Regional policy for skilled migration in Australian and Canada

This thesis examines recent Australian and Canadian policies aimed at the dispersal of skilled and business immigrants away from large cities. This thesis fulfills the need to analyse Australian and Canadian regional migration policies that have been pursued for around a decade and are currently undergoing a rapid development, but have not yet been studied extensively. This thesis commences with a comparative analysis of the policies' nature and practice. Although the policies are motivated by similar population and socioeconomic trends, and therefore have similar objectives, this thesis shows that the Australian and Canadian responses to common challenges differ partially. The analysis concentrates on how the Australian state/territory and the Canadian provincial/territorial governments address their policies' objectives. The thesis elucidates the factors that underpin these different approaches, such as the divergent constitutional responsibilities in the matter of immigration, and Australian and Canadian policy understanding of concepts of 'region' and 'skills'. These constitutional and conceptual differences also condition the Australian state/territory and the Canadian provincial/territorial governments' degree of control over the design and implementation of the policies. The analysis reveals how sometimes divergent policy solution, so conditioned, are employed to address similar policy objectives. The position taken by this thesis is that the governments use innovative responses and are highly active in that policy sphere. The differences notwithstanding, it is concluded that the design of these policies seems potentially capable of addressing the population and economic objectives. An evaluation of the actual policies' outcomes shows however that they have not yet become successful on any considerable scale, with few exceptions evident in both countries. This results from low absolute numbers of regional migrants when distributed among the participating jurisdiction, and a persistent preference for settlement in large cities. In Australian, the latter sometimes contravenes the stated policy intentions, This thesis closes with suggestions on cross-country policy exchanges that could improve policy outcomes and discusses additional solution, especially relevant in the Australian context, that might be considered as policy results-enhancing measures