Overview

This study aims to understand how the overall motivations and plans among prospective and actual English-speaking and French-speaking highly skilled migrants and international students immigrating to Canada are shaped by uncertainty and risk, and in particular the global pandemic. The research will examine the interaction between migrants’ aspirations and their capacity to migrate when faced with the challenges of the global pandemic. The project will also consider how highly skilled migrants’ and international students’ migration decisions are influenced by specific factors such as the socio-demographic and cultural characteristics of a migrant, their psychological and emotional condition, and the state of the labour market and the effectiveness of policies and services designed to support them.

This research focuses on three cohorts of highly skilled migrants (and their families) who are seeking to migrate to Canada:

1. High-skilled people applying from abroad for permanent residency programs, a study permit, or a work permit for a highly skilled occupation.
2. Highly skilled foreign workers based in Canada and holding a temporary work permit.
3. International students and post-graduates based in Canada and holding a study or work permit.

Applying a comparative lens between these three highly skilled migrant groups, the project will produce new, first-hand knowledge of how the global pandemic has shaped each group’s decision-making – to come, stay, delay, or speed up immigration moves.

The findings of this study will offer guidance to Canadian policymakers on how to attract and retain English-speaking and French-speaking highly skilled migrants and international graduates after the aftermath of the pandemic. It will also inform service providers and other stakeholders on what adaptations they may need to consider in the post-pandemic times. Given the study’s focus on the uncertainty created by health-related factors, it will complement other studies seeking to understand the impact of regional epidemics (such as HIV or Ebola) on migrant decision-making.

1. What are the social, economic, and policy factors that influence the decision-making of different groups of English-speaking and French-speaking high-skilled migrants who seek to migrate to Canada under uncertain conditions?
2. What role can government and non-government stakeholders play to attract and retain English-speaking and French-speaking high-skilled migrants to ensure socio-economic and demographic growth during the post-pandemic recovery period?

As the Covid-19 pandemic has unfolded around the world, the importance of migration and mobility, and their challenges and opportunities, have become dramatically visible. We have witnessed the unprecedented decision made by countries like Canada to close borders to both highly skilled migrants and visitors, while at the same time, bringing in migrant workers in agriculture and care work under emergency arrangements. The highly skilled migrants, for which post-industrial countries are generally competing, have been left stranded at their origin even if they had completed their paperwork and had job offers waiting for them. Other such highly skilled professionals are to be found in the destination country with insecure status as their immigration applications have been held up in the pandemic emergency.

For Canada, the pandemic only posed short-term challenges with regards to border restrictions and quarantine arrangements aimed at protecting public health, but it also raised important medium and long-term risks to the supply of skilled immigration, which is a vital element in the country’s socio-economic and demographic growth. Annual targets have been severely affected by the border closures hence immigration policy has turned to those who were already in the country with temporary permits, facilitating their transition to permanent status. As Canada welcomed a record-breaking 431,645 people as permanent residents in 2022 and aims to welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025, migrant labour is likely to be at the forefront of the economic recovery, whether through the foreign talent required for technological or social innovation or the migrant labour force that is needed to fill jobs in the essential sectors of the economy.

In this disrupted COVID-19 world, understanding better the drivers of highly skilled migration and international student mobility and how uncertainties and risks, such as those experienced in the global pandemic, are affecting the decision-making of English-speaking and French-speaking highly skilled migrants and international students is key to supporting Canada’s future immigration plans, economic recovery, and demographic sustainability.

Outcomes

Upon its completion, this project will have:

• created new interdisciplinary knowledge, bringing together sociological, psychological, and health sciences perspectives to better understand the decision-making of highly skilled migrants during a pandemic crisis.
• produced new methodological innovation, combining social psychology experiments with more ‘traditional’ sociological tools such as qualitative interviews, focus groups, and quantitative tools such as an online survey.
• formulated a novel theoretical approach, integrating macro (i.e., social, economic, and political), meso (i.e., networks and culture), and micro (i.e., family situation and individual elements such as hope, aspirations, and imaginaries) in decision-making processes of highly skilled migrants. 
• provided recommendations to Canadian policymakers and immigration service providers on how to attract and retain English-speaking and French-speaking highly skilled migrants during the pandemic and its aftermath.
• enhanced public awareness about the vulnerability of highly skilled temporary migrants and international students in Canada, and how gender, ethnicity, and race influence such vulnerability and may shape migrant decision-making.