International Journal of Intercultural Relations 42 (2014) 25–37 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Intercultural Relations journal h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel High-skilled immigrants in times of crisis. A cross-European analysis Bogdan Voicu a,b,∗ , Ionela Vlase b a Romanian Academy of Science, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romania b Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Department of Sociology, Romania a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 16 January 2014 Received in revised form 11 July 2014 Accepted 12 July 2014 Keywords: High-skilled immigrants Global economic crisis Self-selection Acculturation a b s t r a c t In times of economic turmoil, do high-skilled immigrants (HSIMs) tremble, or are they better suited than non-immigrants or low-skill immigrants to cope with such instability? This paper sheds some light on HSIMs’ social integration during crisis by considering their life satisfaction, ability to get paid work, and civic participation. European Social Survey (ESS) data are used in multilevel models aiming to disentangle the effect of recession in the host economy from that of living through times of crisis. The existing literature does not point in a clear direction, but the use of acculturation perspective, along with the self- selection hypothesis, help to derive clearer expectations. Diverse pathways are revealed. In troubled economies, HSIMs succeed in increasing their access to paid work and involvement in organizations, but their life satisfaction decreases. In functional economies, the situation is reversed: Life satisfaction seems to have a protective role in relation to the slightly higher difficulties in the labor market and lesser civic participation. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Salt (1992) drew attention to the paucity of data and literature on the patterns and processes linked to the migration of highly skilled workers. Efforts have been made by researchers to fill this gap, but studies in this field remain modest compared to those concerning low-skilled migration (Huber, Landesmann, Robinson, & Stehrer, 2010). Some authors observed a current tendency toward positive selection with respect to the education of migrants in the current context of European enlargement (Verwiebe, 2008; Verwiebe, Mau, Seidel, & Kathmann, 2010), and at the same time, a diversification of highly skilled migrants (Iredale, 2005), with women accounting for more than half of them (Kofman, 2012). This paper delves into high-skilled immigrants’ integration into European societies, investigating the effects of the economic recession. While it has been acknowledged that the ongoing economic crisis has had an impact on many categories of labor migrants, there is little empirical evidence on how specific categories are affected and how they cope with such economic challenges. Recent studies have addressed the question of return migration as a response of low-skilled migrants in the context of economic strain, but there is a dearth of knowledge concerning highly skilled migrants. It is also known that job losses vary across countries and between different economic sectors within each country (Martin, 2009). The global crisis led governments to limit the intake of new highly skilled migrants and sometimes to implement programs for promoting voluntary return (Cerna, 2010; Kiwan, 2010). It is assumed, however, that labor shortages will continue to exist in specific ∗ Corresponding author at: Romanian Academy of Science, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romania. Tel.: +40 4922128275992. E-mail addresses: bogdan@iccv.ro (B. Voicu), ionela.vlase@ulbsibiu.ro (I. Vlase). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2014.07.003 0147-1767/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.