Moving People and Knowledge

Scientific Mobility in an Enlarging European Union

Louise Ackers, School of Nursing, Midwifrey, Social Work & Social Sciences, University of Salford, UK and Bryony Gill, formerly Research Fellow, ELPRG, Liverpool Law School, University of Liverpool, UK

Moving People and Knowledge provides a fresh examination of the processes of highly skilled science migration. Focusing on intra-European mobility and, in particular, on the new dynamics of East–West migration, the authors investigate the movement of Polish and Bulgarian researchers to and from the UK and Germany. Key questions include: who is moving, how long for, and why? In addressing the motivations and experiences of mobile scientists and their families, insights into professional and personal motivations are provided, demonstrating how relationships, networks and infrastructures shape decision-making. This book provides a useful perspective on the implications of increasing researcher mobility – for both sending and receiving regions and the individuals concerned – which is necessary for the construction of future policies on sustainable scientific development.

‘The book can be seen as a welcomed contribution to this field of study. . . [it] raises some important questions and problems of scientific mobility.’
– Høgni Kalsø Hansen, Papers in Regional Science

‘This is a very timely book looking at East–West migration, which has recently become a hot political issue in various West European countries. It does an excellent job in laying out the intricacies of mobility that affect different groups, particularly “knowledge migrants”. The book successfully shows that “knowledge migrants” follow different motivational routes than other groups of migrants in their choice of mobility between institutes and nations. It makes a valuable contribution to a growing body of research that seeks to change established thinking and rhetoric about migration and to shift it from a dualistic thinking of migration in terms of economic vs. non-economic migrants. What this book shows is that the professional identity of people often supersedes their nationalities in relation to why and where they move.’
– Sami Mahroum, NESTA, UK

‘Based on excellent empirical research on migrating scientists from Poland and Bulgaria to the UK and Germany, this book follows an innovative agenda which is crucial to the world today – the movement of people and the movement of knowledge. It achieves this by a creative blend of analysing personal stories, embedded in their professional and family networks, on the one hand, and macro-scale discussions of brain drain, brain gain and national and European policy implications on the other.’
– Russell King, University of Sussex, UK

‘This book makes a timely contribution to understanding the circulation of scientific knowledge via international mobility. It skillfully combines an analysis of structural and institutional changes, with a focus on individual circumstances, life courses and motivations. The outcome is a compelling account of the role of international migration in the transfer of knowledge across borders, and in shaping the careers of individual scientists. This places people and human mobility at the heart of the debate about how the knowledge economy is produced and reproduced.’
– Allan Williams, London Metropolitan University, UK