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This paper examines the drivers of brain gain by investigating the motivations of migrants who plan to return and contribute to their home country. It focuses on highly skilled Sudanese migrants in Japan, including a group of “plan-to-return” migrants (P-group), who intend to gain knowledge abroad that they will use to contribute to their homeland upon their return.

The participants are 24 highly skilled Sudanese migrants in Japan, 10 of whom are part of the P-group. To understand their motivation to contribute to their home country, the study applies the qualitative life course approach, using Elder's four life course themes: lives in time and space, the timing of lives, linked lives and human agency.

The P-group is characterised by a high level of motivation for self-development, which motivates them to study abroad. The analysis finds that the P-group's drive to contribute had been nurtured by a spirit of mutual aid in Sudanese society, which emphasises Islamic values and social ties. Religious norms, personal interactions and emotional ties to Sudan are especially influential on the P-group's motivation to contribute to their home society.

This study identifies drivers that lead to brain gain. Whereas previous studies have noted the relationship between return intentions and willingness to contribute to the home countries; they have not investigated influences on motivations to contribute. The results suggest that Sudan might already possess a system for local human resource development to encourage brain gain.

The goal is to explore the role of international education in a developing country's nation building in a mostly indigenous process.

This study reviews China's history of international education set in the larger context of different nation building tasks in the past two centuries.

The unique case of China with dramatic ups and downs in national fortunes in the past two hundred years serves to show that an open attitude to and an active engagement in international education are contributing factors for national prosperity. The case of China also serves to show that a self-determined agenda is of paramount importance in international education as a tool for nation building.

Few studies so far have paid attention to the specific relationship between the internationalization of higher education and nation building, so the topic of the paper is an important one and a necessary addition to the existing literature. What has been the role of international education in China's national transformation? What contributions has international education made to China's achievement of nation building goals at different stages of this transformation process? What implications can other developing nations draw from China's case with regard to the role of international education in nation building? These are the questions the researchers hope to answer in this study.

The repatriation process often involves challenging and unexpected readjustment issues, leading to high turnover amongst repatriates. However, research has focussed on the re-entry decisions and experiences of company-assigned (CA) repatriates, whilst studies on self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) that repatriate back to their home countries (i.e. self-initiated repatriates (SIRs)) are limited, particularly in emerging transition economies. This study develops and tests a model to explain the factors influencing professional SIRs' turnover intentions and how repatriation readjustment affects their intentions in Vietnam.

The data was collected from 445 Vietnamese professional SIRs who worked and/or studied for extended periods overseas and subsequently returned to Vietnam. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data.

Results indicate that both work and life repatriation adjustment difficulties have significant positive effects on turnover intentions, whilst only repatriation life adjustment difficulties have an indirect effect via life dissatisfaction. Further, cultural distance positively influences repatriation adjustment difficulties and turnover intentions. SIRs' on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness negatively moderate the influence of repatriation work and life adjustment difficulties on turnover intentions, respectively.

The study develops a theoretical model explaining how repatriation difficulties impact the turnover intentions of SIRs, considering contextual factors including cultural distance and embeddedness. The research highlights the importance of job embeddedness as a form of social and organisational support for SIRs in managing psychological challenges related to repatriation, which can help reduce turnover and retain highly skilled talent. Additionally, the study extends repatriation research on an under-researched subgroup of SIEs, SIRs, in an under-researched emerging transition economy context.

Integrating identity theory and role theory, this study examines the re-expatriation inclinations of highly-skilled professional female self-initiated repatriates (SIRs) in an Asian rapidly emerging market (REM) and the reasons underlying these inclinations.

The authors conducted a survey on a sample of highly-skilled professional female SIRs in Vietnam (N = 248). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model.

The study found that female SIRs' career identity, family identity and social identity have a significant influence on their inclinations to re-expatriate. Attitude towards re-expatriation fully mediates the influence of family identity and career identity on re-expatriation inclinations.

This research was limited to female SIRs in one REM, namely Vietnam, and may lack generalisability in countries and contexts.

By delineating the identity-related factors that contribute to skilled female SIRs' inclinations to re-expatriate and recognising gender as a complex, multifaceted social construct, the authors broaden the way expatriation is conceptualised and isolate factors that can inform practices for recruitment and retention of this important sub-set of international talent.

