Beyond Remittances

Abstract

Young, tertiary-edu ated e ig a ts see the sel es, a d a e see thei ho e ou t s government, as agents of economic and social change, especially if they can be incentivized to return home. In this paper we examine whether this hypothesized positive impact is realized, taking the case of Latvia, a small peripheral country in north-east Europe, formerly part of the Soviet Union but since 2004 a member-state of the European Union. We build our analysis on data from an online questionnaire (n=307) and from narrative interviews (n=30) with foreign-educated Latvian students and graduates. In moving beyond e itta es, hi h a e the ai ele e t i the theo a d poli of ig atio s o t i utio to de elop e t, e e a i e k o ledge t a sfe as a fo of so ial remittance , eaki g do k o ledge i to a a ge of t pes -embrained, embodied, encultured etc. We find that students and graduates do indeed see themselves as agents of change in their home country, but that the changes they want to make, and the broader imaginaries of development that they may have, are constrained due to the limited scale of the market and the often non-transparent recruitment practices in Latvia. Policy should recognize and respond to various barriers that exist to knowledge transfer and return.

Social innovation within transnational flows of knowledge: The example of student mobility from Bulgaria

“…In the case of Poland, Klein-Hitpaß (2016) found that by transferring organisational knowledge, highly skilled return migrants initiated institutional change, which was especially valuable to support the transformation from a socialist planned economy to a democratic market economy. On the other hand, a study on returning Latvian graduates revealed that the wish to act as 'agent of change' back home is often constrained by the limited scale of the market and recruitment practices that lack transparency (King et al, 2016). These findings point to the strong interrelations between cultural and social capital in the context of transnational flows of knowledge but also to the relevance of institutional contexts for an effective implementation of knowledge.…”

Moderating the Impact of Nurse Emigration on the Health Sector: The State and Policy Instrument Choice

“…Social remittance refers to the “ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving‐ to sending‐country communities” (Levitt, 1998, p. 926). Knowledge transfer is a form of social remittance from migrants abroad, which means the flow of knowledge, skills, ideas, and practices to the home countries (King, Lulle, & Buzinska, 2016). Conversely, only highly‐skilled migrants, who have worked abroad and accumulated human capital, share their learning with local industries when they return to their home countries (Nyberg–Sørensen, Van Hear, & Engberg–Pedersen, 2002, p. 23).…”