, underpaid jobs, particularly in the agricultural sector, but easier access to regular status – albeit a long and costly process. Therefore a pattern of commuting emerged whereby Punjabis applied for documents in Italy, Spain or Portugal while living and working in France. But since the mid-2000s, all the previous paths to regularisation are more or less closed, and Panjabi labour migrants who have arrived in France since then are forced into long-term clandestineness and a state of ontological insecurity, as well as an endless quest of documents. They devote all available energy, time and resources to a frantic search for legal status, which hence is superseding all other aspects of life. French sociologist Alexis Spire has coined the term of “paper career” of migrants, namely their legal trajectory and the various administrative statuses they experience, the refusal or granting of a legal status

When international migration is a failure 277 influencing the next steps of their migration strategy.3 What is then the paper career of Punjabis in France? In most cases, it will involve some mobility and cross-border migration to neighbouring countries, albeit with less and less success, and more and more money spent. We will discuss below the story and paper career of Sonu, a 32-year-old Panjabi man. After three years spent in Abu Dhabi, in 2008, Sonu was called to France by his sister, a legal resident whose husband has lived in the country for over 25 years and got French citizenship. Sonu spent seven years there, without residence nor work document, he trained as a qualified electrician and worked on building sites for various Panjabi malik (boss). He assumed his brother in law would help him with his regularisation process, since he had been in France for so long, knew the ways, and had all the relevant contacts in the regularisation business. But nothing much happened, and he understood that he would have to fend for himself. At the time, in 2014, several of his friends had gone to Spain, where residence permit could purportedly be obtained. A man from his village established in Barcelona for several years committed to oversee his case, provide him with a work contract and submit his application to the local administration. He initially charged him EUR 1,500, then a total amount of EUR 2,000, but to no avail, which the man blamed on the factory owner who had not renewed on time the necessary documents for the work permit application. In October 2015, his maternal uncle settled in Germany told him that immigration had just opened and that he had a scheme for him. Since nothing had worked so far neither in France, nor in Spain and since he had enough to spend his spare time renovating for free his sister’s house, Sonu went to Germany, where he soon discovered that the scheme his mama had in mind was actually a fake marriage to a Polish woman living in Germany, as a way to get legal residence: the scheme would take several years and cost EUR 18,000. At the time, Sonu had just finished paying off the money he had borrowed his brother in law for the failed Spanish scheme. Relieved from the psychological burden of this debt, Sonu decided that the fake marriage plot was too expensive and too uncertain – he had heard many stories of Polish women absconding with the money and decided instead to apply for asylum, for which he paid EUR 800 to a German lawyer well-known among Punjabis in Germany for overseeing his application. Two years later, his application is still under review, but will for sure be rejected within a few months, so that Sonu is now contemplating going to Italy, where the elder brother of one of his closest

278  Christine Moliner friends works, and will tell him when the annual online application for temporary work permits starts. Sonu’s story is in many ways representative of the ordeal faced by Panjabi undocumented migrants in continental Europe. One important aspect in his migration trajectory is his reliance in and (misplaced) trust on friends and kin members, specially those who are deemed knowledgeable about the regularisation process in their country of residence. He soon understood that he was expected to work for free for his brother in law in France, and that his mama had actually called him in Germany because he was in dire need of a reliable and cheap employee for his expanding cleaning business, who would be ready to work overtime, and forego bank holidays. When recounting this, Sonu was quite bitter with what he considered self-interested family members, resenting being exploited by the well-established migrants and reflecting on the huge material gains the latter made at the expense of undocumented migrants like him. He was acutely aware of the deterioration of social relations, particularly of kin ties, tainted by greed and exploitative practices. Additionally, Sonu had to take some crucial decisions (going to France in the first place, then to Germany, and in between a failed regularisation move to Spain) without the necessary legal knowledge and therefore unaware of the risks and possible outcomes of his decisions. Besides, this ongoing quest for documents strains all his energy, time and money whereas at his age, Sonu should be married and raising a family. His life is suspended, put on hold, in order to secure an elusive future. Foregoing the joys and duties associated with family life, he is caught in the administrative and socio-economic limbo of clandestineness, precarity and perpetual mobility. Since he left India nine years ago, Sonu has worked so far simply to repay the cost of his initial migration to Europe and then of his regularisation attempt in Spain. It took him five years of strenuous work on building sites in the Paris region to repay the EUR 10,000 he had initially borrowed from his father for a Schengen tourist visa procured by a smuggler from Jalandhar, and then two years to pay off his brother in law. He is now saving for his next Italian endeavour, as uncertain as the previous ones. In his case, international migration has not resulted in any form of upward mobility, since most of the money he earned in Europe has been invested in covering the ongoing costs of regularisation, which interestingly may be higher than those securing entry into Europe. Since he has been unable to remit money as he was expected to, from the point of view of his household in India, his migration can be

When international migration is a failure 279 considered a failure, a non-profitable investment. Beyond the strictly economic calculations lies the issue of meaning, the purpose of life and of personal fulfilment: what sense is there to live and work only to secure a legal status that seems more and more elusive?

Notes 1 Ali Nobil Ahmad, Masculinity, Sexuality and Illegal Migration. Human Smuggling from Pakistan to Europe, Ashgate, 2011. 2 See in particular Ali Nobil Ahmad, Masculinity, Sexuality and Illegal Migration, op.cit and Kaveri Qureshi, ‘Pakistani Labour Migration & Masculinity: Industrial Working Life, the Body & Transnationalism’, Global Networks, 12(4), 2012. 3 Alexis Spire, Etrangers à la carte. L’administration de l’immigration en France (1945–1975), Grasset, 2005.

17 All about my skills, not me or mine Vignettes of precarity among skilled Indian professionals in the UK Shoba Arun Introduction Currently, policy and academic debates on global skilled migration are wedged in a paroxysm of fear and uncertainty. Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show the compelling presence of migrants in the UK workforce, with foreign-born workers forming nearly 11 percent of the national workforce (see ONS 2017). The UK has seen the constant rise of skilled migrants since the 1990s, closely linked to the processes of global labour markets, sectoral skills shortage and neo-liberal policies (Cantwell, 2011). This article explores the lived experiences of skilled Indian migrants from four key work domains, characterised by skill, mobilities and transnationalism. Although these workers are classified as highly-skilled or skilled workers,1 there exists a diversity of alignment with work requirements, relationship with the state, nature of social relations and family ties. Accordingly, this article introduces the concept of “mobility work alignment” to analyse this diversity of contours within skilled migration in the UK labour market. Most importantly, the obfuscated nature of the working lives of skilled migrant masks the fractured support structures within which such agents operate. The paper draws on recent and previous empirical research done on skilled professional Indian migrants in the UK (see Arun et al. forthcoming; Arun 2017; Arun 2010). Section 2 reviews some of the relevant themes on the skilled migrant neo-liberal self, drawing on debates on precarity and resilience. Section three presents data and findings, while section four summarises the conclusions.