The study examines potential differences in socioeconomic status (SES) and emigration patterns between Greek international students (IS) and non-international students (non-IS) and their relationship to the brain drain from Greece.

The study draws on a unique database including all the Greek PhD holders and provides detailed information on their SES and mobility patterns. Furthermore, an individual-level SES index is constructed including both human capital and socioeconomic indicators to estimate the magnitude of the brain drain in terms of the SES that emigrated abroad between 1,985 and 2,018.

First, Greek IS have a higher educational, professional and economic status compared to Greek non-IS. Moreover, they exhibit a more international profile, inasmuch as they are more likely to remain abroad after graduation to seek employment. Second, the magnitude of the brain drain in terms of SES emigrated abroad (22.5% of the total) is greater than in terms of individuals who moved abroad (13.4% of the total). Specifically, the SES that outflows with an additional Greek skilled emigrant (that is, an additional IS and non-IS residing abroad) is 1.1 times greater than the SES that remains in Greece with an additional non-IS residing in Greece.

The study contributes to the scientific discussion that relates the SES of IS and highly skilled migrants to brain drain and fills the gap in the relevant literature.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0607.

Foreign directors from developed nations are significant brain gains for Chinese firms because they improve board competency and board diversity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between foreign directors from developed countries on Chinese listed firms and firms’ green commitment.

For the empirical analysis, first, this study applies ordinary least square regression and firm fixed model to explore the relationship between foreign directors and green commitment. For the endogeneity concerns, this study first added more control variable in the main model, then applied instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching technique.

This study predicts and finds that percentage of foreign directors from developed countries on Chinese listed firms’ board positively enhances the firms’ green commitment. Furthermore, this study also finds that the positive relationship between foreign directors and firms’ green commitment is more significant when firms are in a low competitive industry, have no financial constraints and are overseas-listed. This study’s findings are robust after controlling for endogeneity concerns.

This is new research on the impact of foreign directors on corporate green commitment.

This study investigates how working-age Asian immigrants' educational attainment and professional abilities when arriving in the United States have evolved over the past 4 decades and draws inferences on the impact of the US employment based visa policies.

Using data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 census and American Community Survey for 2001 to 2019, the study adopts multivariate regression and regression discontinuity design to investigate the trends in educational and occupation selection among Asian immigrants and the association with policy changes in the H1B visa program.

The findings suggest that new Asian immigrants were more positively selected for education than non-Asian immigrants and US natives and this pattern of positive selection increased over time. Newly arrived South Asian and East Asian immigrants had the highest share of highly educated professionals than Southeast Asians and US-born persons. I infer that the enactment and changes in the H1-B program might have contributed to the changing patterns of the educational and occupational selection among East and South Asian Immigrants. The results also shed light on how Asian immigrants' skill selection might be related to the size of Asian diasporas in the US and sending countries' income, inequality and education level.

The story of changing the skill profile (educational and occupational profile) of newly arrived Asian immigrants during 1980–2019 can provide valuable policy implications. US immigration policies are routinely criticized for being inefficient and outdated. The economic prosperity of Asian countries over time also provides an excellent opportunity to test the theories pertaining to how sending countries' income, inequality and education level of the population are associated with Asian migrants' education and occupation when arriving in the US. This study can provide insightful perspectives for policymakers and business decision-makers to adapt to the changing demographics of Asian migrant workers. The most recent reports on Asian immigrants in the US highlighted the aggregated trends of migration flow and education. Still, none have provided a longitudinal and nuanced review of Asian immigrants' educational and occupational selection into the US.

The study aims to investigate the impact of highly skilled emigration from Greece on the innovation performance of the Greek economy.

The study draws on a new, census-scale, database that includes all the Greek Ph.D. holders and on statistical information pooled from various secondary sources.

The mass emigration of highly educated Greek scientists that was exacerbated during the ten-year recession has had detrimental effects on Greece's innovation performance. Specifically, an increase in the number of highly skilled emigrants has a negative impact on scientific citations and on patent applications during the following year. An instrumental variable approach based on gravity model literature is employed to test the authors’ findings. The potential effects of these findings and policy suggestions are also discussed.

The study enriches the academic and policy discussion on the science and technology–related consequences of brain drain on the origin country. This is the first study that focuses on Greece – the country which experienced the highest emigration rates within the EU during the severe ten-year economic crisis – and sheds light on the impact of skilled emigration on its innovation performance.