Intellectual Migration: The Movements of Students and Professionals

Employing the intellectual migration analytical framework, this book examines the dynamics of student and professional migration. Intellectual migration encompasses a spectrum where higher education students and professionals at various life stages move to pursue intellectual credentials that can promote career development. Besides exploring the link between internal and international migration, chapters in this book investigate how key notions of the intellectual migration framework ― intellectual capital, intellectual nodes, intellectual gateways, and intellectual peripheries ― affect the spatial and social mobilities of migrants. They address issues like the (un)certainty of partaking intellectual migration, the agency-structure dynamics behind migration decisions, and the value of intellectual capital in the migration process. For illustrative purposes, the empirical work selected for this book primarily, but not exclusively, focuses on movements between China and North America. The applicability and value of the intellectual migration framework, with its bi- and multi-regional appeal, is not restricted to these two regions. Apart from being insightful scholarly reference work, this book can serve as a textbook in migration studies, China studies, American studies, and geography and sociology courses. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Wei Li is Professor at the School of Social Transformation and the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.

Lucia Lo is Professor Emerita at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, Toronto, Canada.

Yixi Lu is Associate Professor at the Research Institute of Social Development at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China.