Economic crises, technological change, and labor market transformations have long shaped political attitudes, particularly toward immigration. While existing research links occupational risks to anti-immigration preferences, which specific occupations drive this relationship remains underexplored. This research note addresses this gap by examining how occupation-specific skills (OSS) – defined as the amount of skills required to work in a given occupation – moderate the relationship between occupational labor market conditions and immigration attitudes. Drawing on sociological and comparative political economy perspectives, the paper argues that individuals with high levels of OSS are especially sensitive to deterioration in their occupation’s labor market conditions. The central theoretical implication is that adverse changes in occupational labor markets generate stronger political anti-immigration reactions among high-OSS workers, including Managers and (Associate) Professionals. Importantly, OSS are conceptually distinct from other occupational dimensions used in the literature, such as task specificity, and from other skill dimensions, such as general skill. The empirical analysis draws on over 20 years of longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), finding evidence consistent with the argument. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about the political behavior of high-skilled workers, a group whose attitudes toward immigration remain contested.

Research on public attitudes toward immigration consistently shows that people prefer higher- over lower-skilled immigrants, largely for sociotropic economic and fiscal reasons. We argue that this account is incomplete: citizens also evaluate immigrant workers according to the essentiality and social value of the work they perform, alongside formal skills and education. We conceptualize two logics for evaluating occupations – economic-fiscal and moral-social – that shape attitudes toward labor immigrants, before testing this argument in two studies in the UK. Study 1 uses a preregistered conjoint survey experiment (N = 4,951) fielded during the UK’s third COVID-19 lockdown in January 2021. Respondents evaluated hypothetical labor immigrants varying in occupation, skill level, and origin. Immigrants working in occupations designated as ‘essential’ during the pandemic were substantially more likely to be preferred for admission (by about 22 percentage points) and more likely to be viewed as economically beneficial (by about 10 percentage points) than those in nonessential jobs, net of skill. Study 2 reports results from an online survey (N = 1,944) fielded in 2025 measuring perceptions of occupational essentiality, social value, economic value, prestige, skill, and labor shortages. Perceived essentiality is strongly associated with social value while remaining distinct from skill and prestige. Importantly, perceptions of occupational essentiality remained stable over time and correlated with preferences for admitting immigrants in those same occupations. Together, these findings highlight occupational essentiality as a distinct and consequential driver of immigration attitudes with implications for labor migration debates and policymaking.

Human activity in the Antarctic is supported by a wide network of government agencies, policies, businesses and workers back home. This polar workforce is particularly important in the so-called ‘Antarctic gateway cities’, which foreground their economic and cultural connections with the far south. Rather than focusing just on the Antarctic continent as the place of work, this paper therefore takes a broader approach by turning attention to the people back home that enable Antarctic logistics, modelling, policymaking and public awareness to be executed successfully. The paper outlines a matrix for mapping polar work capacity, with Antarctic roles classified as direct or indirect and as in situ or ex situ. By bringing together stakeholders from a range of Antarctic workplaces (including local and national government, academia, tourism and local business owners and training providers) from Christchurch (New Zealand) in October 2024, a workshop event identified the key challenges facing the Antarctic sector over the coming 5 years and highlighted areas where international collaboration could help to address these challenges into the future. Key suggestions include the implementation of an overarching Antarctic strategy; training and education to improve local talent and pathways; enhanced visibility of existing skillsets; establishing exchange opportunities across the Antarctic gateway cities; and developing Antarctic identities, including through tourism opportunities.

This paper provides an overview of post-study employability for students of linguistics. We begin with a review of the literature on employability, education, and skills. We then conduct an analysis of fifty-one interviews with people who studied linguistics and went on to work in a diverse range of occupations. We provide a summary of the interview participants, and then conduct an analysis of the domain-specific and transferable skills reported and the advice offered in these interviews. Finally, we look at how linguistics programs can use the existing literature and insights from these interviews to help their students think about careers.

The economic voting literature shows that good economic performance bolsters the electoral prospects of incumbents. However, disagreement persists as to whether voters in vulnerable economic conditions are more likely to engage in economic voting. It is argued in this article that a crucial factor in explaining individual‐level variation in economic voting is the degree of exposure to economic risks, because risk exposure affects the saliency of the economy in voting decisions. In particular, the focus is on job insecurity and employability as key determinants of economic voting patterns. The article hypothesises that the extent of economic voting is greater in voters who are more vulnerable to unemployment and less employable in case of job loss. Support for these hypotheses is found in a test with a dataset that combines survey data on incumbent support with occupational unemployment rates and other measures of exposure to economic risks.

In recent years, a growing body of literature has widely investigated the impact of role-playing simulations in teaching politics and international relations. While scholars agree that participating in simulations is helpful for the students in developing their skills, the evidence about benefits is more mixed. Moreover, the question whether all students—regardless of their demographic or academic background—benefit similarly from simulations remains largely unanswered. This article, based on a cross-national survey submitted to students from Italy and the Netherlands who have participated in the Model United Nations (MUN), provides an innovative contribution to the current literature by looking at views and opinions of students coming from different educational contexts. Our empirical results suggest that students perceive that MUN increases their skills regardless of their academic and socio-demographic background. The quantitative analysis, based on OLS regression models, reveals that the individual students’ background does not influence their perceived benefit, nor their enjoyment of the experience. MUNs appear to be educational as well as fun for all students, regardless of their age, gender, field of study, seniority, and academic homeland.

Skills and employability are increasingly viewed as crucial issues in curriculum design and teaching, while simultaneously perceived as potentially detrimental to academic standards. This article comparatively analyses the current European employability agenda and how it was implemented in Britain and the Netherlands. In addition, this article critically reflects on the challenges and opportunities of integrating such an agenda into an EU study curriculum, by drawing on practical examples from the universities of Maastricht and Newcastle.