The human face of global mobility: A research Agenda

The lack of research on the migrants, as well as the empirical weaknesses of many other debates on transnationalism and global mobility, leaves a clear opportunity for a new kind of integrated research agenda on global mobility and the international migration of the highly skilled. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) International Institute working group on global mobility was brought together with just these issues in mind. Academically speaking, there has been relatively little human level research on the diverse, yet prototypical avatars of globalization in the skilled, educated or professional categories. More broadly, there remains a call for more micro-level, phenomenological studies of the everyday reality of global mobility, despite the avalanche of writings on globalization in all its forms. Working through five such assumptions then, in fact, leads to the emergence of a new, more specified and more differentiated research agenda on elite, professional, highly skilled or highly educated international migration— in all its forms.