Neo-liberal self, resilience and precarity as norms for skilled migrants With a total of 701,000 non-UK nationals working in the areas of public administration, education and health, data shows that Indian

All about my skills, not me or mine 281 nationals accounted for 57 percent of total skilled work visas granted (ONS 2016). Further, non-UK nationals are more likely to be in jobs they are over-qualified for than UK nationals, showing that migrant work is segmented by country of origin, sector, skills and earnings (ibid). Mobility is an increasingly important requirement for the individual employee in skilled and highly-skilled occupations (Kesselring 2014; Bauder 2012). Drawing on a sample of highly skilled Indians in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, Kõu and Bailey (2014) show that international geographical mobility has become a normative part of professional careers, and as a strategy for enhancing competitiveness in a neo-liberal international labour markets. Thus self-actualisation, rather than pure economic motives, appears to be the major driver for migration. Global mobilities is also seen as a global field that relates to habitus (based on the Bourdieusian concept of learned behaviour), rules and games and in which dominant systems of distinction based on class, occupational prestige, gender, race and economic capital are contestable (see Arun 2017). For example, Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus and cultural capital has been linked to migration and internalisation of social structures (Arun 2017; Thatcher and Halvorsrud 2015; Erel 2010). Issues of global migration often raise deep-seated issues about work, equality and policy, resulting in diverse precarious working relationships (see Meier 2015; Raghuram 2014; McDowell 2008). For Sassen (2016), the term migration serves little purpose when multiple forms of socio-economic dislocations evolve into predatory formations, through assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes, thus leading to expulsions of people, social groups and livelihoods. Such vested interests as seen through the persistent effects of neoliberalism lead to various consequences and vulnerabilities. For some, the term resilience refers to a range of behavioural responses, whilst the term precarity relates to low-wage, insecure labour markets, temporary forms of citizenship and social inequalities (Reid-Musson 2014; Goldring and Landolt 2013; Standing 2011). Often precarious work articulates with new migrant divisions of labour becoming a systemic facet of labour market restructuring (Wills et al. 2010). At times the micro-behaviour of individual and groups may obscure the massive web or impact of neo-liberal practices and thinking, for example, Hall and Lamont (2013) use the concept of social resilience to capture new logics into social life. This study draws on the agentic behaviour of skilled migrants within neo-liberal narratives of global immigration regulatory policies and regimes, engendering narratives of “resilience” in everyday lives of UK-based Indian migrants. The global competition

282  Shoba Arun for highly-skilled migrants has increased considerably along with the increasing part highly-skilled migrants play in maintaining the growth of developed economies (see Bailey and Mulder 2017). Yet such mobilities ignore the multiple roles undertaken by migrants (see King and Raghuram 2013). This could be because, as Anderson notes as a tap regulating the flow of labour, immigration controls function as a mould, helping to form types of labour with particular relations to employers and the labour market. In particular, the construction of institutionalised uncertainty, together with less formalised migratory processes, help produce “precarious workers” over whom employers and labour users have particular mechanisms of control. (2010; 301) The effects of austerity and hostile social attitudes after Brexit predicate on this moral view of the self-sufficient migrant, but in reality it tests the social ties, resources and resilience of individual migrants, their families and wider community networks (Root et al. 2014). Thus the ambiguous nature of “resilience thinking” (Walsh-Dilley and Wolford 2015) has compelled scholars and practitioners in development practice and global studies calling for the grounded and embedded processes of meaning-making around resilience, as this study aims to show. Experiences of skilled migrant workers, from the Global South, particularly India, fall within these two categories of precarity and resilience. Whilst often deemed as operating in straight alignment with the state through regulation of their “eligibility” of work, employment contracts, bringing families into the UK and claiming access to legal welfare rights, yet their grounded, everyday, lived working narratives blur these two concepts. This may relate to how immigration controls regulate nature of migrant work and prevents exploitation, it may also undermine the long-term economic and social lives of such workers, and inhibit full integration into society. As Anderson (2010) argues how, whilst immigration controls are often presented by government as a means of ensuring “British jobs for British workers” and protecting migrants from exploitation, in practice such mobilities often can undermine labour protections (see Anderson 2010). Such mechanisms also curtail flexibility of mobility and full integration into the economy and society that migrants live in, as explored here.

All about my skills, not me or mine 283

Data and findings The research deploys narratives as an ethnographic tool to relate and reproduce stories and experiences that “capture” the voices of such globally mobile workers. The decision to use narratives is largely based on the value of conversation and voice as a dynamic medium for generating information (Webster and Mertova 2007) on shared stories of working migrant lives. Thus, the shared experiences through narrative research can help both individuals and communities to make meaning out of their social situation. For the current research, a total sample of 28 UK-based Indian professionals were selected from four skilled mobility domains, viz, academia (eight), Information Technology (IT) and Engineering (12), medicine/dentistry (five) and the care sector (three). The sample was selected through pre-existing research links as part of a larger study (Arun 2017, 2010), with Indian Associations, cultural organisations and community centres across various geographical locations, primarily cities of Manchester, Belfast, Aberdeen and Greater London. These varied locations provide diverse political and economic contexts that had contrasting experiences with relation to Brexit (changing economy in relation to the EU for Northern Ireland); prospects for devolution and impact on the oil industry in Scotland: the Northern Powerhouse project and implications for job opportunities in Greater Manchester; and the higher levels of global diverse workforce in London. The narratives were elicited through face-to-face interactions with the selected sample respondents over two phases, from June to December 2016 and November 2017. In most cases, family members were present for the interviews; in other cases, telephone or skype conversations also supplemented such interviews. The key themes for these interactions were their individual pathways to mobilities, ways in which they perceive relationships with the state, work environment and wider community; modes of engagement as migrants in a “foreign” culture and society; and their perceived outcomes of such alignments for families and children in future. These could relate to accumulations of capital, skills, confidence and engaging in community relations; intergenerational transmission of cultural practices within families or broader plans for building global links. The presentation of ethnographic data helps to elucidate the concept of “mobility alignment”, to provide the analytical leverage to theorise: (1) work relations beyond standard labour relations; (2) the gendered and racialised alignments that aggravate forms of precarity in highly skilled work; and (3) forms of resilience, risk and resourcefulness in skilled mobility.

