Brain chains: managing and mediating knowledge migration

Abstract

Knowledge constitutes a critical vector in processes and outcomes of migration, in the evolution of economies and societies, and in national policy-making. This is apparent in the growing emphasis on managing migration and the infrastructure of intermediaries involved in facilitating and channeling flows of migrants, but also finance, ideas and objects generated through diaspora communities. Scholars have captured these movements through vocabulary around ‘brain circulation’, or brain ‘drain’ and ‘gain’. While these concepts are useful for describing patterns and outcomes, sometimes in narrow cost-benefit terms, they do not provide tools to explore the constitution of knowledge flows in migration. This paper proposes a more nuanced construction of brain circulation which we call’brain chains’ to acknowledge the complex linkages comprising knowledge migration, between individuals, families, diasporic communities, private and public agents, and nation states. The rationalities of migration management and mediation are expressed at all levels, but perhaps most visibly at the level of national (im)migration policy. The concept of brain chains is illustrated through a case study of the relatively small country of New Zealand. This country is an apposite example because of its high levels of immigration, its changing ethnic composition, and its relatively large national diaspora. Further, it provides a clear example of changing regimes of migration management based on neoliberal assumptions related to human capital and the roles of migrants. A focus on brain chains provides a foundation to develop more theoretically substantive explorations of the production, circulation and mediation of knowledge in contemporary migration.

Keywords:

• migration
• knowledge migration
• brain circulation
• migration management

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge initial support from the Royal Society of New Zealand, and comments made on an earlier version of this paper by Richard LeHeron, Andrew Butcher, Manying Ip, Richard Bedford, Nick Lewis, Elsie Ho, Lyndsay Blue, Victoria Jollands, Gary Hawke.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise referenced, New Zealand migration data in this paper are derived from Immigration New Zealand databases of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE), namely R1 Residence decisions by financial year; S1 Student applications decided; W1 Work applications decided; W3 Work applications approved by occupation; Customised visa transition database. These are not referenced by access date because they are dynamic databases, constantly updated. These databases for recent years can be found at http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/general/generalinformation/statistics/. These data have been tabulated by the authors, including from earlier data (no longer online) provided by MBIE.