Internal versus International Scholarly Mobility and Migration Worldwide

Aliakbar Akbaritabar , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Emilio Zagheni , Max Planck Institute for demographic Research
Xinyi Zhao, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)

An increasing number of literature focus on scholarly mobility among countries worldwide. Many studies look at specific national cases. But, contrasting the movement of scholars “within” subnational regions of countries versus “between” the national borders is understudied. We repurposed large-scale bibliometric data on more than 30 million “article” and “review” publications from Scopus in 1996 to 2020 and geocoded the affiliation addresses. We prepared the first global database of migration of scholars at the level of internal migration within countries, and at the level of international migration. It enables us to study the connection between international migration from specific subregions within a country. We further highlight the role that scientific collaborations play in facilitating future scholarly mobility. Scholars form ties before or during their mobility events and some of these ties persist and facilitate future moves. We discuss the implications of our results on the global circulation of talent and high-skilled mobility.

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 Presented in Session 3. Spatial mobility over the life course