<p>Bakgrund: Migration är ett vanligt förekommande fenomen idag vare sig den är ofrivillig eller frivillig. Mycket forskning har gjorts om den ofrivilliga flyktingmigrationen men ytterst lite forskning har fokuserat på den frivilliga migrationen, då i synnerhet gällande högutbildade individer med special kompetens. </p><p>Avgränsningar: Vi har begränsat oss till att studera de mer rationella orsakerna till inflödet av utländsk kompetens, vilka anses vara lättare för en stat att påverka. Vidare så har vi fokuserat oss mot de individer som anses vara högutbildade eller inneha en speciell eftertraktad kompetens. Studien är också begränsad till att studera migration av högutbildad arbetskraft mellan i-länder. </p><p>Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka orsakerna till det nettoinflöde av utländsk kompetens till ett visst land vilka kan påverkas av statliga åtgärder. I vårt fall har vi använt oss av Nederländerna som ett studieobjekt i vår undersökning för att se vad den nederländska staten gjort för att attrahera utländsk kompetens. Genomförande: Uppsatsen baseras på empiriska resultat som insamlades under en veckas uppehåll i Nederländerna. Vi har också använt oss av litteratur och artiklar angående migration av högutbildade. Viss statistik data angående Nederländerna har också använts. </p><p>Resultat: Vi har funnit att orsakerna till migration av högutbildade individer styrs av både rationella och irrationella faktorer som mer eller mindre kan påverkas av statliga åtgärder. Vad gäller Nederländerna så har man inte tagit några åtgärder med det explicita syftet att attrahera utländsk kompetens. Detta har blivit en positiv konsekvens av den nederländska statens försök att attrahera utländska direktinvesteringar. Slutligen har vi funnit att"brain drain"inte nödvändigtvis är en negativ företeelse på lång sikt.</p> / <p>Background: It is a common phenomenon for people today to leave their country of origin to move to another country. Involuntary movements have been the focus of much research, however little has been done to explain why voluntary migration takes place specifically amongst highly skilled individuals.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this report is therefore to investigate the reasons for the net inflow of foreign skilled workforce to a country, which a government can influence. In doing so we have made use of the Netherlands as a case study. </p><p>Limitations: We have focused on the inflow of foreign competence for more rational reasons, which a country's government could have some influence upon. Furthermore, we will concentrate on those individuals who are considered to be highly educated or specialists. The study is limited to the migration of skilled labour from one industrialised country to another. </p><p>Manner of Proceedings: The report is based on empirical results collected during a weeks visit to the Netherlands. We have also made use of literature and articles treating the brain drain-brain gain phenomenon. Some use of statistics regarding the Netherlands has also been used. </p><p>Results: We have found that the reasons for the migration of highly skilled labour is dependent on both rational and irrational factors of influence. The possibility for a government to influence any of these issues varies. Regarding the Netherlands nothing has been done with the explicit intent of attracting foreign competence, this has been a positive side effect in the attempt to attract FDI. Finally we have found that brain drain is not necessarily a bad phenomenon in the long run.</p>

Bakgrund: Migration är ett vanligt förekommande fenomen idag vare sig den är ofrivillig eller frivillig. Mycket forskning har gjorts om den ofrivilliga flyktingmigrationen men ytterst lite forskning har fokuserat på den frivilliga migrationen, då i synnerhet gällande högutbildade individer med special kompetens. Avgränsningar: Vi har begränsat oss till att studera de mer rationella orsakerna till inflödet av utländsk kompetens, vilka anses vara lättare för en stat att påverka. Vidare så har vi fokuserat oss mot de individer som anses vara högutbildade eller inneha en speciell eftertraktad kompetens. Studien är också begränsad till att studera migration av högutbildad arbetskraft mellan i-länder. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka orsakerna till det nettoinflöde av utländsk kompetens till ett visst land vilka kan påverkas av statliga åtgärder. I vårt fall har vi använt oss av Nederländerna som ett studieobjekt i vår undersökning för att se vad den nederländska staten gjort för att attrahera utländsk kompetens. Genomförande: Uppsatsen baseras på empiriska resultat som insamlades under en veckas uppehåll i Nederländerna. Vi har också använt oss av litteratur och artiklar angående migration av högutbildade. Viss statistik data angående Nederländerna har också använts. Resultat: Vi har funnit att orsakerna till migration av högutbildade individer styrs av både rationella och irrationella faktorer som mer eller mindre kan