Trends in skilled migration: causes and consequences

German physician’s immigration to Switzerland increased since the ratification of the Agreement on the free movement of persons (FMP) between Switzerland and the EU in 2002.
Since little is known about this migration, our paper raises the question “What are the causes and consequences of the recent immigration of German physicians to Switzerland?” First, we evaluate the main causes of their migration. Second, we analyze the phenomenon’s extent. Particularly, the impact on the age and gender structure of the physician’s population is evaluated. Finally, the consequences, in terms of dependency of the health system on German and foreign physicians as well as integration issues, are shown.
Results show that on the macro-level the Swiss demand for foreign physicians and the absence of geographical, linguistic and legal barriers trigger the German physician’s immigration to Switzerland. On the micro-level, several push and pull factors are divisive.
Between 2002 and 2009, German physicians contributed to the Swiss practicing physician’s population not only in terms of numbers but also in terms of lower mean age and higher proportions of full-time workers.
These contributions are crucial to the good functioning of the Swiss health system by reason of insufficient “internal” medical training and demographic aspects.

The Asian region has witnessed a shift in the flow of people across boundaries, and the complexity in which it is occurring. The diverse profiles of migrants, the patterns of movement, and policies towards migration have been overwhelming. Thailand, like several countries in the Asian region, has been experiencing an increasing trend in the movements of people from neighboring countries despite its efforts in managing migration through policies that provide legal opportunities for labor mobility and restrict irregular migration. For the last five years, Thailand has a growing stock of Filipino migrants. This research is a pioneering work on Filipino migration in Thailand, adapting Drachmann’s stages of migration process framework in analyzing the patterns and experiences of Filipino migrants in the country by focusing on the factors that facilitated the movement, the resources that made migration possible, and the opportunities and vulnerabilities experienced in migration. This study used multiple approaches to analyze the movement of Filipinos to Thailand. Findings revealed their socio-economic conditions, the ways migrants had to go through, the magnitude of irregularity among them, and the exposure to risks. Data also showed that social networks and intermediaries have a major role in promoting and sustaining irregularity.

The cause of revolution in information and communication technologies, the globalization presses has emerged increasingly. The knowledge and information are discussed as an economy good in the presses of production, distribution and consumption in this era economy. The unique feature of this era has transformed the nature of brain drain phenomena. The authors have explained the role of globalization in brain drain and have emphasized on the characteristics of industrial and network society. The results show that based on the globalization and the information era theories, Iran has exposed in prose that the brain drain is changing from spatial migration to virtual migration in the globalization era. Also, one of the most important of brain drain reasons is the formation of phenomena that is named knowledge economy in capitalism society. Furthermore, it is necessary that is provided the context of industrial development and organizing of scientific institutions for professionals and academic elites

This paper analyses correlations between highly qualified migration (HQM) and geographic proximity. The main destines for HQM are the US and some OECD countries, which are also the places that mostly invest in education, research and development and show high purchasing power parity. Some authors explain the economic prosperity in developed countries based on the contribution that migrants make to their multicultural societies. But where do these migrants come from? Do regions (neighbourhood) matter on the international market of competences?
Based on statistic analysis of main countries of destination, I assume that proximity is still is an important factor for professionals who choose to migrate, due to cultural affinities and regional labour agreements that favour free labour movement, among others. People tend to go to where there are good labour opportunities but also to places to which they are geographically and culturally akin. For instance, Europeans tend to choose other European countries when they migrate, Canadians mainly go to the US and a significant number of Americans migrate to Canada or Mexico for a life change. The paper also discusses exceptions to this tendency.

Many real, social, technological, biological and information systems can be described as complex networks, however, few works contemplate migration from the perspective of complex networks such as that by Askar and House (2010) that study multi-scale mobility patterns in the United Kingdom and the one by maier and Vyborny (2005) that analyze internal migration in the USA. In general, migration studies are focused in people, while other studies focus on places. The former requires very detailed data while the latter are based on aggregated data. In this case we will follow this last idea, in such a way that the motivations to change place of residence will be left out. Migration flows will be taken as a given and the resulting patterns of those flows will be the object of this study. In Mexico, census data is collected every 10 years, 2010 being the most recent and not up until recently there exist tools and capacity to visualize and model internal migration at the municipal level. While in general municipalities have been characterized by their net migration, hiding patterns that link origins and destinations, this study will help characterize the migration patterns.

Since the beginning of the global crisis in 2008, over 200,000 Spaniards have left the country looking for better opportunities abroad. The Spanish government has for the first time admitted to a talent drain without precedent. However, except for the international variation, the phenomenon is not different from the trend experienced in many regions where the lack of qualified jobs has traditionally forced residents to emigrate, mainly within internal boundaries. The current research focuses on the Spanish city of Melilla (located in Northern Africa), where a scarce college offer forces six out of ten high-school graduates to move to the mainland to continue studying. The data do not go unnoticed by the local authorities, concerned to see how this temporary diaspora is becoming permanent. With information collected from quantitative and qualitative sources, we explore local economic and social factors underpinning the egression of highly skilled workers in this quite often forgotten city despite its geostrategic position (the only EU territory, along with Ceuta, on African soil). We frame the issue in the debate about the adaptation of education and training to labour market needs, especially in a European context that places knowledge at the heart of economic competitiveness.

The discourse concerning the mobility of human capital internationally typically evokes migratory patterns from poorer to relatively more wealthy countries and this focus is strongly reflected in the (brain drain) literature. This emphasis omits an important and as yet understudied aspect of the phenomena however, namely skill transfer to non-OECD and in particular, emerging nations. This paper contributes to the literature by first developing a new dataset of international bilateral migration stocks by gender and education level, which includes both OECD and non-OECD countries as destinations in 1990 and 2000. We then use pseudo-gravity model regressions to impute missing values where data are not available, such that we are able to provide, for the first time, a global assessment of human capital mobility. The comprehensiveness of the resulting matrices facilitates a more nuanced definition of emigration rates based on the concept of the natural labour force, which additionally considers both entries and exits of workers.

There have been a number of studies on microeconomic and macroeconomic determinants of migration, but few discussed on the race and religion factors on skilled labour immigration. This paper makes contribution toward filling this void by examining how religion influences the skilled labour immigration flow into Malaysia. Specifically, the sharing of religious cultures enables the formation of exchange networks that can overcome the failure or non-existence of the social and economic institutions for affecting the flow of skilled labours into Malaysia. The determinants of immigration are analysed with pooled cross-country and time series data on skilled immigration into Malaysia from 39 countries during 1998-2004. Results demonstrate clearly the sharing of Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu culture by three major races which are the Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaysia has a significantly positive influence on the inflow of skilled labour immigrants.

The present study is motivated by the consistent upward trend in international educational migration. Our case study area is a bilingual European country, Estonia. We are particularly interested in the variations in emigration intentions by Big Five personality traits and ethnicity. Migration studies do not usually control for personality traits that vary significantly by ethnic groups. Data for the study comes from the sample survey among school graduates in 2012. The results revealed remarkable differences in emigration intentions by ethnicity. Three personality traits, Extraversion, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness, are significantly related to emigration intentions. Controlling for personality traits does not significantly change the results by ethnicity. With regard of other variables, gender, parents education, location of high school, earlier studies abroad and friends-family abroad were linked with emigration intentions. The factor analysis revealed two important groups of school graduates. Factor 1 characterizes those who would like to go abroad because studying abroad is useful, while Factor 2 characterizes those who think that Estonia does not deserve them. Estonians belong more likely to the first group while ethnic minorities belong more likely to the second group.