Making Europe More Attractive to Indian Highly-skilled Migrants? The blue card directive and national law in Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract

Despite the potentially significant societal and labour market implications of highly-skilled migration policies in Europe, the new dynamics have only been subject to few inquisitive studies in the academic literature, none of them discussing the case of Indian migrants specifically. This paper seeks to close this gap by comparing the national schemes and programmes for highly-skilled migration in two EU Member States that have become increasingly important for Indian migrants, namely the Netherlands and Germany and analysing the newly introduced provisions of the EU Blue Card Directive. The findings will lead to conclusions on whether the implementation of the EU Blue Card Directive renders immigration to the Netherlands and Germany more attractive for highly skilled migrants from India.