284  Shoba Arun Findings Internationalisation as mobility/mobility as internationalisation Internationalisation is a key feature of the current UK Higher Education strategy particularly more distinct in the post-crises period. Mobilities in terms of both staff and student exchanges within academia is embedded within discourses of internationalisation, academic mobility (Mavroudi and Warren 2013; Ackers 2005) and forms of academic labour (Cantwell and Lee 2010; Jöns 2009). For the academic labour market, with its higher degree of internationalisation as both a requirement and a condition, mobility is becoming a characteristic “attitude” (Bauder 2012; 5) and that values international experience and mobility, and considered a symbolic form of capital (Bauder et al. 2016). As observed from narratives with academic professionals, mobility is intertwined with job opportunities, rewards and family ties. A number of respondents who were Indian-origin academics (from early career professionals to mid-career professionals) emphasised the temporality of mobilities due to the nature of jobs (short-term contracts; higher earning; dual career families; promotion opportunities). One senior lecturer (male, age 37) in engineering, stated, I knew that my move to Manchester will not be for the long term. Whilst those who take up their first lectureship jobs make long terms plans for their career, I took up this position as way to improve my professional experience and earnings, so I could apply for promotion of professorship closer to my home (Glasgow), where my family ties are. I commute during the weekends, but this is a short-term cost for a longer-term career growth. As noted previously, internationally mobile academics are more likely to be employed full-time in most national systems of higher education (Welch 1997, cited in Bauder 2012), and foreign-born female academics are more engaged in prestigious research activities and less in teaching and administration than their native-born colleagues (Mamiseishvili 2010, ibid), challenging notions of gender division of roles in academia. For academics, their international experience is very relevant, manifested through conference presentations, research partnerships and visits. However, such temporary moves affected place making, social ties and community building. Often social relations are built around similarly mobile professionals, rather than relating

All about my skills, not me or mine 285 to local networks, identities and relationships. Nevertheless, families with school going children, particularly mothers, built local networks with similar migrant Indian families, and accumulating social networks as a way of information gathering, preparation for secondary schools and harnessing cultural networks. One of the respondents from Northern Ireland felt that the impact of Brexit could change experiences of internationalisation in the region due to withdrawal from the EU and relationship with mainland Ireland, and thus preferred to move either to the Republic of Ireland or Britain, thus seeking opportunities. Thus mobilities, then were assumed to be routine, rather than through choice, due to the imminent political changes on stability of jobs. Further the increase in international fees, scrutiny of student engagement among Tier 4 students2 and restrictions on working hours did impact on the number of non-EU students in general. Drawing attention to international student migration/mobility as a relatively neglected field in migration research, King and Raghuram (2013) point to the contradictions of student mobilities between “desired” for their internationalism and fee contributions, and as “unwanted” because of the politics of migration control. Most narratives with academics in the sample also supported observations that a good number of PhD students from India continue to work as post-doctoral scholars in fields such as science and engineering, accumulating work and academic experience as Early Career Researchers (ECRs). In particular, as seen in the sample, international academic links between UK and Indian universities enabled student mobilities in areas such as naval architecture, whereby students were absorbed into key engineering sectors, including the oil industry. For Bauder (2012) experiences of international mobility for academic labour differ from the experiences workers have in other occupations, as the academic labour is valorised and devalued in the migration process. Cantwell and Lee (2010), focusing on the experience of international post-doctoral researchers in the UK and the US, show that despite their rising numbers, the workings of neo-racist global academic labour markets and culturally specific stereotypes affected career and work opportunities of such skilled migrants. Restructuring of gender dynamics Gender dynamics presents both contradictions and rhetoric within skilled migration. Studies on women migrants in Switzerland show how women’s lack of participation in the economic sphere, often leads

286  Shoba Arun to loss of autonomy and feelings of social “non-recognition”, characterising another form of brain drain in global mobilities (Riano 2012). With increasing economic migration, previous research has shown that gender, along with other social divisions, contributes to new cultural practices, forming global and transnational formations (Arun 2010). Some forms of gender dynamics are presented here. PROFESSIONALISATION OF FEMALE MIGRANTS

The experiences of care work in gendered migration, particularly female migration, has received much attention within discourses of care work, care chains, etc. (Arun, 2009). Previous research on the experiences of NHS-based nurses from India divulges mixed narratives of empowerment and disempowerment (Kofman and Raghuram 2015; Walton-Roberts 2012; Arun 2010). Women in the current sample reported that on having attained certain levels of education and work experience from India, as female migrants, nurses have been able to build successful careers in the health sector, and gain formal citizenship in the UK. Female nurses reinforced how they strategically respond to the labour shortage in Western European care sectors, and sought capital in this way because legal citizenship status within the UK nation state relates to employment, whilst nursing work functions as a pull factor, it also transforms notions of nursing as a feminine occupation. For example, nursing, once seen as “devalued” work, is taken on by young men and women from India, altering notions of feminine3 or masculine capital (see Arun 2017). Here, gender is a primary form of capital as gender capital,4 is a disposition, a form of capital (Huppatz 2012; McCall 1992), although gender intersects with classed, racialised hierarchies of work and status (see Arun 2017; Dyer et al. 2008). DESKILLING AS GENDERED PROCESS

India women who enter the UK as spouses do make a range of pathways to adaptive resilience. Many report to working in lower skill and short-term jobs such as shop assistants, teaching assistants in learning centres (tuition and learning centres for school curriculum and support for secondary school entrance exams) which provided fewer opportunities for secure work, exhibiting professional deskilling and devaluation. Further, evidence from the sample showed that women in the age group of 26–39, who did manage to get jobs in their professional fields have had to withdraw from work due to childcare responsibilities and

All about my skills, not me or mine 287 demand of spouses’ work practices. As out of school childcare options were limited, mothers took responsibilities for homework, extracurricular activities and school routines. These women, as dependant spouses, are funnelled into low-cost labour or underemployment, and often into the temporary echelons of labour markets. In observations from the sample of respondents across the domains, women from dual career relationships fare better in the labour market. Those working as doctors in the NHS, or as IT professionals, share working lives with their spouses, spinning off benefits through help in juggling childcare, training and professional development opportunities and more informal learning opportunities through social and personal networks. Nevertheless, women commonly tend to take up family friendly positions within these sectors such as General Practitioner (GP), or those specialisms that do not require night or weekend shifts (microbiology, pathology, etc.). (NON)RECOGNITION AS PRECARITY

Professional recognition was pointed to as a major issue for women who were joining spouses, as their alignment of mobilities relates to recognition (or lack of) of reinforcing regressive gender relations through difficulties in pursuing professional careers. Here one form of brain gain is related to another form of brain drain when gender and ethnicity is factored into the mobility of skilled workforce. Women, as spouses of skilled migrants, are less visible, relegated to dependants or care givers. Thus this resourceful gender capital was not recognised in terms translating, converting their acquired human capital in fields of medicine, dentistry, engineering and science. Those who were qualified dentists, in the sample reported anomalies in the way they are treated in the UK labour market. Comparing with dentists with degrees from institutions within the European Union who are automatically recognised, but do not have English language skills, are often absorbed into the labour market. But Indian dentists, as nonmembers of European Economic Area (EEA) countries. However, those who qualified outside the EU, are required to take the three-part International Qualifying Exam (IQE), which takes around 18 months to complete and costs around £2,800, despite possessing professional and language skills. Thus women in the sample reported that they were not able to pass the exams in the first or second rounds, facing high fees and leading to lack of self-esteem. The registration process takes more time to complete, given the requirement to complete voluntary experience in dental clinics which was also harder to obtain.

