International Migration Institute

Saara Koikkalainen presents her paper 'Highly skilled migrants and the European mobility industry' in Parallel session IV(D) of the conference Examining Migration Dynamics: Networks and Beyond, 24-26 Sept 2013 The paper examines intra-European mobility and migrant agency from the perspective of highly skilled migrants, namely Finns working abroad in other EU15 countries. It is based on a web survey titled Working in Europe (n=364) conducted in 2008, its continuation in 2010 (n=194) and 18 migrant interviews (2011). The paper draws on Karen O'Reilly's (2012) practice theory for international migration. It focuses on understanding highly skilled mobility in Europe through an analysis of the external, macro level structures that ease or impede mobility, as well as the internal, micro level structures that affect the mobility behaviour of this particular migrant group. At the meso level the paper introduces a novel concept of mobility industry, which helps facilitate intra-European mobility. The term migration i