Short-term fix or remedy for market failure? Immigration policy as a distinct source of skills

Abstract

This article analyses the role of immigration policy as a distinct source of skills supply in liberal market economies. It draws upon interviews with representatives of employer associations and trade unions in the Australian construction and hospitality industries to identify how labour market actors make sense of the function of immigration policy. Rather than ‘complementing’ or ‘undermining’ training and other domestic labour market institutions, as is often assumed, immigration policy can serve to remedy the systemic failures of these institutions to supply skills in the short term. However, overreliance on immigration can disincentivise reform of the labour market institutions necessary to generate adequate skills supply in the long term. The findings suggest the need to reconceptualise the function of immigration policy in terms of its distinct rather than equivalent functions to labour market institutions. © 2023 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Not provided

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Work and Organisational Studies, The University of Sydney Business School, Sydney, NSW, Australia

UCD College of Business, Dublin, Leinster, Ireland

Funding & Acknowledgements

Australian Research Council, ARC

Grant: DE170101060

Funding text 1: Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Migration Working Group, the Human Resource Management & Employment Relations Group at King's Business School, the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, the 2022 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio‐Economics, and the 2022 European Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association. The authors are grateful for audience feedback from those presentations. The research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170101060). Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Sydney, as part of the Wiley ‐ The University of Sydney agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.; Funding text 2: Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Migration Working Group, the Human Resource Management & Employment Relations Group at King's Business School, the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, the 2022 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and the 2022 European Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association. The authors are grateful for audience feedback from those presentations. The research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170101060). Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Sydney, as part of the Wiley - The University of Sydney agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

University of Sydney, USYD

Funding text 1: Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Migration Working Group, the Human Resource Management & Employment Relations Group at King's Business School, the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, the 2022 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio‐Economics, and the 2022 European Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association. The authors are grateful for audience feedback from those presentations. The research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170101060). Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Sydney, as part of the Wiley ‐ The University of Sydney agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.; Funding text 2: Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Migration Working Group, the Human Resource Management & Employment Relations Group at King's Business School, the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, the 2022 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and the 2022 European Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association. The authors are grateful for audience feedback from those presentations. The research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170101060). Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Sydney, as part of the Wiley - The University of Sydney agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

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Short-term fix or remedy for market failure? Immigration policy as a distinct source of skills

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