288  Shoba Arun Hence one woman from the sample reported working as a receptionist in a dental clinic, as a way to respond to such tough conditions as a form of adaptive resilience. Similar, experiences were shared by those women whose academic qualifications (PG or equivalent) was not recognised, thus affecting their abilities to work as in skilled professional sectors. In general, these forms of adaptations point to intersections of the private and public spheres, reinforcing gender roles, but are mostly ignored in migration studies. This could be as often the skilled migrant is mostly assumed to be male, and resourceful in adapting in the host country. Other studies also show that wives of skilled migrant men suffer from cumulative disadvantage, and that it is necessary to adopt a complex model involving the interaction of gendered/racialised immigration laws, workplace and household experiences (Iredale 2005; Purkayastha 2005). Risky alignments as resilience Risk is an inherent feature of mobilities. Respondents in the sample identified risks related to occupational mobilities, stability of work which shaped associated uncertainties in relation to educational choices for children and long-term life planning. For IT professionals and engineers, instability of work was common as many of those who have no work restrictions in the UK, took on contract jobs as a normal work routine. This meant frequent travel, daily commuting between cities, alongside periods of absent work arrangements. Yet, as one respondent (male, age 45), describes, contract assignments offer more money so I can plan my economic needs for the foreseeable future. The flip side of this arrangement is lack of family time, tiring routines and long commute. I feel disconnected to places, people and work places, and at time miss most family ties, both here and back home in India. For those working in naval architectural jobs related to the oil industry, work opportunities were linked to the cyclical nature of the sector. The boom in the early to mid-noughties led to many job opportunities for Indian engineers in the city of Aberdeen, as many retrained to find work in this sector. However, the post-crises period and decline of the oil prices led to massive job losses in the sector, leading workers to leave the city to find jobs in mainland England. The sample respondents reported of related decline in the housing industry where house value plummeted, with uncertainties in jobs and subsequent

All about my skills, not me or mine 289 redundancies. Such uncertain economic conditions have compelled migrants to adapt or respond with resilience. For example, instances where Indian workers either resort to cyclical or return migration were reported to be common. Some moved to the Middle East or East Asia for better working conditions, or others relocated families to India and took on short-term foreign assignments. The flip side here as reported is the splitting of families in different locations for the continuity of children’s education and accumulation of economic capital for such purposes. Those on Tier 2 visas, with no recourse to public funds, often feel that paying higher rates of taxes meant they had very less rights in the host society in relation to entitlements and taxes. In particular, those on company-based contracts based on Tier 2 visas are compelled to thrive on uncertainty in relation to work contract extensions for specific companies relied on short-term visas. The sample of IT professionals in the study revealed that they are less inclined to make investments in housing due to difficulties with getting mortgages with short-term visas and tend to depend on the rental housing market for housing needs. This also affects schooling of children, particularly those in secondary schools, where children often travel long distances for suitable schools. Some preferred to return to India once secondary schooling was completed due to educational choices for children. Thus, risk for mobile professionals is related to shortterm work adjustments and long-term uncertainty relating to familial arrangement and educational opportunities for children.

Conclusions Research has shown that the state, through its policies and practices, impinges on the mobility of the skilled and highly skilled in a variety of ways (Mavroudi and Warren 2013; King and Raghuram 2013; Hawthorne 2008). In particular, immigration policies, through targeting the skilled, resourceful migrant self, function as regulators of employment, working conditions and right to family life. Further, lack of state support provided to help migrants and their families has created and continues to reinforce the idea of the “good” vs “bad” migrant citizen (Root et al. 2014; Standing 2011). This paper, through the conceptualisation of “mobility alignment”, provides the analytical leverage to understand work relations beyond standard labour relations in various domains. The different forms of resilience, risk and resourcefulness in skilled mobility show adaptation amidst vulnerability and an inability to plan for the long term (Waite, 2009). Thus, while Indian migrants exercise choice and agency in choosing

290  Shoba Arun to work in the neo-liberal labour markets of the UK, there are mixed evidences of precarity across these economic domains, through a spectrum of insecurity linked to the nature of jobs, simultaneous deskilling of labour through non-recognition of professional qualifications and reinforced gender relations. These are equally matched with shades of resilience in relation to adaptations in the labour market, harnessing gender capital or taking on risky alignments through patterns of return or circular migration, familial separations, etc. Taken together, these tenets of international mobility and forms of mobility alignments create a worker-citizenship system that is central to regulated mobility. In many ways, such regulations can be seen as collusion between the state and employers, sectoral policies and societal structures. The structural nature of labour markets, reinforced through gendered, racialised and classed forces, further compound their vulnerabilities. Further social structural arrangements within households, workplaces and national policies affect the migration experiences of women, as joining spouses, as they are often rendered invisible in migration debates. Critically, migrant networks and ties are viewed independent of their family structures and networks, which has implications for local community place making, work life balance and quality of workforce in any society. Thus, while the neo-liberal migrant self is seen as the reflexive, resourceful, risk-taking agent, the ways in which Indian migrants engage with immigration policies through lived experiences and family ties need more attention in migration and work discourses.

Notes 1 Since 2011 in the UK, the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) has been replaced by the five-tier points-based work permit system. Under this, the Tier 1 visa category relates to “high-value migrants” from outside the EEA, covering entry of entrepreneurs, investors, and those under the “exceptional talent” visa. The Tier 2 category is for “skilled workers” from outside the EEA with a job offer in the UK, and includes skilled workers who are transferred to the UK by an international company and skilled workers where there is a proven shortage in the UK. This chapter refers to the latter group of skilled workers. 2 For example, postgraduate and research students are seen as one form of migration into the country, although the number of foreign students arriving in the UK continued to fall. In 2016, 134,000 students entered Britain compared with 175,000 a year earlier (see ONS 2017). 3 The difference here is between biological and gender capital. For example, Huppatz (2009, p. 50) makes an important distinction between female and feminine capital: ‘Female capital is the gender advantage that is derived

All about my skills, not me or mine 291 from being perceived to have a female (but not necessarily feminine) body; whereas feminine capital is the gender advantage that is derived from a disposition or skill set learned via socialisation, or from simply being hailed as feminine (this occurs when one’s body is recognised as feminine)’. 4 Here, gender capital refers to female and feminine as well as male and masculine forms of capital. In general, nursing as an occupation is socially constructed as feminine, based on feminine traits such as caring and bodily work. The increase in the number of males undertaking nursing professions demonstrates how notions of masculinity are changing (Arun 2017).

