Return migration of German-affiliated researchers: analyzing departure and return by gender, cohort, and discipline using Scopus bibliometric data 1996–2020

Xinyi Zhao (), Samin Aref (), Emilio Zagheni () and Guy Stecklov ()
Additional contact information
Xinyi Zhao: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Samin Aref: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Emilio Zagheni: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Guy Stecklov: University of British Columbia

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 12, No 45, 7707-7729

Abstract: Abstract The international migration of researchers is an important dimension of scientific mobility, and has been the subject of considerable policy debate. However, tracking the migration life courses of researchers is challenging due to data limitations. In this study, we use Scopus bibliometric data on eight million publications from 1.1 million researchers who have published at least once with an affiliation address from Germany in 1996–2020. We construct the partial life histories of published researchers in this period and explore both their out-migration and the subsequent return of a subset of this group: the returnees. Our analyses shed light on the career stages and gender disparities between researchers who remain in Germany, those who emigrate, and those who eventually return. We find that the return migration streams are even more gender imbalanced, which points to the need for additional efforts to encourage female researchers to come back to Germany. We document a slightly declining trend in return migration among more recent cohorts of researchers who left Germany, which, for most disciplines, was associated with a decrease in the German collaborative ties of these researchers. Moreover, we find that the gender disparities for the most gender imbalanced disciplines are unlikely to be mitigated by return migration given the gender compositions of the cohorts of researchers who have left Germany and of those who have returned. This analysis uncovers new dimensions of migration among scholars by investigating the return migration of published researchers, which is critical for the development of science policy.

Keywords: High-skilled migration; Return migration; Computational demography; Scholarly migration; Gender disparities; Science of science; Scientometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04351-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04351-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04351-4

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().