Promoting return and circular migration of the highly skilled

Migration of skilled workers from developing countries has increased substantially in recent years. Traditionally, such patterns raised fears on the ground of the associated 'brain drain' as human capital formation is considered to be of central importance to the development and reduction of poverty levels. Therefore, any loss of skilled workers through migration was considered harmful to the achievement of development goals. In contrast, the new body of literature emphasizes the positive incentive and feedback effects which skilled migration has on sending countries' development as well as on other stakeholders. While most papers on the impacts of migration on development focus on remittances and low-skilled migration, we emphasize the effects of skilled return migrants which bring about the transfer of knowledge and skills. This paper examines five levels of policy concerning the mobility of skilled workers. Because of their differing positions, we examine the position of sending and receiving countries with regard to skilled migration separately. We look at receiving country policies, sending country policies, bilateral approaches, regional approaches and global approaches. This paper first explores what options are theoretically discussed at the five levels of analysis. Secondly, we observe what kinds of policies are actually used in practice and which policies show some evidence of success. We also systematically discuss the advantages and disadvantages (or limitations) of each policy option.return migration, highly skilled, migration, immigration, skilled migration, developing countries, human capital, skills

A historical perspective on immigration and social protection in the Netherlands

Immigrant access to social protection in the Netherlands has changed quite markedly over time. This paper discusses the changes from an historical perspective and introduces a theoretical framework (the Welfare Pentagon) explaining how immigrants cope with (economic) hardship when they do not have access to formal social protection. The relationship between migrants and social protection in the Netherlands has been and still is marked by asymmetries in entitlements and contributions (taxes). Shifting notions of fairness throughout time to both documented and undocumented migrants are noticed and interpreted.immigration, migration, social protection, social security

Synthesis of Research on the Common Core State Standards and Dyscalculia

This thesis analyzed the implications for instruction under the newly adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the effects they have on students with dyscalculia. The CCSS is an educational initiative created for students to succeed in their academic endeavors through college and their professional careers. Correlations were found in the research between the instructional implications under the CCSS and intervention strategies for students with dyscalculia. Parents, teachers and students were interviewed as evidence to verify this correlation

Dyadic analyses of daily interactions: Effects of perceived social support and social control on physical activity behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of daily perceived social support and social control receipt, as well as the effects of partner reports of provided social support and control, on daily physical activity. Couples completed 14 daily diary surveys measuring social support and social control provided to the romantic partner and received from the romantic partner, as well as a self-report measure of daily exercise minutes. During this 14-day period, participants were also asked to wear a Fitbit Zip to track their daily physical activity. Men and women demonstrated different patterns of effects for social support and social control for the three outcome variables: daily steps, daily active minutes, and daily exercise minutes. For women, support received from a partner was a significant predictor of more exercise for all outcomes, while for men it only significantly predicted self-reported exercise. Partner-reported provided support only significantly predicted more daily exercise minutes for men. There were no significant effects of received social control, but partner-reported social control provision predicted more daily steps and active minutes for men. This study provides a better understanding of how daily social support and social control might influence health-promoting behaviors, such as physical activity

Equal Protection in Dobbs and Beyond: How States Protect Life Inside and Outside of the Abortion Context

In two paragraphs at the beginning of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court rejected the Equal Protection Clause as an alternative ground for the abortion right. As the parties had not asserted an equal protection claim on which the Court could rule, Justice Alito cited an amicus brief we co-authored demonstrating that Mississippi’s abortion ban violated the Equal Protection Clause, and, in dicta, stated that precedents foreclosed the brief’s arguments. Yet, Justice Alito did not address a single equal protection case or argument on which the brief relied. Instead, he cited Geduldig v. Aiello, a 1974 case decided before the Court extended heightened scrutiny to sex-based state action—a case our brief shows has been superseded by United States v. Virginia and Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs. Justice Alito’s claim to address equal protection precedents without discussing any of these decisions suggests an unwillingness to recognize the last half century of sex equality law—a spirit that finds many forms of expression in the opinion’s due process analysis. Equality challenges to abortion bans preceded Roe, and will continue in courts and politics long after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In this Essay we discuss our amicus brief in Dobbs, demonstrating that Mississippi’s ban on abortions after fifteen weeks violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and show how its equality-based arguments open up crucial conversations that extend far beyond abortion. Our brief shows how the canonical equal protection cases United States v. Virginia and Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs extend to the regulation of pregnancy, providing an independent constitutional basis for abortion rights. As we show, abortion bans classify by sex. Equal protection requires the government to justify this discrimination: to explain why it could not employ less restrictive means to achieve its ends, especially when using discriminatory means perpetuates historic forms of group-based harm. Mississippi decided to ban abortion, choosing sex-based and coercive means to protect health and life; at the same time the state consistently refused to enact safety-net policies that offered inclusive, noncoercive means to achieve the same health- and life-protective ends. Our brief asks: Could the state have pursued these same life- and health-protective ends with more inclusive, less coercive strategies? This inquiry has ramifications in courts, in legislatures, and in the court of public opinion. Equal protection focuses the inquiry on how gender, race, and class may distort decisions about protecting life and health, within and outside the abortion context. There are many forms of equal protection argument, and this family of arguments can play a role in congressional and executive enforcement of constitutional rights, in the enforcement of equality provisions of state constitutions, and in ongoing debate about proper shape of family life in our constitutional democracy. Equal protection may also have the power to forge new coalitions as it asks hard questions about the kinds of laws that protect the health and life of future generations and that enable families to flourish

