On January 28 and 29, 2013 Higher School of Economics in its premises on Pokrovsky boulevard hosted the two-day regional practical seminar “Regulating Economic Migration: existing mechanisms and practices of attracting, selection and admission of foreign labour force and possibilities of coordinated management of labour migration in Eastern Europe and Central Asia”.

The seminar was organized upon the initiative of the International Organization for Migration, jointly with the Institute of Demography, Scientific Research University - Higher School of Economics. The event aimed to sum up the main results of migration policies conducted during the last three years in Central Asia and Russia, which is the period of implementation of Central Asia Regional Migration Programme jointly executed by IOM, UN Women and the World Bank, with the financial support of DFID.

More than 100 participants took part in the regional seminar - experts and practitioners in the area of migration, representatives of the state structures and research institutes working in migration policy area from Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, and Tajikistan. The event was greeted by the Director of the Institute of Demography, Mr. Anatoly Vishnevsky, Deputy Head of FMS Russia, Ms. Ekaterina Egorova, IOM Moscow Chief of Mission, Mr. Zlatko Zigic.

Thematic sessions of the first day of the seminar were devoted to such mechanisms of economic migration regulation as quotas, point-based system, patents, organized recruitment programmes. Second day presentations and discussions focused on regulating migration of investors and entrepreneurs, migration of specialists in demand, as well as regulation of mobility of foreign labour in visa-free regional regimes and CIS region in particular. During the seminar, international experience was represented by USA experts, Prof. Muzaffar Chisti (Migration Policy Institute), Prof. B. Lindsay Lowell, (Georgetown University), IOM and HSE experts, as well as the representatives of the governmental structures of the countries in the region.

Results of the seminar will be summarized in the publication of its materials, which is planned to be published in the upcoming months. Presentations of the main repost can be found at the following link.