Intellectual Migration: The Movements of Students and Professionals

Employing the intellectual migration analytical framework, this book examines the dynamics of student and professional migration. Intellectual migration encompasses a spectrum where higher education students and professionals at various life stages move to pursue intellectual credentials that can promote career development. Besides exploring the link between internal and international migration, chapters in this book investigate how key notions of the intellectual migration framework — intellectual capital, intellectual nodes, intellectual gateways, and intellectual peripheries — affect the spatial and social mobilities of migrants. They address issues like the (un)certainty of partaking intellectual migration, the agency-structure dynamics behind migration decisions, and the value of intellectual capital in the migration process. For illustrative purposes, the empirical work selected for this book primarily, but not exclusively, focuses on movements between China and North America. The applicability and value of the intellectual migration framework, with its bi- and multi-regional appeal, is not restricted to these two regions. Apart from being insightful scholarly reference work, this book can serve as a textbook in migration studies, China studies, American studies, and geography and sociology courses. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.