påverkas av statliga åtgärder. Vad gäller Nederländerna så har man inte tagit några åtgärder med det explicita syftet att attrahera utländsk kompetens. Detta har blivit en positiv konsekvens av den nederländska statens försök att attrahera utländska direktinvesteringar. Slutligen har vi funnit att"brain drain"inte nödvändigtvis är en negativ företeelse på lång sikt. / Background: It is a common phenomenon for people today to leave their country of origin to move to another country. Involuntary movements have been the focus of much research, however little has been done to explain why voluntary migration takes place specifically amongst highly skilled individuals. Purpose: The purpose of this report is therefore to investigate the reasons for the net inflow of foreign skilled workforce to a country, which a government can influence. In doing so we have made use of the Netherlands as a case study. Limitations: We have focused on the inflow of foreign competence for more rational reasons, which a country's government could have some influence upon. Furthermore, we will concentrate on those individuals who are considered to be highly educated or specialists. The study is limited to the migration of skilled labour from one industrialised country to another. Manner of Proceedings: The report is based on empirical results collected during a weeks visit to the Netherlands. We have also made use of literature and articles treating the brain drain-brain gain phenomenon. Some use of statistics regarding the Netherlands has also been used. Results: We have found that the reasons for the migration of highly skilled labour is dependent on both rational and irrational factors of influence. The possibility for a government to influence any of these issues varies. Regarding the Netherlands nothing has been done with the explicit intent of attracting foreign competence, this has been a positive side effect in the attempt to attract FDI. Finally we have found that brain drain is not necessarily a bad phenomenon in the long run.

This study deals with skilled migration from a developing country perspective. The migration of skilled individuals from developing countries to developed countries is often viewed as a costly subsidy from the poor nations to the rich, and a threat to their economic development. The first part of the study brings up to date both the theoretical and the policy debate on the impact of skilled migration on the sending economies. The second purpose of the study is to take a closer look at the motivations for skilled emigration from Turkey. The emigration of skilled individuals from Turkey has attracted greater attention in recent years, particularly after the experience of back to back economic crises that have led to increased unemployment among the highly educated young. A survey study was undertaken during the first half of 2002 in order to collect information on various characteristics of Turkish professionals and Turkish students residing abroad. Over 2000 responses were received from the targeted populations. The information from this survey was then used to determine the empirical importance of various factors on return intentions by estimating ordered probit models for the two samples. In the migration literature, wage differentials are often cited as an important factor explaining skilled migration. The findings of the study suggest, however, that other factors are also important in explaining the non-return of Turkish professionals. Economic instability in Turkey is found to be an important push factor, while work experience in Turkey also increases non-return. In the student sample, higher salaries offered in the host country and lifestyle preferences, including a more organized and ordered environment in their current country of study increase the probability of not returning. For both groups, the analysis also points to the importance of prior intentions and the role of the family in the decision to return to Turkey or stay overseas.

The Palestinian information technology (IT) sector is growing, yet an ongoing migration of IT professionals and graduates is taking place – both in shape of student migration and labour migration. Through group, pair and individual interviews, this thesis investigates highly skilled IT students’ intentions to stay in or to leave Palestine after graduation. The study puts the individual in the center of the analysis focusing on a micro-level perspective while examining professional outlooks and factors affecting migratory and stay decisions. The findings highlight the impact of the university, the IT sector, the Israeli occupation and gender norms. Moreover, the study reveals a clash between aspirations and reality in professional outlooks, a lack of freedoms, and show significant support for the impact of macro-level factors in migratory decision-making. This thesis also addresses the call for a human face in skilled migration, and provides insights to an under-researched region in the skilled-migration literature.

