Student mobility policies have become a high priority of the European Union since they are expected to result in private and social returns. However, at the same time these policies risk leading to unwanted geographical consequences, particularly brain drain from lagging to core regions, as formerly mobile students may not return on completion of their studies. Accordingly, this thesis focuses on both the private returns to student mobility and the determinants of return migration. It is important to note that, currently, the literature about the mobility of students is scarce and provides mixed evidence regarding both these issues. We contribute to the current academic debate in this field by doing a case study on the Master and Back programme, which was implemented since 2005 by the Italian lagging region of Sardinia. The programme is co-financed by the European Social Fund and consists of providing talented Sardinian students with generous scholarships to pursue Master's and Doctoral degrees in the world's best universities. Concerning the private returns to migration, we evaluate the impact of this scheme on the odds of employment and net monthly income of the recipients. Moreover, we assess whether the scheme has been able to improve their job matching. To perform this analysis we access unique administrative data on the recipients and a suitable control group, complemented by a purpose-designed web survey. In addition, we enquire into the determinants of return migration and the underlying decision-making process by using a mixed-methods approach, which is particularly well-suited for very complex phenomena like the one at hand.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:617770 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Orrù, Enrico |
| Publisher | London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/942/ |
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