Asian Scientists on the Move: Changing Science in a Changing Asia
Abstract
The growing scientific research output from Asia has been making headlines since the start of the twenty-first century. But behind this science story, there is a migration story. The elite scientists who are pursuing cutting-edge research in Asia are rarely 'homegrown' talent but were typically born in Asia, trained in the West, and then returned to work in Asia. Asian Scientists on the Move explores why more and more Asian scientists are choosing to return to Asia, and what happens after their return, when these scientists set up labs in Asia and start training the next generation of Asian scientists. Drawing on evocative firsthand accounts from 119 Western-trained Asian scientists about their migration decisions and experiences, and in-depth analysis of the scientific field in four country case studies - China, India, Singapore and Taiwan - the book reveals the growing complexity of the Asian scientist migration system.
... In these theories, return migration is oversimplified as a binary assessment of either failure or success of the initial migration. However, the success and failure defined in these theories ignore the social context in which return occurs (Cassarino 2004;Paul 2022) and may not match the migrants' perception of success and failure in their migration trajectory. As these theories often adopt a top-down approach, they overlook migrants' own understanding and perception of their return migration trajectory. ...
This article offers insight into the motivations behind voluntary North-South return migration by examining returnees’ own understanding and perception of return. Adopting a bottom-up approach and drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with eleven Iranian returnees, this study asks: How do return migrants perceive and articulate what motivated and facilitated their decision to return from a prosperous country in the Global North to the challenging living conditions of their home country in the Global South? How do they explain the role of their stay-behind families in shaping their return migration trajectory? Informed by social network theory, this article showcases the agency of North-South return migrants as active social actors in the process, wherein their return is shaped by transnational relationships, particularly family ties, regardless of the context of return. Family ties act as a driving force of return migration not only when stay-behind families provide emotional and practical support to return migrants but also when migrants feel a sense of duty towards family members who have remained in the homeland and may need their care. This study contributes to scholarship on return migration by undertaking a critical examination of return migration theories grounded in economic models. In the study of voluntary return migration, scholars have focused significant attention on the economic push and pull factors informed by the rational choice theory. The economic models, however, do not fully explain the seemingly puzzling North-South return cases where migrants participate in return migration from a prosperous country to an economically adverse context of their homeland. This study highlights the role of family ties in return migration process and challenges the dichotomous success-failure narrative about return.
Set against the booming reverse migration of scientific talents from developed nations to newly-emerged advanced economies, this study particularly examines the return of Chinese early career researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Deploying a mixed research design that integrates quantitative and qualitative traditions, it aims to address three prominent knowledge gaps surrounding this emergent pattern of transnational academic migration. According to survey results, caring duties, career prospects, and cultural attachments have consistently emerged as the primary drivers for returnees who received PhD training in various host destinations. In contrast, economic and lifestyle concerns were of much less import to those completing the doctorate in leading Anglophone countries. Stark gender disparities were also observed, with male returnees’ desire to secure cultural familiarity and upward mobility especially evident and their use of transnational academic networks more prevalent. Moreover, participants who made the decision to return toward the end of their overseas sojourn and whose doctoral education was sponsored by the Chinese government demonstrated a significantly higher likelihood of considering onward migratory movement. While largely corroborating the quantitative findings, interview data further highlights the vital role of a justice-oriented university environment in attracting high-skilled talents from across different axes of social disadvantage. Throughout, it points to the prospective stickiness of return migration instigated amidst the radical shifts in global science. We conclude the paper with critical reflections on our empirical and methodological focus.
Research on return migration has tended to focus their analyses on two imagined places: a host country where they used to live, and an origin country where they must reintegrate after a long period of being away. This paper reveals how spaces within the city can undermine the reintegration of former migrants seeking to reestablish themselves in their home countries. Based on in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean academics, we discuss how the priorities of globally oriented universities can impact the reintegration of highly skilled returnees within their home city. Specifically, this paper reveals how returnees face the challenge of negotiating two conflicting demands upon their return home. As academics, they must adhere to the needs of their fast-changing universities, where the pressures of world rankings demand "global impact" through research and publications. Yet, as Singaporean citizens, they also face expectations to fulfill the responsibilities of being "home" in their city, juggling calls for national service and community outreach among local university faculty. We examine the conflict between these two demands as an understudied factor that shapes migration flows into Asia's global cities.
