Language in skilled migration

When the world witnessed the occupation of some parts of the globe by certain colonial powers such as the UK, the United States, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, few would have expected that such would later on become one of the pivotal phenomena that would significantly pave the way for the genesis and growth of skilled migration. The story of skilled migration, to borrow Hansen’s (2003) words, “is one of unforeseen development and unintended consequences” (2003: 1). Even the Spanish colonial occupation in the Philippines unexpectedly resulted in part in the earliest documented Filipino labor migration during the galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco from 1565 to 1815 (Lorente 2012). Tracing the historical development of language in skilled migration is no easy task largely because (1) of the lack of focus on and the outright lack of consideration of the language factor in earlier skilled migration studies, and (2) of the lack of consensus in the literature on the definition of skilled migration.