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18 Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf S. Irudaya Rajan, Chitra Ranganathan and Sreelakshmi Ramachandran

Introduction Migration of Indians in large numbers to the Gulf countries has been a topic of great interest to academicians and policymakers for several years. The oil price hike of the 1970s and the consequent rise in revenues experienced by oil-producing countries in the Gulf fuelled an unprecedented boom in economic activity in these economies that continued for several years until recently. Gulf economies, which had historically suffered from a labour shortage, took in millions of emigrant workers with various levels and types of skill sets. The impressive strides achieved in recent decades by these economies, in terms of economic development and rising living standards, could not have been possible without the hard work and toil of these emigrant workers. Yet, it is a widely accepted fact that the working and living conditions of these migrant workers, especially the unskilled and semi-skilled workers from South Asia, remain dismal. The scholarship around Gulf migration from India has traditionally focused on the push and pull factors of migration, the impacts of migration on source countries’ economies via remittances, and other positive and negative economic consequences on both the source and destination countries (Zachariah, Rajan and Mathew 2001; Zachariah and Rajan 2012). A few studies have looked at the poor working and living conditions of migrant workers in the Gulf. However, a majority of these studies gather data on the experiences of emigrants and returned emigrants through a survey of households in source countries (For instance, see Zachariah, Rajan and Mathew 2001), and there is a general dearth of reliable empirical data on the conditions of migrant labourers in the Gulf (Gardner et al. 2013 cited in Diop, Le and Ewers 2017: 75). A few recent studies have highlighted the plight of migrant workers in several countries in the Gulf through fieldwork

Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf 295 in these countries – Zachariah, Prakash and Rajan (2004) studied the employment, wages and working conditions of Kerala emigrants in the UAE. Rajan, Prakash and Suresh (2016) looked at the wage differentials between Gulf and India. Rajan and Suresh (2017) presents findings from a field investigation of migrant Indian labour in the UAE and Qatar. Diop, Le and Ewers (2017) has a detailed study on the working and living conditions of migrant workers in the GCC. Several of the existing studies on Indian migration to the Gulf have focused on migration from Kerala – studies on migrants from other Indian states are few (Ranganathan 2017: 123). This study has collected and analysed primary data through a survey of 300 single male migrants from Tamil Nadu employed in the UAE. It sheds light on the working and living conditions of these migrant workers and their health aspects, and thereby contributes to this small but growing literature surrounding the experiences of migrant labourers in the Gulf. The study thus adds its findings to the growing debate on the conditions of migrant workers in the GCC – a topic that has caught immense global attention in recent years, especially since the 2022 FIFA World Cup is scheduled to be held in Qatar (Diop, Le and Ewers 2017: 75). The Gulf region has always been a top destination for Indian emigrants – the most recent estimates suggest that about 6.5 million Indians live in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries1 (World Bank 2014). The Government of India estimates suggest that there are about 9 million Indians in the Gulf with the UAE hosting the largest number of migrant Indians – around 3.2 million (Rajan and Joseph 2017: 163). These numbers indicate that the UAE has been the top destination country in the Gulf for Indian migrant labourers of all skill levels over the years. Moreover, Indians comprise around 30 percent of all professionals who have migrated to the UAE (Murthy 2015 cited in Naufal, Malit and Genc 2017: 65). This significant Indian migrant population in the UAE and also across the Gulf holds immense importance in policy debates. Their living and working conditions and overall wellbeing has become a great matter of concern not only for their own families in India but also for the larger Indian public. The recently published results of the Tamil Nadu Migration Survey 2015 (Rajan, D’Sami and Asir Raj 2017) provide rich insights into the trends in migration from Tamil Nadu. The top five destination countries for migrants from Tamil Nadu are in the Gulf region – the UAE, which accounts for 400,000 Tamil Nadu emigrants, is the favourite destination in the Gulf (Ibid.). In this context, a study of the conditions of these expatriates in the Gulf seems pertinent.

296  S Irudaya Rajan, et al. “Bachelors” in Gulf parlance refers to those expatriates who do not earn enough to bring their families with them. These men could be married or unmarried. They are usually employed in low-paying, lowskilled jobs. Being far away from their loved ones, they live in solitude and without much social interaction. This further adds gloom to their abysmal working and living conditions, leading to mental stress, trauma and a general lack of wellbeing. This study presents primary data collected on the living, working and health conditions of single male migrants from Tamil Nadu to Dubai in the UAE. A sample of 300 migrants were selected for the study. The sample included skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers in the construction, restaurant and tailoring enterprises. The sampling techniques used for the interviews were purposive sampling and snowball sampling. We first selected some respondents based on access and appropriateness, and the others were identified through relevant community networks. Crucial information on issues faced by migrant workers in the UAE, which is perceived to have laws that are not labour-sensitive, were collected based on migrant respondents themselves. A structured interview schedule was prepared to direct the conversations with all the respondents. After the initial queries, questions were left open-ended so that the respondents could share their personal experiences about their working and living conditions, health and overall wellbeing, and generally about their lives in the Gulf.

Socio-economic background of migrants surveyed Information regarding the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents – such as their age, gender, education, occupation, income, occupation before migration and reasons for migration – were collected for analysis. All the respondents were unmarried. Regarding the age of the respondents, the study finds that a majority of the respondents (62 percent) belonged to the age group of 26–27 years, while 22 percent belonged to the age group 28–32 years and the remaining belonged to the age group of 23–25 years. This trend is in line with the wellaccepted pattern on voluntary migration, as younger people (especially in the age group 20–30) are more likely to migrate than older people (Mostert 1998) – a pattern universally observed in modern countries. A majority of respondents (59 percent) were Hindus, while 30 percent were Muslims and the remaining Christians. This, again, conforms to the religious distribution of the Indian population. An overwhelming

Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf 297 majority of respondents (90.3 percent) belonged to backward communities, while only 6 percent of them belonged to the forward communities, and the remaining 3.7 percent belonged to the scheduled castes. Regarding the level of educational attainments of the respondents, a majority (81.7 percent) among them had below secondary level of education (having completed 6th to 9th standards), 11 percent had been educated to the level of primary education and the remaining (7.3 percent) had completed secondary or senior secondary education. The districts of origin of the respondents were divided into various zones as the migrants were from almost all the districts of Tamil Nadu.2 Thirty-six percent of the respondents migrated from southern districts to Gulf countries. One-fifth of them (20.3 percent) migrated from the northeastern zone as it is closer to the state capital. Next comes the western zone (17.7 percent) as it is closer to Kerala, which has traditionally seen large numbers of migrants to the Gulf region. 15 percent of the respondents migrated from Cauvery delta zone and the remaining (11 percent) of them migrated from the northwestern zone. A look at the employment status of the respondents before migration reveals that their financial condition was not so sound. Nearly twothirds of the respondents (65.7 percent) were employed before they migrated. These people were mostly employed in low-paying jobs in the construction sector, in shops, as mechanics, plumbers, electricians, vegetable vendors, hotel workers and in family-owned businesses. They are better skilled and have better job prospects than those who were unemployed before migration (28 percent) and those who were seasonally employed (6.7 percent) working as agricultural labourers, and in cloth and festival shops. Their incomes were irregular before migration and consequently they had no savings. The overall poor socio-economic background of these respondents, before migration, made them aspire for better income prospects leading them to migrate to the UAE. The majority of them left their previous jobs and migrated citing low salary at their workplaces in Tamil Nadu. The incomes they received were not sufficient to meet the household expenses and savings. Some significant proportion of the respondents (15.2 percent) decided to migrate to Gulf countries, as they were not able to save money for their future needs on the basis of the income they received in Tamil Nadu. Finally, less than one-tenth of them (9.2 percent) opined that their jobs were seasonal and irregular. The current occupational status of the respondents also needs mention. The unskilled migrants are recruited to work as attendants in supermarkets, to lay pipes and cables on construction sites, to sweep

298  S Irudaya Rajan, et al. streets, to cook in restaurants, to look after children, and to serve in households as domestic help. Thirty-one percent of the respondents were working as office assistants. This included peons, phone operators, file maintenance, etc. More than one-fifth of the respondents (20.7 percent) worked as electrician, helper or machine operator in workshops, construction sites and offices. Fourteen percent of them worked in construction sites performing task like laying pipes and cables, digging, construction, etc. Less than 13 percent of them worked as shops as assistants and the remaining percent of them worked as cooks in restaurants, attendants in supermarkets, farm workers, security job and as domestic help. In the year 2011, the wages of the unskilled workers were fixed at the level of 950 AED to 1,400 AED3 according to the nature of the work. More than half of the respondents (54.3 percent) received 1,000 AED (approximately Rs.17,000) as monthly salary. Seventeen percent of them received 1,200 AED, less than one-tenth of them received 1,100 AED, eight percent of them received 1,300 AED, six percent of them receiving 1,400 AED and only a few of them received 950 AED as they were working either as domestic help or some other unskilled jobs. Further the respondents opined that they were able to save 600 AED to 700 AED every month. Their main expenses were food (250 AED) and some emergency expenses (50 AED). When the respondents were asked about their present job conditions, a majority of them (72 percent) opined that their jobs were regular, they received a good salary and that they were able to save for their future life in spite of the difficult working and living conditions they were in. Others opined that the job was manageable (4 percent), some of them (2.6 percent) said that their working hours were regulated and that they had job security, especially in recent years due to the intervention of the United Nations and the Government of India.

Working conditions The male workers from Tamil Nadu, who were interviewed, were working under the sponsorship system. Twenty-nine percent of the labourers said that they had no contact with their sponsors. Fortyfive percent among them claimed that they were semi-literate and that they were often asked to do unpaid extra-contractual duties. Sponsors referred to instances where well-qualified expatriates conducted fraud, by cheating their employers, and fled. However, there were also some cases the employers were harsh and inhuman in their dealings with the

Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf 299 labourers, especially in paying financial dues and granting exit permits to travel to their home country. Recruitment processes constitute a serious hurdle for those migrating to the Gulf. A majority of the respondents got their jobs through their family members, relatives and friends already working in the UAE. The remaining respondents (39.7 percent) took the help of recruitment agencies. All the respondents had worked for more than five years in various GCC countries. This makes the data particularly relevant as these experienced workers could better respond to questions, thereby providing us a more accurate picture of the working and living conditions of migrant workers in the UAE. All the respondents had signed their work contracts with the employer before migration. A majority of the respondents (63 percent) were aware of the terms of the contract, salary, mode of payment, facilities provided by the employer, etc., at the time of joining. However, a significant proportion (37 percent) was not aware of the clauses mentioned in the contract. They had put their signatures on the contract following directions from the agent or referrer without any idea about the particulars of the contract. Most of the respondents (88.7 percent) were working in Indian establishments in the UAE such as hotels, construction companies, business units, shops and farm houses. Some significant proportions of the respondents were working in UAE-based construction companies. Very few respondents (1.3 percent) were working in MNCs. The new labour regulations in the UAE provide workers one holiday a week, an annual leave, a maximum eight-hour work day, and the right to live outside their employer’s house. Apart from the regular work, if a worker is interested, he can work extra hours for which he will be paid. Most of the respondents said that they were willing to work overtime as they were single male emigrants living without family and thus were eager to save more. About three-fifths of the respondents were working two extra hours for which they were paid 150 AED to 300 AED. About 20 percent worked one extra hour when they were requested to do so. The remaining did not work overtime. Most of the migrants were facing health issues while working. A few of them, who were working as administrative/office assistants, reported no medical problems. The most serious injuries do receive medical care; the employer pays for transportation to the hospital and for medical expenses, which labourers must repay upon recovery – thereby increasing their debt. Both local and foreign contractors have

300  S Irudaya Rajan, et al. been evading important safety regulations that protect construction workers, citing workers’ inexperience and language problems as reasons behind accidents and injuries.

Living conditions All the respondents were residing in labour camps provided by the employer – in Dubai’s two largest camps, Al Quoz and Sonapor. The term “labour camp” is broadly used in the Gulf countries to refer to a wide variety of accommodations provided to labourers. In those camps, male labourers typically live as six to eight individuals per room, although these numbers vary significantly. Although labourers were usually unable to choose their accommodation, within the camp they were generally free to form groups and choose roommates. Labourers typically sought roommates with whom they could easily communicate. Interestingly, the communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims that are widespread in South Asia were largely absent in these labour camps. As the respondents have noted, the difficult working conditions they often face allow no time or energy to get involved in these conflicts. The rent and transportation to workplace is generally provided by the employer. The living quarters, toilets and other amenities do not comply with standard regulations on health and hygiene. The lack of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities have adverse health consequences for the migrants. Normally an average labourer spent 250 AED to 350 AED for the food provided by the contractors in the labour camps. Those who work in restaurants get free food. The respondents also reported that the food provided to them was often disappointing and that packed meals often got stale or spoiled. The respondents who earned 1,000 AED were able to save 600 to 700 AED on an average. The salaries are credited to the employees’ bank accounts. All the respondents indicated that they do not enjoy much social life or freedom. As they reside far away from their loved ones, it is their roommates who function as family. They do not spend much money on entertainment since they try to save as much as possible in order to send money to their families in India. Peer groups play a major role in sustaining these migrants while they toil in distant lands. The numerous expatriates’ organisations, formed on ethnic, religious, political and regional lines, meet regularly. They arrange cultural events and gatherings in order to foster a sense of bonhomie and togetherness.

Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf 301 They bring leaders and artists from India and arrange several celebrations around annual festivals. All these are intended for migrants to build networks and friendships, and to keep their ties with their home countries strong.

Health conditions The dismal working and living conditions often adversely affected the health of migrant labourers. Occupational diseases are rampant among those who work under harsh and dangerous conditions – for instance labourers working in quarries, construction sites and mines suffer from lung diseases and other ailments. As safety regulations are often not followed by employers, accidents are common at workplaces. From the interviews of migrant labourers, it was evident that there was a remarkable deterioration in their health condition after migration to the UAE. Most respondents (96.6 percent) did not report any medical problems before their migration to the UAE. This is not surprising, as these people belonged to the younger age group. A few respondents suffered from asthma, hypertension and diabetes. However, their health steadily deteriorated after migration – the major health problems faced by them were stomach pain, urinary infection, asthma and skin allergy problems. Many attributed their health problems to the dismal living conditions in the labour camps – especially poor sanitation, lack of safe drinking water and unhealthy food. The sedentary lifestyle and lack of exercise (except for those engaged in manual labour) further contributed to an overall decline in health. The employees were given the mandatory health cards – still the medicines were costly. Only a tiny proportion (5.4 percent) said that they did not face any health issue while they were trying to get acclimatised to their newly-adopted country. Lack of access to hospitals was a major worry for these labourers especially because of the non-implementation of worker safety measures at worksites. Government health cards, mandatorily given to migrant labourers, provided them with access to public hospitals. Thirty percent of the respondents did not have a government health card. Though 70 percent of the respondents possessed health cards, the card took care of only minor health issues requiring consultation of a general physician. Any expense due to health complications that require the consultation of a specialist doctor needed to be met by the workers themselves. Most of the respondents agreed that medical treatment in the UAE was very costly.

302  S Irudaya Rajan, et al.

Summary This study set out to explore the working, living and health conditions of Indian migrant workers in the Gulf – especially the group known in Gulf parlance as “bachelors”. With increased media attention and public outcry at the dismal conditions and exploitation of migrant labourers in Gulf countries, such a study would make a significant contribution to the growing debate around migration to the Gulf. Informed by the existing literature, the study was undertaken with a sample of 300 single male migrant workers from Tamil Nadu currently employed in the UAE. Based on detailed interviews with each of the respondents, crucial information regarding their working, living and health conditions was collected. The working conditions of the respondents, who were under the sponsorship system in the UAE, were found to be far less than optimal. Visits to the two largest labour camps in Dubai, Al Quoz and Sonapor, where all the respondents were accommodated, revealed the abysmal living conditions of these migrants. A study of the health conditions of the respondents too indicated that much needs to be done in order to ensure the overall wellbeing of these workers. Policymakers, both in India and the UAE, need to act proactively to ensure that every migrant labourer is able to lead a life of dignity. This would require active and meaningful negotiations by the Indian missions in the Gulf countries with the governments to ensure that Indian expatriates, especially the ones living in labour camps, are able to access crucial public services. Employers need to be held accountable for security lapses at worksites and lack of basic facilities in labour camps. A comprehensive review of labour regulations and their effective implementation is key.

Notes 1 The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a regional grouping of six Arab states in the Persian Gulf – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. 2 Northeastern zone (Kancheepuram, Chennai, Thiruvallur, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Vellore and Thiruvannamalai); northwestern zone (Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Salem and Namakkal); western zone (Erode, Coimbatore, Nilgris, Tiruppur, Karur, Dindigul and Karur); Cauvery delta zone (Tiruchi, Perambalur, AriyalurPudukottai Thanjavur, Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur); southern zone (Madurai, Sivagangai, Theni, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Kanyakumari). 3 At the time of writing, 1 United Arab Emirates Dirham (AED) was equivalent to Rs.17.268 or USD 0.27229.

Experiences of Indian “bachelors” in the Gulf 303

References Diop, Abdoulaye, Kien Trung Le, and Michael C. Ewers. 2017. “Working and living conditions of migrant workers in the GCC.” In India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 75–89. New Delhi: Routledge. Gardner, A., S. Pessoa, A. Diop, K. Al-Ghanim, K. TrungLe, and L. Harkness. 2013. “A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar.” Journal of Arabian Studies 3(1): 1–17. Mostert, W. P. 1998. Demography: Textbook for the South African Student. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Naufal, George S., Froilan T. Malit Jr, and Ismail H. Genc. 2017. “Contemporary Indian labour migration in the GCC region.” In India Migration Report 2016, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 63–74. New Delhi: Routledge. Rajan, S. Irudaya, Bernard D’Sami, and S. Samuel Asir Raj. 2017. “Tamil Nadu Migration Survey 2015.” Economic and Political Weekly, May 27: 85–94. Rajan, S. Irudaya, and Jolin Joseph. 2017. “Gulf migration in a time of regulation: Do migration controls and labour market restrictions in Saudi Arabia produce irregularity?” In India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 162–183. New Delhi: Routledge. Rajan, S. Irudaya, B. A. Prakash, and Arya Suresh. 2016. “Wage differentials between Indian migrant workers in the Gulf and non-migrant workers in India.” In India Migration Report 2015: Gender and Migration, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 297–310. New Delhi: Routledge. Rajan, S. Irudaya, and Arya Suresh. 2017. “Institutional strengthening of the offices of labour attaches of India in Gulf: Field experiences from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.” In India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 48–62. New Delhi: Routledge. Ranganathan, Chitra. 2017. “Tamil emigrants in the United Arab Emirates.” In India Migration Report 2016: Gulf Migration, by S. Irudaya Rajan, 122– 132. New Delhi: Routledge. World Bank. 2014. Migration and Remittances Data. Washington, DC: World Bank. Zachariah, K. C., and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2012. Kerala’s Gulf Connection, 1998–2011. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Zachariah, K. C., S. Irudaya Rajan, and E. T. Mathew. 2001. “Impact of Migration on Kerala’s Economy and Society.” International Migration 39: 63–87. Zachariah, K. C., B. A. Prakash, and S. Irudaya Rajan. 2004. “Indian Workers in UAE: Employment, Wages and Working Conditions.” Economic and Political Weekly, May 29: 2227–2234.

