

Do highly skilled migrants return permanently to their home countries? - known
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5925

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CaptainDecisive
There's often times a hidden variable in the decision to return home - in my
case it involved nice curves and brown eyes.

I'm a Kiwi and many of us head off overseas in our early twenties, usually
with the intention of returning home in a few years. This 'Big OE' though is
mostly because people want to see the world rather than because they want to
move somewhere to improve their quality of life. So that's part of the
explanation for the difference the study sees between migration between
Western migrants and those from Asian regions say.

On their travels some people meet a pretty girl / handsome guy and so
sometimes the new partner returns to New Zealand too and sometimes the Kiwi
ends up staying in the new partners country. The decision in these cases is
more a personal one than to do with any specific countries advantages /
disadvantages.

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flog
Ah yes, the famed NZ man drought.

My girlfriend's also Kiwi, but like a lot of Kiwi's we'll be looking to return
to Australia for a while after Europe. Better weather and more to do.

Our homeland seems to be the place to return to raise the kids, however. I
think that's a major driver of Kiwi's returning home to Godzone.

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jey
Sure, not many skilled migrants return to their home countries, but this
doesn't mean that they're not helping their home countries! They're still
forming the sorts of international ties needed to provide opportunities for
the home country. For example, by providing contacts and funds for starting
companies in the home country, or collaborative research, etc. So it's not
very clear to me that the feared "brain drain" is necessarily a "drain" -- in
fact, India's very awful-seeming brain drain seems to have started to pay off
pretty handsomely in the last 20 years.

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marquis
I would also note that a lot of those who leave, send money back home which
should enable education for their family members and healthier, more
productive lives. I've seen personally seen cases where migration has a
positive economic effect.

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gilgad13
I noticed that the migrants he was tracking were all "foreign faculty who had
their first US faculty appointment after 1993". I would think that receiving a
faculty appointment would be a relatively powerful reason to stay.

I do realize that those who get faculty appointments can be considered the
"most successful" PhD graduates, and thus their return home would be more
beneficial to their home country. However, I'd be interested if they numbers
were significantly different for students that either received their PhD and
went into industry, or immediately returned home.

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microarchitect
It'll be interesting to see how this data changes over the next 20 years given
the current state of US politics.

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erikb
It is clear why only the best stay there. Everybody wants to have a feeling of
accomplishment and success. And clearly with a "higher" countries education
you are the elite of your own country, but in that country you might need some
very excelent results and a lot of luck to just be considered normal. It is a
tough fight uphill to survive in a higher developed country, far away from
your family and culture and nobody interested in helping you.

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adaml_623
It's an interesting question and I don't feel that article really does it
justice.

I also have no idea why you would lump different source countries together
when the difference between moving from the US to Aus and moving from India to
Aus is so great.

In addition this is a question where the answer itself changes with time. Is
there even any point looking at the current situation if the variability over
time is very large.

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pedanticfreak
I was listening to Dan Ariely's podcast a while back and one of the topics was
on the hidden benefit of brain drains.

The theory goes like this. Only a few highly educated people have the
opportunity to emigrate, say 1 out of 10 college graduates. But the benefit of
emigrating is so huge, improving well being by 10x or 20x, more people will
still pursue higher education even though they may not actually have the
chance to emigrate.

So although 1 out of 10 top people end up leaving for the United States or
Europe, the developing nation will still net gain the 9 out of 10 educated
people that couldn't emigrate who will help improve the nation overall.