Previous research has outlined the ongoing decline of British universities, just as the decline of German universities before it. By revisiting the performances of the ‘top’ universities worldwide in multiple rankings and grading systems, this study outlines an ongoing decline of American universities in university rankings. The falls of the USA’s public universities are especially notable. Normally, scholars believe the shift of the world’s scientific center is from the European continent to Britain, and then to America. However, the performance of universities worldwide in recent decades just showcases a different picture, in which American universities are declining at a faster speed than those in Britain and the European continent.
Singapore is known for differentiating highly skilled and low-skilled migrants by regulating their social rights, employment, and pathways to permanent residency and citizenship. Since 2009, the city-state has made further differentiation between highly skilled migrants and natives, that is, native-born citizens. Existing studies on migrant differentiation mostly adopt a state-centric perspective. We argue that differentiation is also driven by forces from below. We introduce the concept of differential fairness to capture natives’ justification for differentiation between themselves and migrants, particularly the highly skilled. Drawing on survey data and in-depth interviews with natives and Chinese and Indian migrants, we show that natives demand for preferential policies to protect their interests. We further reveal that the measures of differentiation have created an integration dilemma, in which natives and migrants hold divergent views on fairness and expectations of migrant integration.
Since 1990 there has been remarkable growth and diversification of worldwide capacity and output in science, and a distinctive global science system has emerged, primarily grounded in research universities, fostered by Internet-mediated communication and publication in English, cross-border authorship and researcher mobility. While global science overlaps with and is affected by national science systems, it is constituted by pan-national knowledge flows and collegial collaboration and has partial autonomy. Four different interpretive frameworks (narratives) have evolved to explain global science: science as an expanding cross-border network; science as an arms race between competing nations; science as a global market of competing ‘World-Class Universities’; and science as a centre-periphery hierarchy in which emerging countries are permanently constrained by Euro-American dominance. The paper reviews each narrative in relation to the literature, especially in scientometrics, and empirical tendencies in global science, tracked in secondary data derived from bibliometric collections. While each narrative contains at least a grain of truth, each also conflicts with the others and each is radically insufficient. A better explanation of the drivers of global science combines (1) flat open networked relations with (2) the inequalities and closures shaped by global hegemony, arbitrarily modified by (3) national governments and specific resources.
In the last decade, political and economic constraints have prompted many students to leave Iran. While Europe and North America have traditionally been Iranians' preferred destinations, selective entry procedures make direct access increasingly difficult. This article focuses on Iranian students' stepwise migration strategies to reach Western countries through Turkey. My research indicates that stepwise migration theory can be applied to international students, as visa restrictions and the selectivity of Western universities transformed Turkey into a stepwise migration corridor. The article also considers the advantages of the trajectory analysis method I developed. Trajectory analysis is a longitudinal and mobile method whereby migrants are followed over time and space. It enables the researcher to compare data about migrants who move stepwise and those who move crosswise by staying in Turkey. The research is based on interviews with 36 Iranians in Turkey, Europe, and the United States, of whom 15 moved in stepwise fashion. An important outcome is that students' academic capital is a crucial indicator for their ability to migrate to the West. This finding points to path dependency in students' trajectories along a hierarchy of destinations: not only in geographical terms but also in terms of the perceived level of educational institutions' reputations.
The world must act fast to contain wider international spread of the epidemic of COVID-19 now. The unprecedented public health efforts in China have contained the spread of this new virus. Measures taken in China are currently proven to reduce human-to-human transmission successfully. We summarized the effective intervention and prevention measures in the fields of public health response, clinical management, and research development in China, which may provide vital lessons for the global response. It is really important to take collaborative actions now to save more lives from the pandemic of COVID-19.
Purpose - This chapter provides a thorough historical overview of policies that have governed and guided scientific research in China since 1949 and illustrates changes in scientific publications that accompanied these policy reforms and programs. Design - We divide this historical period into four stages, each with distinct R&D policies: (1) 1949-1955, a period of socialist transformation; (2) 1956-1965, a period of struggle for higher education and research development in a rapidly changing political environment; (3) 1966-1976, the lost decade of the Cultural Revolution; and (4) 1976-present, a period when major national policies have significantly promoted scientific research in China. We use the SPHERE project's comprehensive historical dataset based on Thomson Reuters' Web of Science and data from a set of research universities in China to analyze changes in scientific publication rates concurrent with these policy reforms and programs. Findings - The analysis suggests a tight connection between national policy and scientific research productivity in higher education. The central government controlled scientific research through direct administration in early periods and has guided research activities through funding specific programs in recent decades. Due to their resource dependency on the central government, higher education institutions have been quite responsive to the common goals set by the central government. As a result, what is measured tends to be accomplished. Originality/value - The chapter provides an in-depth description about the rise of higher education and science in China and produces recommendations for future development.