abstract: Since the 1990s, the United States has been increasingly hosting large numbers of foreign students in its higher education sector and continues to accommodate these skilled college graduates in its job market. When international students graduate, they can transition from an international student to a skilled migrant. Yet their decision-making process to stay in the receiving country (the United States), to return to sending countries, or to move on to another country, at different stages of such transition period, is not presently understood. This dissertation examines the experiences of these “migrants in transition period” when they face the “to return or to stay” choices under structural and institutional forces from the sending and receiving countries. This research adopts the conceptual framework of human capital, social capital, and cultural capital, to investigate how social capital and cultural capital impact the economic outcomes of migrants’ human capital under different societal contexts, and how migrants in the transition period cope with such situations and develop their stay or return plans accordingly. It further analyzes their decision-making process for return during this transition period. The empirical study of this dissertation investigates contemporary Chinese student migrants and skilled migrants from People’s Republic of China to the United States, as well as Chinese returnees who returned to China after graduation with a US educational degree. Findings reveal the impact of social and cultural capitals in shaping career experiences of skilled Chinese migrants, and also explore their mobility and the decision-makings of such movement of talent. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2016

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-08T14:44:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4204961 bytes, checksum: 04b03cee1fd917ea7d3352dc63e749b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation aims to investigate the characteristics and trends of internal migration of people with high education in Brazil, trying specifically to identify regional patterns of skilled migration, its main determinants and the behavior of the "hourly wage" earned by migrants and non-migrants. Using the Census IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) population for the years 2000 and 2010, the present research was divided in two trials. The first one evaluates routes performed by skilled migrants amid different territorial areas (regional, state, and meso-regional micro-regional) between the five-year periods 1995-2000 and 2005-2010. From it, the evidence shows that, in all areas analyzed, the South and Southeast regions have a higher amount of qualified people among its residents, as well as recorded the highest reception and issuing qualified in Brazil in both periods considered. Regarding the routes investigated, it has been established that most of the skilled returnees to their places of origin left the Northeast and Southeast regions, having as main target the Southeast. Also noteworthy agglomerations type high-high amid the North and Northeast to conduct a spatial analysis of Brazilian micro-regions during 2010, as agglomerations of type low-low are observed between the South and Southeast regions. The second essay, in turn, aims to analyze the joint determination of the decision to migrate and wages earned by workers with high education in Brazil. In this regard, it was noted that the skilled migrant is positively selected in unobserved productive attributes. Furthermore, when analyzing the group of migrants, it appears that men earn, on average, more than women (omitted category), those who declared themselves to black and brown have lower income compared to those reported color white (omitted category), the worker with a post-graduate degree has a higher "hourly wage" than the worker with a graduate degree and that unregistered workers as well as those of their own, have a lower yield than that acquired by the employee with formal contract. As variables considered location, one can ascertain that those living in urban areas earn an average "hourly wage" higher than those living in rural areas (omitted category). Just as those who reside in the metropolitan area and the North region states have higher income than those who live in non-metropolitan area (omitted category) and the state of São Paulo (omitted category), respectively. Now regarding the probability to migrate, it was observed that a man who holds graduate, live in the North and Southeast of the country and which has got a social networks, increase the chances of effecting skilled migration. In addition, there was a counterfactual exercise on income earned by migrants and non-migrants qualified in order to verify the