The sustainable development goals and skilled migration: A review and Agenda

Raghuram, Parvati (2024). The sustainable development goals and skilled migration: A review and Agenda. In: Piper, Nicola and Datta, Kavita eds. The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Edward Elgar, pp. 112–124.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802204513.00016

Abstract

Skills are seen as an important driver of development and are repeatedly referenced in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Safe migration also appears, for the first time, as a goal; but the SDGs largely ignore skilled mobility. This chapter reviews the SDGs that impinge on skilled mobility: work, education, technology and health. It also explores cross-cutting issues such as gender and how these play out in relation to skilled mobility. The chapter ends by offering a research and policy agenda for future research on the intersection between development and skilled mobility. First, it suggests that focusing on skilled mobility highlights the constitutive role of mobility to skills and development and the limits of nation-based goals. Second, the SDGs fail to question the racial capitalism that underpins contemporary development. The chapter ends by suggesting that skilled migration provides a lens to understand the contradictions between the SDGs and the economic base through which they are to be achieved.