This article investigates the factors that shape how migrant academics engage with fellow scholars within their countries of origin. We focus specifically on the mobility of Asian-born faculty between Singapore, a fast-developing education hub in Southeast Asia, and their " home " countries within the region. Based on qualitative interviews with 45 migrant academics , this article argues that while education hubs like Singapore increase the possibility of brain circulation within Asia, epistemic differences between migrant academics and home country counterparts make it difficult to establish long-term collaboration for research. Singa-pore institutions also look to the West in determining how research work is assessed for tenure and promotion, encouraging Singapore-based academics to focus on networking with colleagues and peers based in the US and Europe rather than those based in origin countries. Such conditions undermine the positive impact of academic mobility between Singapore and surrounding countries within the region.
Using a transnational perspective, this article analyzes the soriocultural
and political transformation of US-Dominican transmigrants
who have relocated to the Dominican Republic as one step in their
transnational journey. Transmigrants and their society of origin have
forged a dense web of transnational relations that unites them in a
continuous transterritorial social formation. This formation is evident
in the incessant back and forth traveling and multidirectional exchanges
of material and intangible resources and symbols between
the US and the DR. Transmigration has spread people's lives across
national borders and generated a transnational habitus. Thus, even
transmigrants who resettle in the DR maintain enduring transnational
relationships. However, instead of being a social equalizer that
empowers all migrants alike, transnational migration tends to reproduce
and even exacerbate class, gender, and regional inequalities.
Finally, internal and transnational migration seem to form a single
system connecting the Dominican rural population to the US via
large Dominican urban centers.
Many countries have taken action in recent times to address harassment in the work place and violence in the home, but little attention has been paid to sexual harassment in public places, specifically during women's journey to work and school. In developing countries, many more women are seeking education and employment than previously, which has increased the opportunity for sexual harassment in public places. In India, the study location, this harassment is known as "eve teasing". Eve teasing includes cat calling, lewd remarks, and inappropriate sexual contact such as rubbing and fondling. Tolerance of such incidents could lead to more severe forms of abuse and encourage more individuals to participate. Necessary as laws are, they cannot bring about immediate changes in widespread public behaviors, particularly those, such as eve teasing, that are deeply rooted in the culture of a country. To date there is no systematic research on sexual harassment in public places to assist public authorities and town planners with the development of security measures, especially for college-going women in cities and towns in India. Rapid assessment methodology has been used increasingly, especially in the field of public health, to assist decision-making about appropriate interventions for social problems by examining issues within social and cultural contexts in space and time. This paper provides a case study of rapid assessment of so-called "eve teasing" of female college students in Chennai, India. Three methods were employed in this rapid assessment of the problem- focus group discussions with college students, interviews with police officers from stations nearby the campuses and safety audits of the campus surroundings. This small exploratory study of eve teasing in India succeeded in promoting understanding of the problem and in providing many suggestions for reducing it. These latter included an extensive inventory of precautions for students, particularly female students to take in order to protect themselves from eve teasing, and a list of preventive suggestions for other stakeholders-the police, local municipalities, transport agencies and the colleges themselves. The study has wider implications for the study of routine precautions, for crime in public space and for the use of rapid assessment techniques in Crime Science.
Higher education expansion is not a new development in the world. Different countries have faced various contexts and factors that push the expansion to occur. Since 1996, the Taiwanese government has allowed the private sector to open new higher education institutions or be upgraded for open more access at the higher education level to correspond to the general public’s educational expectations. This article starts by describing the expansion of higher education from the elite to universal stage both globally and locally. The article then specifically introduces the case of the doctoral manpower structure in Taiwan and lists three specific scenarios regarding local PhDs’ reality in the current competitive job market, highlighting the further talent fault crisis in society today. In addition to discussing the consequences and challenges at the doctoral level of talent cultivation, the article further identifies the main issues facing the current manpower planning in Taiwan. The article calls for all stakeholders of the agenda to rethink the purpose of doctoral manpower cultivation in Taiwan over the long run.
