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| TRANSNATIONAL MOBILITY OF THE HIGHLY SKILLED: A REVIEW |
| LIU Ye1, SHEN Jian-fa1, LIU Yu-qi2 |
1. Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;
2. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China |
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Abstract With the rise of globalization and knowledge-based economy, transnational mobility of the highly skilled has emerged as a salient issue and has triggered a heated debate in Western countries. Based on existing geographic, demographic, ethnic, and racial literature, this paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of Western literature on transnational mobility of skilled people and elaborates the spatial patterns, mechanism, and socio-economic implications of their mobility. At the regional scale, transnational skilled labor is highly concentrated on world cities of developed countries and newly industrialized countries, and the power of drawing and managing transnational elites represent a city's managerial role in the global economic system. The mechanism of transnational skilled mobility is considered on multiple scales. It is conditioned by global political, economic and cultural restructuring at the macro scale, migration management and migration channels at the meso scale, and the decision-making of transnational elites themselves at the micro scale. The next section provides a review of socio-economic influences of transnational mobility of skilled labor on both origins and destinations. With regard to origin countries, some scholars asserted that skilled transnational mobility may undermine social and economic development of less-developed countries through the process of brain drain, but others, in the light of dramatic economic success of Asian newly industrialized countries over the last few decades, claimed that less-developed countries may benefit from reversed brain drain and brain circulation. In the final section, this paper proposes some suggestions for future relevant research in the Chinese context: theoretically, to adopt the most recent theoretical perspectives derived from Western literature on skilled transnational mobility; empirically, to analyze skilled transnational mobility from a micro perspective by integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches; additionally, to value context-specific research and the Chinese unique institutional and socio-cultural context.
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Received: 26 June 2012
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2013, Vol. 28 