rationality of the decisions of both groups. Thus, the results indicate that conferred the migrant has positive selectivity, since skilled workers who migrated recorded a higher hourly wage than those who did not migrate. Moreover, based on counterfactual exercise performed, ascertained that the choices made by both groups were rational, given that the income received was larger when considering the factual decisions (migrants - migrant and not migrated - not migrated) than observed when the counterfactual analysis (migrant - not migrated and non-migrant - migrated). Finally, one can still see that skilled workers who decided to migrate typically have the following characteristics: male, white, 36-years-old (on average), employed with contract, who lives in metropolitan urban areas and in the Southeast. / Esta dissertação tem por finalidade investigar as características e tendências das migrações internas de pessoas com alta instrução no Brasil, buscando-se especificamente identificar os padrões regionais da migração qualificada, seus principais determinantes e o comportamento do salário-hora auferido pelos migrantes e não migrantes. Utilizando o Censo Demográfico do IBGE para os anos de 2000 e 2010, a pesquisa em questão foi distribuída em dois ensaios. O primeiro avalia as rotas realizadas pelos migrantes qualificados em meio a diferentes âmbitos territoriais (regional, estadual, mesorregional e microrregional) entre os quinquênios de 1995-2000 e 2005-2010. A partir dele, as evidências mostram que, em todos os âmbitos analisados, as regiões Sul e Sudeste apresentam maior quantidade de qualificados em meio aos seus residentes, assim como também registraram maior recepção e emissão de qualificados no território brasileiro em ambos os períodos considerados. No tocante as rotas averiguadas, ainda foi possível apurar que grande parte dos qualificados que retornaram aos seus locais de origem saíram das regiões Nordeste e Sudeste e teve como principal destino a região Sudeste. Destacam-se também aglomerações do tipo alto-alto em meio às regiões Norte e Nordeste ao realizar uma análise espacial das microrregiões brasileiras no período de 2010, à medida que aglomerações do tipo baixo-baixo são observadas entre as regiões Sul e Sudeste. O segundo ensaio, por sua vez, tem por objetivo analisar a determinação conjunta da decisão de migrar e dos salários auferidos por trabalhadores de alta instrução no Brasil. Nesse sentido, notou-se que o migrante qualificado é positivamente selecionado em atributos produtivos não observados. Ademais, ao analisar o grupo de migrantes, verifica-se que homens ganham, em média, mais que as mulheres (categoria omitida), que aqueles que se declararam de cor preta e parda possuem rendimento inferior quando comparado com os que se declararam de cor branca (categoria omitida), que o trabalhador com pós-graduação possui um salário-hora maior quando confrontado ao trabalhador graduado e que os empregados sem carteira assinada, assim como os de conta própria, possui um rendimento inferior ao que é adquirido pelo empregado com carteira assinada. Quanto as variáveis de localização consideradas, pode-se averiguar que aqueles que residem na zona urbana ganham, em média, um salário-hora maior que os que residem na zona rural (categoria omitida). Assim como os que residem na zona metropolitana e nos estados da região Norte possuem um rendimento maior que os que moram em zona não metropolitana (categoria omitida) e no estado de São Paulo (categoria omitida), respectivamente. Já no que tange a probabilidade de migrar, observou-se que ser homem, detentor de pós-graduação, residentes nos estados do Norte e Sudeste do país e possuidor de redes sociais aumentam as chances de trabalhadores qualificados efetuarem a migração. Além disso, realizou-se um exercício contrafatual sobre o rendimento auferido pelos migrantes e não migrantes qualificados, de modo a averiguar a racionalidade das decisões de ambos os grupos. Com isso, os resultados conferidos apontam que o migrante possui seletividade positiva, uma vez que os trabalhadores qualificados que migraram registraram um salário-hora maior do que aqueles que não migraram. Ainda com base no exercício contrafatual realizado, averiguou-se que as escolhas tomadas por ambos os grupos foram racionais, haja vista que o rendimento auferido se mostrou maior ao considerar as decisões fatuais (migrante migrou e não migrante não migrou) do que quando observado as análises contrafatuais (migrante não migrou e não migrante migrou). Por fim, ainda se pode verificar que os trabalhadores qualificados que decidiram migrar possuem tipicamente as seguintes características: homens, branco, com 36 anos de idade (em média), empregado com carteira assinada, residente na zona urbana, em área metropolitana e na região sudeste.

