On socialization, patriotism and trust: the migration of homeward-bound Russian academics

Abstract

Because global labor markets affect the self-assignment of academics, they also affect structural changes in migration movements. To understand the migration patterns of highly qualified academic scholars, research has focused on their mobility, including their return migration. Thus far, studies have examined migrants from Latin America to the United States, but the impacts of cultural or societal contexts on migration have not been investigated.

Based on an empirical study of Russian academics who have migrated to Germany, we propose theory-based answers to the following questions: Is trust a relevant motivation for homeward-bound academic migrants to return to their native countries, and who or what is the object of this trust? Why do these migrants, in contrast to the vast majority of interviewees, self-identify with their society of origin? Does transaction cost theory explain these academics' motives for migration? Is their temporary stay beneficial to the host society?

Keywords:

• migration
• highly qualified
• Russian academics
• patriotism
• transaction costs

Notes

The terms global and international are used interchangeably.

This article uses Han's definition of migration as “permanent or temporary geographical and social movement and structural attribute of the global labor market” (Han 9). While this definition is flexible enough to cover a broad range of migration patterns, it lacks concreteness. Further research is required to define this social phenomenon.

This group is called Patriots because most of them self-classify with this term to describe their identity through reference to their society of origin.

Highly qualified workers are persons who, according to internationally accepted classifications, work in professions codified under ISCO-88 (the International Standard Classification of Occupations), groups 1–3. The terms highly qualified workers, experts and academics are used interchangeably.

Richter (338) defines networks as follows: social networks consist of a finite number of actors, their characteristics and their social relations (Richter 593).

Identity is defined by Recchi and Nebe (9) as “social, dynamic, categorical and relational aspects of our automatically composed self-conception.”

Treibel's assumption (13; also Beck, Risikogesellschaft.) that, like the impact of relationships, the impact of kinsmen on decisions to migrate is decreasing must be differentiated.

Hillmann (554) defines milieu as an aspect of “a class, social level or population group … with its socio-cultural, economical living conditions, which influence experiences and impressions and thus have a selective impact on the way to think, value, decide and behave. Milieu necessarily privileges and discriminates in terms of social mobility and performance, as it determines capabilities and resources.”

For example, Individualists stated, “I enjoy working with languages and people from other countries.”

“Group is a social system which is determined by … diffuse relationships between its members, as well as by constancy” (Endruweit and Trommsdorff 255). The precondition of forming a group of migrants is their group identity (Sackmann 35).

Market is defined “as a social institution of repeating exchanges between a majority of prospective buyers” (Hamilton and Feenstra 61) and cannot be uncoupled from social structures (Richter 328).

Transaction costs are composed of costs of control, enforcement, search, information, negotiation and decision (North 32).

Limited ratio means that the ability of the human intellect to raise and answer complex questions is limited compared with the size of the objective problems to be solved (Simon 243).

According to North (165), informal restrictions derive from the traditions of a culture as well as from the extension and implementation of rules and solutions to coordination problems.

Transactions take place when goods or services are transformed across an interface (Williamson 1). Transactions are characterized by uncertain foresight, occurrence and volume. These attributes affect the economic action of market actors (Richter 57).

Ostrom (51) defines institutions as “the sets of working rules that are used to determine who is eligible to make decisions in some arena, what actions are allowed or constrained, what aggregation rules will be used, what procedures must be followed, what information must or must not be provided, and what payoffs will be assigned to individuals dependent on their action.”

Richter (321) defines markets and companies as networks based on relational contracts “with specific structures of control and enforcement.”