The Role of Education-Based Migration in the Country’s Economic Development

Education-based migration plays a decisive role in any country’s economic development from the traditional agricultural society to the modern globalized and industrialized economy, which is confirmed by the numerous provisions of economic theory. In this paper, we focus on the multigenerational overlapping pattern framework for educational-based migration occurring before labor market involvement, and examine its roles and pathways in economic development, urbanization, and workforce composition. Given the rapid changes in both the numbers of foreign-born people and in their composition across European countries and other Western developed economies over the past few decades, it is important to explore not only the extent to which mechanisms shaping associations between education and anti-migration attitudes vary between countries, but also how these differences develop over time, and whether these differences are systematically related to economic factors, such as levels of income inequality or economic development, or the stocks of immigrant communities. Our results demonstrate that education-based migration might increase the intellectual potential and innovations in the incumbent countries, as visible from the examples of Erasmus student exchange program in the European Union. Moreover, this migration can be induced using the targeted economic policies such as maintained by Canada or Australia. These findings can be used as guidelines for stakeholders and researchers focusing on deriving the strategies of economic growth.