Canada has been active in attracting highly-skilled, foreign-trained workers to overcome its labour shortage, facilitate its economic growth, and enhance its global competency. While promoting gender equality in the workplace and advancing women’s labour market participation are ongoing focuses of Canada’s attention, the arrival of an increased number of skilled immigrant women and their marginalized experiences in the Canadian labour market reflects a critical problem that the underuse of highly skilled immigrant women’s professional skills might be a loss for both Canada and individual immigrants. This research reveals the lived experience of highly skilled Chinese immigrant women in the Canadian labour market, and analyzes how the barriers to their career restoration were constructed. It adopts Seyla Benhabib’s weak version of postmodern feminist theory and Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography methodology. Based on interview data with 46 highly skilled Chinese immigrant women, this research identifies these immigrant women’s standpoint within the institutional arrangements and understands the barriers to their career restoration as discursively constructed outcomes. This research contends that the settlement services for new immigrants funded by the federal government fall short of meeting the particular needs of highly skilled immigrants who intend to find highly skilled jobs that match their qualifications. This research also makes recommendations for improving existing language training and employment-related settlement services in order to better assist highly skilled immigrants in using their skills to a larger extent.

The focus of interest in this thesis is the social and personal trajectories of men and women who were born in the Soviet Union in the 1970-1980s and then, after growing up in post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s in an atmosphere of change and uncertainty, decided to exploit the opportunities to go abroad to study and work that started opening up in the early and mid-1990s. The thesis analyses these moves as the individual strategies of either escaping or waiting on the career insecurities in Russia, or consciously enhancing one's social standing and professional and educational capital. It traces their social and professional trajectories, showing that, apart from developing the desired expertise and gaining experience, these Russians went through intensive changes in their self-identifications and senses of belonging, including the acquisition of new habits of mobility, international social networks and cosmopolitan dispositions. This thesis argues that, while their Soviet-Russian cultural past and their belonging to a particular social group of 'Soviet intelligentsia' was still important to them, they continuously acquired new social, cultural and cosmopolitan forms of capital that influenced their coming back to Russia as different persons from their contemporaries who had stayed in the country. They brought with them new dispositions and new social practices resulting from their active comparisons of their lives in Russia and Britain, and in many respects they actively maintained their differences in creating clubs for returnees. While able to integrate successfully into the emerging Russian middle classes, they still expressed the cultural and intellectual heritage of the past Soviet intelligentsia, now reborn in the guise of Westernizing attitudes and practices, different degrees of cosmopolitan patriotism, intellectual pursuits, a quest for education and self-development, interest in world travel, an ethical concern for sustainability, opposition to excessive consumerism in Russia and conspicuous practices of status performance. The materials for this research were mainly gathered through the use of semi-structured in-depth interviews, one third of them longitudinal, with informants talking to the researcher several times during the course of fieldwork between 2007 and 2012. Some additional participant observation has been conducted in informal Russian circles in the UK and among returnees from Britain in Russia. This research consists of an ethnography with elements of a biographical approach. This has made the researcher attentive to the inclusion of a certain event within a person's whole biography, aimed at putting the period researched within the context of the past and future lives of the informant. The participants of this research were aged between 22 and 40 and belonged to a transition cohort generation (Miller 2000), as they had all passed their childhoods in the Soviet Union, their adolescence and teenage years coinciding with the period of dissolution of the USSR, with the transitional break up of one system and the formation of another, while their young adulthood developed in post-Soviet Russia. They were mainly single when they initiated their move to Britain, and had various professional profiles within the broadly defined groups of 'highly skilled' and 'highly educated', the latter term being preferred in this research. The dissertation includes an introduction, four ethnographic chapters, a conclusion and one appendix. The introduction presents the historical and research context, the methodology and the design of the study. The first chapter traces the professional and educational trajectories of participants, while the second chapter focuses on informants' spatial mobility and habits of extensive travel acquired during the move to Britain. The third chapter deals with the negotiation of informants' belonging to a particular cultural and social past, which is associated both with Russian-Soviet culture and with their social status as the children of Soviet-era intelligentsia. The fourth chapter argues that, while belonging to Soviet intelligentsia families was still important for informants' self-identifications in Britain, new social, cultural and cosmopolitan forms of capital were acquired during this period, resulting in new cosmopolitan dispositions, ethics and moral values, and new practices socially remitted (Levitt 2001) from Britain. The conclusion places this ethnography within the state-of-the-art research on the mobilities of Russians to the UK.

