The impact of employment skills support and inequalities at work on incentives to migrate: a case study of Kosovo

The aim of this thesis is to explore how experiences of looking for jobs and working in Kosovo have influenced migration. This includes the experiences of job seekers and workers in Kosovo, of return migrants, and also of prospective migrants. Central to this study is the question of how the presence or absence of employment skills support programmes, and the ways in which employees are treated at work influence the decisions made by individuals to migrate. An interpretivist approach has been adopted with a focus on qualitative data to achieve these objectives. The primary qualitative research involves thirty-one semi-structured interviews conducted with migrants, return migrants, workers, job seekers, employers, labour inspectors, trade union members, and analysts. Four court cases were obtained from the [redacted] to examine the nature of different appeals and how they are handled and resolved, and to complement and enrich the findings from the interviews. This thesis contributes to the existing literature about migration by illuminating how a lack of human rights and human capital development can increase migration. It illustrates the importance of the state in supporting workers in accessing jobs and in implementing labour law. It finds that there are, in addition to purely economic incentives, interfering factors that favour migration from Kosovo, such as nepotism, favouritism, and corruption. The application of an adapted and expanded push and pull theory to explore migration incentives from Kosovo offers a unique perspective on the ‘push-pull’ and ‘intervening’ factors of migration.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

London Metropolitan University

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Berbatovci-Sojeva, Vlora

• 330 Economics

Dc Identifier Grantnumber

N/A

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.londonmet.ac.uk:7218