Academic mobility of Russian scientists: from “brain drain” to “brain circulation” model

Abstract

Academic mobility is one of the key directions of development of intellectual potential and realization of professional opportunities of both youth and highly qualified specialists, scientists and teachers. This category of the population is the intellectual potential of the country, able to carry out an “innovative breakthrough” of the economy, able to act as a mechanism for strengthening the integration processes in the Eurasian space (within the EAEU and SCO), as well as to become a certain reserve for the demographic development of some Russian regions. The term “circulation of minds” is defined, which has become increasingly used in relation to the emigration of specialists from Russia. The circulation of minds implies that the migration of highly skilled professionals and scientists follows the movement of capital and projects, is temporary and returnable. The concept of “academic mobility” is specified and its key characteristics are given. The evaluation of the implementation of international programs to promote academic mobility, including such programs as Erasmus Mundus, DAAD, Tempus, Fulbright Program, etc., which allow participating countries to obtain positive socio-economic, scientific and demographic effects. Unfortunately, this potential of educational migration is not fully realized in Russia. In addition, the Russian science lacks the necessary amount of scientific research on the problems of academic mobility, which is largely due to the negative “color” of educational migration in the country, due to the significant attention to the problem of “brain drain”. Nevertheless, in our opinion, Russia has enormous unrealized potential and unique opportunities for the development of academic mobility. In conclusion, there are proposals for the formation of Russia’s policy in relation to the development of academic mobility, maintaining a positive trend to attract highly skilled migrants from near and far abroad, but also for the further development of forms of academic mobility.

Causes and Consequences of the Migration of Scientists and Students from the Brics Countries to Developed Economies

“…The main problem of researchers and students from China and India who try to build their careers in this way is the shock of social displacement. In the homeland most of them belong to the middle class or upper middle class; when they move, they significantly lower their social status and spend a lot of time and effort to take a more worthy position without a guarantee that they will achieve success (Chellaraj, 2019;Faist, 2018;Rostovskaya, Pismennaya and Skorobogatova, 2018). Significant intellectual migration rates have led to the fact that there is rather fierce competition for jobs in universities and research centers of the Global North, and various forms of temporary employment of scientific personnel have been common for a decade (Chang, Chen and Xiong, 2018;Wang, 2020).…”

“…Modern researchers are shifting from the term "brain drain" as not corresponding to reality and come up with parallel terms, such as "brain gain" and "brain sharing" (Gurieva, 2016;Rostovskaya, Pismennaya and Skorobogatova, 2018). The latter is related to the fact that academic mobility in a digital society may not be associated with real geographic movement as the scientist continues to work in their country.…”