What affects international migration of European science and engineering graduates?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ABSTRACT What Affects International Migration of European Science and Engineering Graduates? *Using a dataset of science and engineering graduates from 12 European countries, we analyse the determinants of labour migration after graduation. We find that not only wage gains are driving the migration decision, but also differences in labour market opportunities, past migration experience, and international student exchange are strong predictors of future migration. Contrary to our expectations, job characteristics such as the utilisation of skills in the job and involvement in innovation hardly affect the migration decision. When analysing country choice, countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia appear to attract migrants due their larger R&D intensity. Moreover, graduates with higher grades are more likely to migrate to these countries.JEL Classification: F22, J61

Europe as unlikely immigrant destination: location choice for internationally mobile students in India

“…The perception of Europe as a short-term destination reduces the relevance of several favourable options introduced into immigration policies to attract skilled migrants. Our results as well as other empirical studies (Binsardi and Ekwulugo 2003;Boeri et al 2012;Constant and D'Agosto 2008;De Grip, Fourage, and Sauermann 2009;Soutar and Turner 2002) show that career prospects matter most to attract the highly skilled, which provides clear policy implications. Improving access to the labour market for foreign workers and providing a more seamless transition from studying to the local labour market would provide the missing link in placing continental Europe more visibly on the map of the global race for talent.…”

“…Kolster (2014) suggests that it is important to study perceptions of international students in addition to factual country characteristics. Among the few papers explaining the difference in migration decisions with respect to geographic areas, De Grip, Fourage, and Sauermann (2009) and Constant and D'Agosto (2008) look into the determinants of country choice for European science and engineering graduates and for Italian scientists and researchers, respectively. De Grip et al find that among European science and engineering graduates, wages matter only for migration within the European Union but not for migration to Anglo-Saxon countries, which attract people for higher R&D intensity.…”

“…Studies show that students who studied abroad are more likely to work abroad after the completion of their studies relative to other domiciled students (De Grip, Fourage, and Sauermann 2009;Findlay et al 2005;King, Ruiz-Gelices, and Findlay 2004;Tremblay 2002;Wiers-Jenssen 2008). Student migration is considered a form of knowledge migration by industrialized countries, which are changing their policies to become more attractive to students and highly skilled migrants.…”

Management perceptions of a higher educational brand for the attraction of talented academic staf

“…Studies of academics depict that their mobility choices are mostly kindled by the reputation of host HEIs, the research resources at their disposal and the compatibility between the job post and their research preferences (Agarwal & Ohyama, 2013;De Grip, Fouarge & Sauermann, 2010;Ivancheva & Gourova, 2011). Williams and Omar (2014) argue that the running and effectiveness of HEIs are vastly associated with the quest for prestige or reputation.…”

What Do We Know of the Mobility of Research Scientists and of its Impact on Scientific Production

“…The available evidence highlights that research related reasons such as working on interesting research topics, quality of the receiving institution, and career prospects, dominate (Ivancheva and Gourova, 2011;De Grip et al, 2009). Franzoni et al, Chapter 3 in this volume, based on a sample of more than 45,000 researchers working in 16 countries, confirm that career prospects and research quality are the main drivers of researcher emigration while salary plays a minimal role.…”