Students without borders? Migratory decision-making among international graduate students in the U.S.

Katalin Szelényi suggests that the less-developed a country is internationally, the more elites of such a country choose to move internationally in their educations and careers. Her research on different graduate student nationalities in the U.S. (presented here) is the basis of her suggestion. She adds that it is no surprise the North Africans and Latin Americans one meets in finance or the media in London are from relatively elite backgrounds—one has to be an elite in these countries to have the chance to move. This is not the case with nationals from the more highly developed countries, where mobility opportunities are more broadly shared and where people who move internationally have made much more marginal, risky, career decisions compared to those in nationalized careers from welfare-states with stable pay-offs at home. Szelenyi also reviews in depth the brain drain/gain/circulation question, which is the biggest single area of research on skilled migrants. This is because of its sharp policy implications in developing countries in terms of economic development and political stability. Such fears of the developmental costs of “brain drain” assume a zero-sum game in which sending countries lose as the developed world creams off the best and the brightest. Szelényi, however, questions the notion that it is always the best and the brightest who move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]