Profiling Ethiopian migration: a comparison of characteristics of ethiopian migrants to Africa, the middle east and the north

This paper provides an overview of the different characteristics of migrants from Ethiopia to three different migration destinations: (1) northern countries, (2) other African countries, and (3) the Middle East. The paper is based on a recent household survey of 1,286 migrant, non-migrant and return migrant households in Ethiopia. First, the results show that the characteristics of the migrants and their origin households differ depending on migration destination. Secondly, the increased migration flows to Africa and the Middle East in recent decades have played an important role in reshaping the profile of Ethiopian migrants. Furthermore, the results show that current Ethiopian migration flows coincide with some of the current global migration trends but at the same time contrast some of the overall migration figures representing Africa

Equal Protection and Abortion: Brief of Equal Protection Constitutional Law Scholars Serena Mayeri, Melissa Murray, and Reva Siegel as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization

Equal Protection changes the questions we ask about abortion restrictions. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an amicus brief filed on our behalf demonstrated that Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The brief continues a tradition of equality arguments that preceded Roe v. Wade and will continue, in new forms, after Dobbs. Our brief shows how the canonical equal protection cases United States v. Virginia and Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs extend to the regulation of pregnancy, hence provide an independent constitutional basis for abortion rights. Under equal protection, government must give reasons why it is better served regulating by group-based rather than facially neutral means, especially when group-based laws perpetuate historic forms of group-based harm. As we show, Mississippi decided to ban abortion, choosing sex-based and coercive means to protect health and life at the same time that the state was refusing to enact safety-net policies that offered inclusive, noncoercive means to achieve the same health- and life-protective ends. Why? Asking equal protection questions may move decision makers in federal and state venues, as well as in politics where, over time, equality claims have the potential to enable new intersectional forms of coalition and to transform the conversation about the meaning of our values and our practices, inside and outside the abortion context. Part I of our brief shows how, in the decades after Roe, equal protection doctrine has evolved to include laws regulating pregnancy. Most recognize that Justice Ginsburg’s landmark opinion in United States v. Virginia restates the equal protection framework with attention to securing equality for the sexes across differences. Virginia is the Court’s first equal protection decision to consider laws regulating pregnancy as sex-based state action subject to “skeptical scrutiny.” We consider abortion laws under Virginia’s framework, which requires states to defend sex-based laws by showing (1) that the use of sex classifications is substantially related to achieving important government ends, for reasons not reduceable to generalizations about the sexes and (2) laws employing sex classifications may not “be used, as they once were, to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.” Following Virginia, we analyze the Mississippi abortion statute in both a historical and a policy context. Part II of the brief demonstrates that Mississippi’s claims to protect both women and the unborn by singling out women and compelling pregnancy reason from sex-role stereotypes about women (the statute terms them “maternal patients”) that were employed in the nineteenth-century campaign to ban abortion and its modern successors. This might be sufficient to establish an equal protection violation, but we go further to demonstrate how these traditional sex-role assumptions distort Mississippi’s approach to protecting unborn life. Part III of the brief examines Mississippi reasons for employing sex-based coercive laws to protect health and life. The brief shows that Mississippi targeted women resisting motherhood for coercive abortion restrictions while refusing to enact numerous policies, many federally funded, that provided non-coercive and nondiscriminatory alternatives by which the State could have protected life and health—such as comprehensive sex education and access to contraception; Medicaid expansion; public benefits and child-care assistance. Did the state endeavor to protect health and life by helping those who seek its assistance—either in avoiding pregnancy or in raising healthy families—before singling out for coercion those who violated sex-role stereotypes? Given this historical and policy context, under Virginia Mississippi has failed to offer an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for the means it chose to protect health and life. The abortion ban it adopted enforces a sex-based and coercive classification that re-entrenches stereotypes and “perpetuate[s] the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.” Part IV concludes by anticipating—and rejecting—claims that abortion bans promote equality by preventing abortion from being used for eugenic purposes. We distinguish between laws that protect individual choice and laws that promote eugenics by limiting reproductive freedom in order to control the demographic character of the community. We offer historical illustrations of campaigns for eugenics, including Mississippi’s history of sterilizing women of color as punishment for nonmarital childbearing and with attention to the racial identity of the community. Efforts to associate abortion rights with eugenics blame women for state policies—many surveyed in our brief—that perpetuate the very conditions in which growing numbers of poor women and women of color decide to end their pregnancies. Analyzing abortion restrictions in this larger policy context, our brief asks, how is this mix of policies—favored by states banning abortion—pro-life? How might the characteristics of the persons the state is regulating have shaped Mississippi’s choice of coercive rather than supportive strategies to protect health and life