19 Impact of migration on contemporary demographic transformation in Kerala S. Irudaya Rajan and K. C. Zachariah

Introduction The change in fertility behaviour has twisted the shape of the family all over the world. The average family size around the world ranges from two to nine persons per household (United Nations, 2017). According to United Nations (2017), the total fertility rate or average child born to a woman during their reproductive span is 2.5 globally. Enrolment of females in education as well as employment has improved the situation. In India, the TFR improved to 2.4 in 2011 from 5.4 in the 1970s. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (2015–16), India’s TFR has further declined to 2.2. India is the first country in the world that has adopted family planning policies, even in 1952. The compulsory sterilisation in the 1970s made the situation worse. Female sterilisation has been accepted as a practical method by most people. However, the practice is still not common in many areas in India. As a result, some northern states show very high fertility rates in contrast to the low fertility rates in southern parts of India. Kerala, the southernmost part of India has a good history of reducing the fertility rate by practicing family planning methods. After the 1970s, the birth rate of Kerala decreased tremendously and currently TFR of Kerala is 1.6, which is below the replacement level (2.1) (Guilmoto and Rajan, 2002; 2013). In this context, it is to be analysed whether the family planning practices alone are responsible for reducing the fertility rate of Kerala or whether there are any other factors at play? Is there any impact of migration on the fertility of Kerala?

Theme The history of migration from Kerala to the Middle East tells us the real picture of how the fertility rate can be changed among the migrant

Impact of migration 305 households. The migrants moved away to other places in search of their livelihood and for their survival at their prime youth. If it is a single migration of married males, this can be directly affected their fertility behaviour as the wives are left behind at the place of origin. The environmental factors and lifestyles in Gulf countries have defined their fertility achievements. The discussion in this chapter is whether there is any difference in completed fertility among migrant and nonmigrant households. The hypothesis states that there will definitely be a difference between the migrant and non-migrant families in Kerala in terms of their fertility behaviour. In Kerala, in recent years, the younger generation prefers a good career to enhance their living standards to an early marriage. Even though they achieved a good career, they prefer to enjoy the single life for a while. This results in a postponement of marriage and their accomplishment of family formation. If they migrated to other countries for better opportunities, the situation will be more depressing for their parents in the origin countries as they wish a new family for their children. Zachariah et al. (2003) explained this situation – once they migrate, innumerable obstacles would stand in the way of their getting married and having children leading to an increase in the age at marriage and reduce the number of children desired by them. The study also said that large family is burdensome to a migrant couple in many ways – it increases the cost of living, the costs of children’s education and consumption behaviour. As a result, a migrant’s desired family size is smaller than that of anon-migrant. But this situation is different for some of the well-settled families – those who can look after children will produce more children. Easterlin and Crimmins (1985) hypothesise that increased income would lead to an increased demand in children; while a rise in the relative prices of inputs required for children would lead to substitution against both child quantity and quality. The migration study done by Zachariah et al. (2003) examined the difference of migrant and non-migrant families in accordance with their fertility status. They found that the standardised measures of fertility, controlled for age and sex characteristics, are lower among the migrant households and that migration has a negative impact on fertility. But in the case of age at marriage of women, it was 18.3 years in migrant households and 19.3 years in non-migrant households. The lower average age at marriage among migrant households has a possibility to increase the fertility. In addition to this, there was a lower rate of use of family planning practices among migrant households. This chapter enquires whether there is any difference in the reasons

306  S. Irudaya Rajan and K. C. Zachariah described in earlier studies in the fertility behaviour of migrant and non-migrant families.

Relevance with review of literature It is evident from Kerala Migration Surveys that the main impact of migration in Kerala is on education and healthcare. The consumption behaviour is an after-effect of migration and remittances. There are many factors that affect the fertility of migrants compared to that of non-migrants. Zachariah (1968) explained factors such as physical separation of husbands from wives, changes in age at marriage and changes in marital fertility. As a result, the Keralites limited their number of children and gave good education and healthcare to them by consuming household possessions and developed a high-quality lifestyle. Most of the emigrants followed this way and some non-migrants imitated these people and followed the same way. The impact of these remittances at the household and national levels have been shown to increase child education (Edwards et al., 2003) and expenditures on healthcare (Ponce et al., 2011). Many studies in India have shown that migrants are more active, dynamic, educated and belong to higher socio-economic levels; they probably exhibit lower fertility (Singh, 1986). They acted as agents of familial and social change at the place of origin (Kapur, 2010), thus demographic transformation could be a potential feature of this change. Religion-specific studies related to contraceptive use and fertility have been done by the researchers in India. Among the women, Muslim women using contraception at lower proportions than their Hindu counterparts (Moulasha and Rao, 1999). Though the fertility is very high among this group, it is expected that the absence of husband would influence a woman’s decision to use contraception. Migration of men has a vital role in the demographic transformation of Kerala.

Objectives 1 To analyse the number of alive children among currently married women by current age and total effective fertility rate in migrant and non-migrant households. 2 To identify the sex preference of the currently married women in the migrant and non-migrant households. 3 To compare currently married women who have completed their fertility in migrant and non-migrant households along with their demographic, social and economic status.

Impact of migration 307

Data and methodology The Kerala migration survey 2013, funded by State Planning Board, Government of Kerala, collected the information about the currently married women in the reproductive age group 18–49 years irrespective of migrant and non-migrant households. For the purpose of analysis, the women in this age group are divided into two groups – women in the migrant households and in the non-migrant households. The fertility behaviour of women in these two types of households is analysed. The survey has collected information about 10,298 women in the age group 18–49 years from 8,908 households in Kerala. About 43 percent of the women were from migrant households and the remaining were from non-migrant households. Among the currently married women, 25.3 percent were permanently sterilised in the migrant households whereas, in non-migrant households it was 27.6 percent. Bivariate analysis has been done to find out the difference in fertility behaviour of migrant and non-migrant households. To find out the significance of relation between the currently married women among the two types of households according to their educational status, occupational status and standard of living bivariate correlation have been carried out. The variables selected for the analysis was the women who have completed their fertility in the migrant and nonmigrant households, their house ownership, age, religion, education, work status, household assets, number of male children and number of female children.

Analysis The modern values such as proportion of women who desire a small family size and the proportion of women who adopt family planning are emphasised in this section. The age-specific fertility rate of currently married women among migrant and non-migrant households is shown in Figure 19.1. It considers the number of births during 2013–2014 period for the currently married women of both types of households. Generally, child bearing in Kerala is confined to a shorter span of a woman’s reproductive period. Most of the women give birth to their children between the age of 20 and 40 years in which the peak interval is 20–29 years (Figure 19.1). Most of the women in migrant households have an early child-bearing at the age of 20–24 years whereas women in non-migrant households had children at a later age, at the age of 25–29 years. Thus migrant households have early child-bearing behaviour and non-migrant households have late child-bearing behaviour.

40.0 35.0 30.0

Migrant HH

25.0 No-migrant HH

20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0