Tina Haussen, Stefan Toepfer (p), Silke Uebelmesser

Well-integrated highly skilled immigrants are an important economic factor for regions confronted by demographic change and skilled-labor shortage. Even though international university students are officially temporary migrants, they may plan to become immigrants to the university region in the future. However, little is known about their migration intensions after graduation, i.e. whether to leave or to stay in the university region.

We have surveyed 453 international students from more than 20 countries and seven fields of study at the time of their enrolment at a German university. Not only do we ask about their migration intensions after graduation but also about how certain they are about this choice as well as about the factors that may determine this choice. Additionally, we have detailed information on students’ initial reasons to come to the university region, their socio-economic background, their past migration experience, their expectations related to living and studying in Germany, and their risk attitude and time preferences.

Our econometric analysis will allow us to test whether and how personal, professional, economic and societal factors are associated with international students’ intention to leave or to stay in the university region after graduation. Further, we can empirically test how these factors vary by individual characteristics, nationality or field of study. Deepening this understanding will help to derive policy recommendations about international students’ potential as future high-skilled labor in the region.

María Gutiérrez-Portilla (p), Adolfo Maza, María Hierro

Nowadays, as we live in the era of globalization, the scope and consequences of an economic crisis are bound to affect different features of this global society. And, within this context, the phenomenon of international migration is far from being an exception. In fact, the evolution and trends of this phenomenon are heavily influenced by the business cycle.
Since the nineties, Spain has received a large number of immigrants to the point of turning into one of the highest immigrant-receiving countries in the world. However, the outbreak of the economic downturn became a turning point in this trend; in fact, this unprecedented crisis has coincided with the end of this period of international migration to Spain, giving rise to a new era of out-migration.
In this regard, the contribution of this paper is to analyze migration outflows of foreign population from Spain during the Great Recession, trying to uncover the main factors shaping them and how foreign emigrants face this new economic reality. To do so, an extended gravity model will be estimated for the period 2008-2013, using data for Spain and the group of countries receiving the great majority of these flows.
The paper will be organized as follows. The first section will offer a brief literature review of previous studies in this issue. Then, a descriptive overview on the phenomenon of foreigners’ outflows in Spain will be provided. Subsequently, the empirical model will be outlined. Finally, the main results and conclusions will be presented.