Paper long abstract:

The effects of international skills migration on the developing countries has received a significant attention in the literature on migration and development. The focus of the debate on brain drain, brain gain, or circulation pits the pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints and subsequent skilled migration policies. International skills migration is simultaneously driven by shifting labour market conditions and skills requirements in the sending and receiving countries as well as individual pursuit of advanced training, better position in the labour market and improved income. For most countries in Africa, international skills migration is a complex reality whose consequences and manifestations point to a mixture of outcomes. International skills migration from Africa to Europe is highly regulated and largely characterized by education-migration, skilled and semi-skilled persons seeking greener pastures, relocation of professionals and employees of multinational companies as well as the diasporas generated through family formation and reunion (first, second and third generations). All these forms of mobility have a remittance (social, material and financial) dimensions with spatial and place-based impact that includes migrants with multiple layers of belonging. The intensity and complex linkages that migrants have with both the country of residence and origin as well as the increased digitalisation of education and the labour market therefore calls for re-thinking the challenges and potentials of international skills migration beyond brain drain/gain in academic debate and policy prescriptions. This paper contributes to the skills mobility debate by examining the role of in-between spaces, increased work between places through digital platforms or tele-migration and likely skills transfer or deployment within contemporary international skills migration. Drawing on existing literature, the paper presents some reflections on international skills migration by looking at migration of ideas (education-migration and productivity), notions of quality and what kind of skills-reorientation might be applicable in the context of increased digitalisation of the work place/space and labour market conditions (tele-migration) in Africa and Europe.