Beyond Remittances.pdf (432.12 kB)
Beyond remittances: knowledge transfer among highly educated Latvian youth abroad
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 06:43 authored by Russell King, Aija Lulle, Laura BuzinskaYoung, tertiary-educated emigrants see themselves, and are seen by their home country’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 remittances, which are the main element in the theory and policy of migration’s contribution to development, we examine knowledge transfer as a form of “social remittance”, breaking down knowledge into a range of types – 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.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Sociology of DevelopmentISSN
2374-538XPublisher
University of California PressExternal DOI
Issue
2Volume
2Page range
183-203Department affiliated with
- Geography Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-06-15First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-06-15First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-06-15Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC