Student Mobility Flows: A Literature Review

Knowledge streams of any kind (vertical or horizontal) have become essential to the modern knowledge society, changing and impacting the future development of each higher education system and causally the process itself. This paper focuses on reviewing approaches to mobility flows. In the literature we identified four main approaches, although many other theoretical approaches are also in place. They can be categorized in four main categories; a) studies with the focus on determinants on mobility – push and pull factors adopted from the migration theory; b) studies focusing on the labour market and human capital theory – to attract the brightest students; c) studies that place attention to cross-border, internationalization and globalisation processes and d) studies focusing on world system theories. These frameworks are not mutually exclusive and can be easily complemented and correlated. The identified theoretical approaches are most used and can be helpful to other scholars who research the same topic.