Start date , End date: 1999-2001

PhD dissertation (develop a new aspect of a research for the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research (National program 39: "migrations et relations interculturelles")) Qualitative methods (interviews)

Supervisor: Prof. Denis MAILLAT

The objective is to show how, through local systems of employment, the international migrations influence the competitiveness of the regions. We assume that the recent changes of migratory policy observed in Switzerland have local economic impacts; in particular, the production systems and regional specialization make that the coordination between the labour force, the companies and the public institutions vary from a production system to another. Within this framework, the presence of specific resources represents an important factor of regional differenciation.
International migrations constitute a strategic tank of labour, quickly mobilizable at low costs, and this way constitute a resource at a local level. The point is to show how these resources related to migration are mobilized and developed at a local level. The competitiveness of the regions is the result of the creation of core competences, which can become reinforcing (Moati, Mouhoud, 1994; Veltz, 1996). The labour force and its "quality" (its adequacy to the organisation’s goal) play a significant role in the regional development. Competences of the labour force in the region can evolve with international migrations.
We assume that the international migration constitutes at the local level an immaterial resource, suitable to form competitive advantages of which constitution is the result of a process of territorialized trainings. The concept of territorial system of production is the result of the articulation of functional and territorial logics (Maillat, Kébir, 1998; Grosjean, Crevoisier, 1998). Via the labour market -by the migrant’s competences- an industrial organization can lead to the destructuration of the industrial "milieu" (functional logic), or to the construction or maintenance of a regional coherence (territorial! ! logic) (Crevoisier, Maillat, 1989, p.18). We assume that the quality of the migrant’s insertion on the labour market depends on the labour market organisation.
The impact of the international migrations on the transformation of the local systems of employment will be the central point. We assume that the impact on the local systems of employment is double; first, it can depend on the industrial sectors (through companies); secondly, on anchoring or not anchoring of competences in the local system of employment. We find here two possible introductions to this problematic of the local management of migrants’ competences ; by the firm (sectoral problematic) and by the territory (anchoring problematic).
If local anchoring of competences constitutes within this framework a significant stake, the point is to analyze the mechanism of anchoring, in order to understand how some specific resources, a priori mobile, can or cannot play a significant role in the processes of renewal of specific resources related with immigrant labour.
The empirical part will have for goal to highlight the types of local impacts of the immigration of workers on a ! ! local system of employment.