Paper short abstract:

This research questions how educational opportunities in the host context drive or generate familial migration decisions to come, stay in or return from the host context and whether they could be (further) considered for the development of valorization strategies for highly-skilled migrants.

Paper long abstract:

In the light of the contemporary brain drain discussion, Beltrame (2007:60) sustains based OECD data that the 'Italian problem' is not emigration of its professional elite but the scarce capacity of attracting high-qualified immigrants. He prompts to offer them attractive conditions in the host context that go beyond economic opportunities.

Several scholars (Clark and Withers 2007) confirm the crucial agency of family within migration processes, and highlight the interdependence between life course events, such as childbirth.

This research hence assumes family needs to be the main indicator when talking about attractive conditions for highly skilled migrants. It thus questions how educational opportunities drive or generate familial migration decisions and whether they could be considered for the development of valorization strategies.

On this purpose, parental practices towards the choice of formal and non-formal educational contexts and strategies have been examined through a comparative lense with qualitative data on German and Romanian highly-skilled in Turin. Both groups are significantly polarizing in numbers and migration patterns, however they reveal several historically and politically rooted peculiarities in common. The choice has thus been made to see how "European tradition" works in the collective habitus of both populations.

Drawing on King's (2002:91) appeal to link "pre- with post-migration characteristics, sometimes across more than one generation, and often employing a social networks approach" investigations examine the motivation for spatial mobility, the processing of choices within the own family nucleus and the decisional power ascribed to the migrant's family, first and second degree relatives.