Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that the intersection of employment venue and family circumstances rather than ethnic background or citizenship should be given more attention when discussing HSMs’ perceptions of integration and future chances for their remaining in the country or moving elsewhere.

Paper long abstract:

The paper addresses the topic of the panel by focusing on highly skilled immigrants (HSM) to Croatia. While not significant in a numeric (or any other) sense, as a highly diverse group of persons HSM in Croatia present an interesting case for they allow to study how the characteristics such as education and professional experience play out with variables such as employment venue (transnational corporate sector, small scale private enterpreneurship, state/public employment), ethnic background (with or without Croatian background), citizenship (with or without Croatian citizenship), reason and motivation for migration (lifestyle, romance, identification with the country, digital nomadism), family circumstances (with or without family and/or children), length of stay and, last but not least, choice of settlement (capital/other city, medium, small location) to produce various integration outcomes and determine migrants’ futures in the country. Based on in-depth interviews with HSM, it will be argued that the intersection of employment venue and family circumstances, rather than ethnic background or citizenship should be given more attention when discussing not only HSMs’ perceptions of integration but also future chances for their remaining in the country or moving elsewhere.

Paper short abstract:

The present paper critically examines the trajectories of highly-skilled migration from post-Soviet Russia towards Western European countries (as exemplified by Vienna/Austria).

Paper long abstract:

One of the least discussed legacies of communism refers to the memory of how bureaucratically difficult it had been to change one’s place of residence. By turning relocation “abroad”, with reference to so-called developed Western countries, into an exclusive privilege, communism made it desirable and synonymous with a prized social success (Krastev and Holmes 2019). In this regard, post-Soviet Russia is an illustrative example wherein amid political establishment and celebrities it has been “traditionally” highly-qualified “best and brightest” (Maltseva 2016) who have got the means, professional skills and ambitions to move outside country’s borders. Even though relocation has become less regulated and “marked by power and privilege”, Russian passport still provides little space for international mobility. Under these circumstances highly-qualified Russian migrants are prone to follow one of the following trajectories - either on a supra-national level by working as expats for international organisations, or enter the chosen country by means of a student visa and search for employment on-site. In order to investigate this I will focus on the case of Russian highly-qualified “specialists” who come to Vienna not just to work/study but also to settle down there. Whereas an expat status allows and to some extent promotes “light” immersion/integration into the local social and cultural context, student visa holders tend to regard familiarizing with a host culture, what includes proficiency in German as well as grasping local realia particularly in relation to education and labour market, as an individual strategy of establishing long-term foothold and full legalisation.

Paper short abstract:

Revisiting the life-story of an Indian expat in the Netherlands, this presentation explores the social disparities and cultural representations that produce and legitimise differential mobility patterns from South Asia to Europe.

Paper long abstract:

Diya is an Indian young woman who moved to Amsterdam in 2009, at a time when her co-national community was burgeoning. Ten years later, on Diwali’s eve, she invited me down to a borough where Indian street-food stalls had replaced Dutch herring booths.

Diya’s biographical account flew smooth across her life-course until it halted in an extant suspension. Three key motives emerged from her narrative: her education grounded in a rhetoric of merit, her desire “to get a taste of the world” and her disillusion with being a privileged high-skilled migrant in the Netherlands.

As a globetrotting professional, this woman’s life-story sounded critical for several reasons. First, her transnational transfer challenged the rift between labour migration and lifestyle mobility. Second, the status of Kennismigranten oddly combined with her Indian ethnicity and nationality, as she was flanked between an international peer community and an established Indian labour diaspora. Third, which cultural surviving strategies could this ambitious young woman develop to actualize a transient Dutch home on the mirage of cosmopolitanism? Diya’s behaviors sounded indecisive, as she dwelt on overstaying her original time-plan, despite career prospects did not outbalance the alienness she felt living alongside the Dutch, in the face of underground racial discrimination.

Diya’s faulty integration in the Dutch capital, beyond an assimilation in its corporate market, questions the sustainability of coexisting models of mobility at the apparent safe end of high-skilled migration, taking charge of gender, class and race, vis-à-vis local conundrums and global ideologies.

Paper short abstract:

The paper adresses transnational high-skilled mobility and internationalization strategies in current Croatia. It explores challenges and obstacles for wellbeing of incoming and returning young professionals in academic and business sectors based on semi-structured interviews.

Paper long abstract:

The paper adresses the correspondence of transnational high-skilled mobility and of internationalization strategies in current Croatia. High-skilled outgoing mobility has been facilitated and significantly accelerated since Croatia's accession to the European Union in 2013. To counter brain drain effects and skilled labour shortages, both academic and business sectors invest into raising competitiveness through internationalization strategies, in order to enhance and benefit from transnational mobility. Based on semi-structured interviews with incoming and returning young professionals the paper inquires into experiences of (re-) integrating, embedding and participating in Croatian academic and business environments as social fields with respective work cultures and power configurations. Wheras internationalization strategies and policies are usually aligned with criteria of professional performance and advancement, those engaged in transnational mobility tend to make their choices and moves based on a complex assessment of structural conditions, local circumstances, personal motives, and comparative opportunities in order to determine their chances for wellbeing. The paper critically discusses the (non-) correspondence of policies with actual challenges and obstacles posed to the wellbeing of incoming and returning young professionals and researchers.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on participant observation and interviews with 25 Italians and Bulgarians, this paper uses emotions as lens in order to better understand highly skilled migrants’ complex and changing relationship with the country of settlement.

Paper long abstract:

A new neo-assimilationist climate is sweeping across Europe, drawing attention not only to the fragility of intra-European mobility but also to the integration processes’ to socio-economic and political changes. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is a case in point, which also illustrates the precarity of settlement rights. Thus, Brexit as an ‘unsettling event’ (Kilkey and Ryan, 2020) provides us with an interesting contextual backdrop against which we can re-consider and re-evaluate the relative privilege associated with highly skilled European migration. Respectively, drawing on ethnographic data (participant observation and interviews) from 25 Italians and Bulgarians, this paper uses emotions as a lens to better understand highly skilled migrants’ complex and changing relationship with the country of settlement. Focusing on the costs of migration in the context of a changing socio-economic and political climate, we explore the gendered nature of integration and re-evaluate the meaning of relative privilege often assumed in highly skilled status. By paying particular attention to the subjectivities of the migration process, we offer new ways of thinking about the process of migrant integration.