This thesis focuses on the widely acknowledged so-called brain drain controversy. More concretely on developments in the traditional brain drain literature towards a new shift, claiming the brain gain effect, as an alternative to the brain drain effect, that emigration may bring to a source country. The research investigates not only the obvious direct loss effects – the so called brain drain – but also the possibility of more subtle indirect beneficial effects.

Det övergripande syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka förhållandet mellan migration, reflexivitet och social klass. I fokus för den empiriska analysen står högt kvalificerade estniska emigranter. Reflexivitet har hittills inte varit ett viktigt begrepp i migrationsstudier. Även om vissa studier använt ordet reflexivitet, har det i huvudsak fungerat som bakgrundsbegrepp. Det finns en påtaglig brist på empiriskt orienterade studier av reflexivitet i migrationsstudier. Avhandlingen består av fyra artiklar med något olika inriktning. Den första undersöker det empiriska fallet i sin helhet utifrån en survey-undersökning om estniska migranter. Den andra artikeln diskuterar den brittiske sociologen Margaret Archers sätt att analysera migration och argumenterar i hennes efterföljd för ett socialpsykologiskt synsätt på de skiftande motiven att migrera. Den tredje artikeln utmanar tanken på att migranters återvändande i huvudsak kan förstås som saknad efter sociala relationer och känslor av hemlängtan. I den fjärde artikeln föreslås ett sätt för livsstilsorienterade migrationsstudier att hantera frågan om reflexivitet. Här positioneras livsstilsmigranter teoretiskt till andra typer av migranter och hur variationer ilivsstilsmigration kan analyseras. Trots inbördes variation har samtliga artiklar en gemensam nämnare. / This thesis focuses on issues around reflexivity and highly skilled migration. Reflexivity has been an underused concept in migration studies and incurporating it has been long overdue. By reflexivity this thesis understands the capacity of an actor to evaluate his or her position in relation to social structures, to take action in managing those structures and, finally, to critically revise both the position and action taken. There are multiple reasons as to why incorporating reflexivity is a useful endeavor to migration studies. On one hand, using reflexive types in order to understand different migration motivations offers an alternative to otherwise mainly class based explanations behind migration objectives. Migration research has long relied on the idea that migration motivations can be coupled with societal and class background. Similarly, return migration has been described almost unanimously as a result of a homing desire. Both positions, as claimed in this thesis, are oversimplifications. On the other hand, I argue that, reflexivity helps to analyze the importance of class or even society on migration in 21th century. This is why I suggest to analyze all three in concurrence – migration, reflexivity and class. In the following pages I analyze how reflexivity can be operationalized for studying migration. So far, reflexivity has been either used as background concept – mobility studies or for explaining particular kind of migration – lifestyle migration. I argue, that with careful operationalization reflexivity could be useful tool for explaining wide-variety of migrations – family, labour, lifestyle etc. Three articles in this thesis focus on providing such operationalizations, analyzing the relationship between migration motivations and reflexivity. Finally, the first article in this thesis analyzes the background of my particular group of migrants – Estonian highly skilled migrants and positions them in relation to other groups in Estonian society. Moreover, the article also underlines that self-development and lifestyle, if you will, is an important motivation for Eastern European migrants as well.