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Currently a number of countries around the world grapple with the alleged issues of “brain drain” and “brain gain”. These twin areas are especially felt in smaller nations such as Australia. They are particularly the subject of analysis with respect to the academic profession, which seeks to recruit the next generation of academics in an increasingly global and competitive world. Academic migration itself is not a new issue being as old as the profession itself. What perhaps is novel is that in a mass system of higher education with a great diversity of institutional types migration and migration decisions are even less one-dimensional than perhaps they once, if ever, were. If ever academic migrants were motivated only by academic decisions in making their migration choices does this also apply to those who work in newer and less traditional universities. This study using life history methods examines academic migrants and their migration choices with reference to two new Australian universities. The data is related to the wider literature on recent migration studies and academic migration. Questions are posed and conclusions drawn for academic recruitment by universities facing the challenges posed by imminent large-scale retirement of academic staff.

This chapter explores the migration decisions and motives of a group of academics who were recruited to three Australian higher education institutions during the period 1965–2003. The chapter furthers our understanding of historical patterns of academic mobility and the experience of academic mobility and adds to our understanding of the academic profession. The research used a micro approach to migration history and focussed on academic migrants’ decision-making processes. The research used semi-structured interviews with three groups of academics who were interviewed in 1982 and 2003. The academic migrants in this research were not committed to any particular institution or curriculum. What was most important in their migration decision was simply obtaining any academic position. Many, if not most of them, owed their academic careers to the growth in Australian higher education caused by its transition from an elite to a mass system. They obtained their academic posts because of the global nature of academic work. The question that arises from this study is what Australian universities will need to do to attract a new generation of academics as they compete in a global market for academic personnel.

Conducting research with young migrants offers an important opportunity to understand better their own perspectives on their migration experiences. Yet, engaging migrant youth in research can be fraught with ethical and methodological challenges. Institutional ethics processes have a tendency to prioritise standard principles – many of which depart from the ethical sensitivities that emerge during research practice. In this chapter, the authors explore some of the procedural and situated ethical issues involved in conducting research with child and youth migrants in Ghana. In particular, the authors highlight how the diversity of young migrants prompts definitional issues about what constitutes childhood and youth, and in different socio-cultural spatial settings. Differing categorisations of child and youth generate issues of representation and guide adult-led decisions about children’s assumed competencies and vulnerabilities to participate in research. The precarious living circumstances of many migrant children, including the absence of parental figures or legal guardians, coupled with language and cultural barriers, present particular difficulties for securing informed consent. Challenges of this kind can deny young migrants the opportunity to participate in research about their own lives and serve to reproduce dominant power asymmetries and assumptions about these children’s vulnerabilities. The authors conclude by offering some suggestions for how researchers might develop critical ethical reflexivity to support the meaningful and ethical engagement of young migrants in research.

This chapter discusses how gender scholarship has transformed the study of immigration in the United States since the 1970s.

This discussion is based on a synthesized review of immigration studies and their connections to gender scholarship in different historical contexts.

Over the past four decades, gender scholarship has significantly shaped the theories, methodologies, and core concerns in immigration studies in the United States. Before the 1970s, immigration research focused on men. Studies of immigrant women began in the 1980s, which not only challenged previous gender-blind perspectives but also highlighted women’s unique experiences. From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, the study of gender and immigration focused on immigrant women’s vulnerabilities in the global economy and enhancing women’s status at home through employment in the host society. Since the 1990s, more diverse topics have emerged to involve discussion on globalization and transnationalism. These gendering trends in immigration studies have not taken place in an intellectual vacuum. Rather, they have been influenced by developments in gender scholarship within different historical contexts.

To enrich gender-focused and feminism-informed research in immigration studies, scholars will have to build connections across subareas and engage in dialogues with each other. More immigrant groups must also be studied to reflect the extremely diverse make-up of current immigrants in the United States. Intersectional analyses are also needed to avoid homogenizing studied groups. Finally, mainstream immigration research must begin to perceive gender as an essential analytical framework.

The influx of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe over the last decade represents the largest migratory flows to Norway in history and an unprecedented supply shock to parts of the Norwegian labour market. This article reviews existing research and summarises the findings in terms of (1) the volume, direction and temporal patterns of migration flows; (2) the economic integration of new labour migrants; (3) the impacts of labour migration on wages, employment, skills, and social organisation of work in affected industries and (4) the political and institutional responses to rising labour migration. The article concludes by discussing the overall long-term consequences of labour migration, particularly with regard to social inequality in Norway.

This chapter analyses the emergency policy responses that the European Union made during the summer of 2015 to manage the significant numbers of migrants entering Europe. The chapter employs Broadbent’s (1998) ideas of ‘accounting logic’ to analyse these policy actions. The chapter argues that there are multiple and complex reasons why people migrate, and why in this instance people are prepared to risk their lives by taking perilous journeys. An ‘accounting logic’ leads to decisions being based mainly on financial inputs and expected outputs rather than on the social and humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees. Despite the significant amount of resources provided by the European Union, the crisis continues. The risks associated with employing an accounting logic are that it may preclude a full understanding of situations by silencing other values and logics.

To identify the trajectories of occupational mobility among non-EU immigrant workers in Europe and to test empirical data against neoclassical human capital theory that predicts upward occupational mobility and labor market segmentation theories proposing immigrant confinement to secondary segments.

Data from survey and semi-structured interviews (2,859 and 357, respectively) with immigrants from Brazil, Ukraine, and Morocco in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Norway. Multinomial regression analysis to test the likelihood of moving downward, upward, or stability and identify explanatory factors, complemented with qualitative evidence.

We found support for the thesis of segmented labor market theories of limited upward occupational mobility following migration. However, immigrants with longer residence in the destination country have higher chances of upward mobility compared to stability and downward mobility, giving also support for the neoclassical human capital theory. Frail legal status impacts negatively on upward mobility chances and men more often experience upward mobility after migration than women.

Findings reflect the specific situation of immigrants from three origin countries in four destination areas and cannot be taken as representative. In the multinomial regression we cannot distinguish between cohort effects and duration of stay.

Education obtained in the destination country is very important for migrants’ upward occupational mobility, bearing important policy implications with regards to migrants’ integration.

Its focus on trajectories of mobility through migration looking at two important transitions: (1) from last occupation in the origin country to first occupation at destination and (2) from first occupation to current occupation and offers a wide cross-country comparison both in terms of origin and destination countries in Europe.