Mobility of skilled professionals: A Indo-French perspective

Abstract

The study aims to bring a holistic perspective of mobility of skilled professionals between India and France. For the purpose of the project, we define skilled professionals as the most knowledgeable and educated class of workforce who graduate with professional degrees and take up roles across sectors like IT, Pharma, Engineering, Research, Services and Manufacturing. The scope of the project is to focus on skilled professionals associated with IT and Engineering sector. We define migration in line with the “Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration” by the United Nations Statistics Division (1998) as follows: - Long-term migrants are persons who move to a country other than that of their usual residence for a period of at least one year, so that the country of destination effectively becomes their new country of usual residence - Short-term migrants are persons who move to a country other than that of their usual residence for a period of at least three months but less than one year except in cases where the movement to that country is for purposes of recreation, holiday, visits to friends and relatives, business, medical treatment, or religious pilgrimage

Key Objectives: 1) Understand the following: a. Is there a need for skilled labor in France?. b. Is there capacity in India to provide skilled labor to France? 2) How much of the need of skilled labor is met today? If the need is not met, what are the likely reasons? How can we effectively address the issues?.

Need for the proposed work: Labor market deficit, in terms of skilled labor to meet the growing demand from businesses, is a pressing concern for France. The possible routes for labor migration to France are European countries as well as third world countries. The current migration policy framework of France concentrates on using skilled migrants (whether short-term or long-term) to fill gaps across sectors such as engineering, IT and medicine, in addition to training unemployed workers to meet labor demands. India on the other hand, has abundant skilled workers, with knowledge base spanning across verticals. Apart from meeting domestic demand, there is sufficient manpower that can contribute to the countries that need skilled labor. Hence, India can play a role in addressing existing unmet demand for skilled labor in France. However, trade policies related to mobility needs to be studied to identify gaps that should be addressed to enable a seamless transfer of Indian skilled professionals to France.