Return mobility of scientists and knowledge circulation: an exploratory approach to scientists attitudes and perspectives

Abstract

Th e paper addresses the international mobility and return of scientists and its implications for regions/countries with weaker scientific and technological systems. It focuses on the "return dilemma" and, using the Portuguese case as empirical setting, discusses the conditions for return, the "diaspora" alternative and the role of policies in minimising the impacts of mobility flows.Despite the growing importance assum ed by scientific mobility, our understanding of mobility flows, in particular of return mob ility, is still deficient. Data about the level of mobility and mobility paths is scarce and difficult to obtain and the knowledge about expatriate scientists' motivations and strategies, namely their attitudes towards the home country and their perspectives concerning career and return mobility, remains limited.The research presented in this paper is a preliminary contribution to attend to some of these issues. A method is proposed to address some methodological problems in empirical research on scientific mobility. It permits to delimit a sample of "scientifically productive" expatriate scientists in specific fields, to locate these scientists and to trace their professional trajectories, thus making possible to collect information on their mobility behaviour as well as to gain some preliminary insights on their attitudes and perspectives. This methodology is experimentally applied to the Portuguese case. Notwithstanding its exploratory nature, the empirical research provides some insights into the behaviour of a younger generation of "scientifically productive scientists" in a field with a strong international mobility pattern (biotechnology), which can be relevant for policy making.