International student mobility and subsequent migration: the case of Poland

ABSTRACT

This article aims to identify selected determinants of migration among former international student mobility participants. It is based on a large-scale online survey (2450 completed questionnaires) distributed among all Polish alumni who took part in Erasmus mobility for studies 5–6 years before. The survey was conducted in 2012. We apply descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation, χ² tests, t-tests, ANOVAs, and a logistic regression model. Being a man and graduating from education studies diminish the likelihood of living abroad, whereas graduating from science, mathematics and computing, finishing one’s education at the Bachelor level, having studied in German and French during one’s international student mobility and being involved in a student association at the host university significantly increase the chance of currently living abroad. Finally, those who had their first international student mobility at the doctoral level are more than three times as likely to be living abroad than those who did not.

KEYWORDS:

• International student mobility
• migration
• brain circulation
• Erasmus
• Poland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Paweł Bryła http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1535-5659

Additional information

Funding

Our research study was co-funded by the European Commission within a project Mobility and Employability Research for Generation Erasmus (MERGE) [no. 518352-LLP-1-2011-1-UK-ERASMUS-ESMO] and the Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego [research grant no. W208/ERASMUS/2011].