Our study analyses connections between the economic and cultural capital of the families of international students, their study choices, and postgraduation returns. Thus far, research on brain drain has focused either on actual returns or on the intentions of students to return. Literature exploring the selectivity of international student mobility interpreted the middle class background of the students as a distinction strategy in a situation of expanding tertiary education in the source country. However, the connection between the cultural and economic capital of the student's family and postgraduation returns has not yet been analysed. Our results, based on a survey of parents of internationally mobile students from Slovakia, confirm the previously reported selectivity of international student mobility. Internationally mobile students come more often from families with a higher level of cultural capital. Moreover, students from families with high cultural capital have a higher probability of studying in more prestigious study destinations. The study destination is, however, not influenced by the economic capital of the family. We use structural equation modelling to describe the connection observed between cultural and economic capital and postgraduation returns. Although a high level of cultural capital increases the odds of nonreturn, a high level of economic capital increases the chance of postgraduation return. We suggest that such a “cultural capital drain” could have positive consequences on vertical labour market mobility in the source country. We discuss the connection between international student mobility and labour migration in the case of international students from low income families.

This study complements the existing analyses of migration of care workers by focusing on the economic situation in the sending country. It shows that the rising popularity of care work in Austria in recent years was fuelled primarily by the crisis induced unemployment rise in Slovakia, rather than by the Austrian legalization policies. Compared to the pre-crisis situation, post-crisis care workers in Austria are more often previously unemployed and without a nursing qualification. Similarly, the earnings of the carers are strongly connected with their previous employment situation in Slovakia. We conclude that the size of the migrant workforce as well as its composition is better explained by the conditions in the sending country than by welfare policies in the destination. If care migration follows the logic of labour migration-as our results suggest-the gradual closing of the income gap between Western and Central European countries will lead to a shift in the source countries of care workers.

This article evaluates predictions of the level of migration from Central and Eastern European countries which joined the European Union in 2004. It does so by comparing observed levels of migration from the new Member States with predictions based on a 2002 Eurobarometer survey. This comparison demonstrates that the failures of previous approaches were due mainly to underestimating the complex relationship between regional and international migration. In contrast to the situation in EU 15, the propensity to migrate regionally within the accession states does not imply a greater potential for international migration. This article shows that GDP was a strong predictor of migration from the new Member States during the 2004 to 2006 period. Equally important, the research presented demonstrates that well‐chosen survey variables have the potential to provide accurate measurements of migration intentions.

This paper focuses on migration from Slovakia in the context of migration from the 10 countries which became European Union members in May 2004. While on the aggregate level these migration flows confirm the basic assumptions of the neoclassic migration theory, this study tests if insights from the new economics of labour migration (NELM) and migrant network theory are confirmed by those movements. Contrary to MexicoÁUS migration, such theory evaluation is rather rare in European migration research which is probably caused by the requirement of detailed and reliable datasets. We try to overcome this inconvenience by using Labour Force Survey data. Those data include the necessary information about the households of migrants that can be used to test for predicted interactions. We show on post 2004 labour migration from Slovakia that foreign employment of a household member creates remittance flows and, as expected by the NELM theory, improves the income situation of the household. However, remittances are produced only if the migrating household members are in the position of parents. This finding has consequences for remittance estimations as most of the post accession migration are single young migrants. The existence of intra-and trans-generational migrant networks is also confirmed by our multivariate analysis. While both types of network effects are gender specific, the gender factor seems to be stronger in the case of transgenerational networks. Besides the strong and significant influence of networks that increase the odds of migration to a destination where migrant family members are present, we found preliminary evidence of a 'culture of migration' in the households of migrants.