BRAIN CIRCULATION?

Abstract

This article argues that despite the growing emphasis on brain circulation, most British and Indian scientists working in Boston, Massachusetts, USA are still contributing to a brain drain in their home countries. I show that although the majority of respondents have regular, albeit different kinds of business contacts with their home countries, this has yet to translate into significant personal investments. Although most British and Indian scientists do not forge social contacts with professionals in their home countries, I suggest that such links could help induce investment in the UK and India in the future.

Keywords:

• highly skilled migrants
• social networks
• brain circulation
• British scientists
• Indian scientists

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mia Gray, Erik Stam and three anonymous reviewers for detailed, critical and valuable comments on a previous draft of this paper.

Notes

1. National and regional economies are difficult to conceptually define and separate (Storper 1997). For the purposes of this paper, I do not separate national and regional economies because it is clear that highly skilled migrants have a positive effect on both the national and regional scale. Saxenian (2006), for example, argues that Indian engineers have made a positive impact upon national and regional economies in the US. Here, she is referring to the ICT sector in general in the US, as well as Silicon Valley's ICT sector. Any discussion of the ‘impact’ of highly skilled migrants on national and regional economies refers to their economic influence in terms of starting-up companies, creating jobs, making personal investments in companies, and contributing to the economic development of the high technology sector.

2. I recognise that the term highly skilled migrant is broad and I use it to include scientists, science business consultants, entrepreneurs, managers, and senior managers because I want to include people who hold a wide selection of job positions within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector.

3. I use the following categories to distinguish between different sized firms. Small firm: 0–49 employees; medium firm: 50–249 employees; large firm: 250 or more employees.

4. ‘South’ India is understood here as anywhere that lies on or south of the latitude of Mumbai.