Small developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa are still struggling with the institutionalisation and professionalisation of science. Many countries in these regions are yet to establish science communities. Singapore case becomes all the more interesting and exemplary as this small country was able to build a small but vibrant science community in relatively a short span of time. As will be shown through the case study on ‘Biopolis’ (cluster of modern biology laboratories and national university), there is indeed a unique Singaporean approach in building science community by attracting global talents. The process of attracting global talents or what may be seen as a case of brain gain was part of Singapore’s national science, technology and innovation (STI) strategy since the 1980s and particularly the 1990s. After exploring the most salient features of STI policies, the essay will focus on two major institutional developments, which were crucial for building Biopolis, based science community. First is on building of world class university and research ecosystem; and second is a empirical research on the structure and composition of scientists in eight major biological labs.
Contemporary immigrants can not be characterized as the "uprooted'. Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. In the US, anthropologists are engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this article, the authors use studies of migration from St. Vincent, Grenada, the Philippines, and Haiti to the US to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. The authors conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext of the public debates in the US about the merits of immigration. -Authors
This paper sets out an argument and approach for moving beyond a primarily arts-based conceptualization of cultural capital, as has been the tendency within Bourdieusian approaches to date. We advance the notion that, in contemporary society, scientific forms of cultural and social capital can command a high symbolic and exchange value. Our previous research [Archer et al. (2014) Journal of Research in Science Teaching 51, 1–30] proposed the concept of “science capital” (science-related forms of cultural and social capital) as a theoretical lens for explaining differential patterns of aspiration and educational participation among young people. Here, we attempt to theoretically, methodologically, and empirically advance a discussion of how we might conceptualize science capital and how this might be translated into a survey tool for use with students. We report on findings from a survey conducted with 3658 secondary school students, aged 11–15 years, in England. Analysis found that science capital was unevenly spread across the student population, with 5% being classified as having “high” science capital and 27% “low” science capital. Analysis shows that levels of science capital (high, medium, or low) are clearly patterned by cultural capital, gender, ethnicity, and set (track) in science. Students with high, medium, or low levels of science capital also seem to have very different post-16 plans (regarding studying or working in science) and different levels of self-efficacy in science. They also vary dramatically in terms of whether they feel others see them as a “science person.” The paper concludes with a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues and implications for practice.
Globalization of higher education, finance and industrial production has contributed to the internationalization of scientific and technical human capital (STHC). STHC is generated by and includes research and development (R&D) personnel, but also includes the knowledge, know-how and learning capacity embedded in their knowledge networks. As science and technology (S&T) personnel develop their careers and networks, they draw upon and contribute to the development of dispersed knowledge networks and consequently STHC. Drawing on a recent survey of publishing scientists and an analysis of publication patterns in the biological sciences, this article seeks to document and reveal the policy implications of dispersed knowledge networks for Australian science and innovation capacity.
The paper focuses on returnees and knowledge diaspora as important sources for human resources development, identifying push and pull factors that also contribute significantly to innovation in the higher education sector. For both China and Israel, their high-skilled diaspora are a major policy priority: each has a substantial, high-skilled diaspora, and policies and programmes to promote their return and/or greater involvement. By outlining key projects and schemes in each to recruit international professional workers, we argue that bringing advanced knowledge and skills back home through international education and experiences has long been common to both. At the same time, the rise of a worldwide knowledge diaspora is now of global importance in promoting transnational scientific and business networks that underpin both research and development, and the quest for world-class universities. China’s size and weight, its determination to boost development and improve its higher education system, as well as the willingness of both diaspora and returnees to contribute, constitute its advantages. Limits to its success include a lack of high-quality research atmosphere, reservations regarding new ideas, the priority attached to materialism and quick results, and corruption. For Israel, the high-quality but relatively small scale of its system presents some particular challenges, as well as budget cuts, stop-start programmes, sclerotic administration, declining salaries, and an ageing professoriate, with few slots open. For both systems, goodwill on both sides is necessary for effective returnee and diaspora strategies, and identity is complex.
The landscape of scientific research and funding is in flux as a result of tight budgets, evolving models of both publishing and evaluation, and questions about training and workforce stability. As future leaders, junior scientists are uniquely poised to shape the culture and practice of science in response to these challenges. A group of postdocs in the Boston area who are invested in improving the scientific endeavor, planned a symposium held on October 2
nd and 3
rd, 2014, as a way to join the discussion about the future of US biomedical research. Here we present a report of the proceedings of participant-driven workshops and the organizers’ synthesis of the outcomes.
Biopolis is the major life sciences investment by Singapore to become a global player in a new knowledge economy, as well as a promissory construction, a future-oriented emergent form of life constituted by and constitutive of a series of ethical plateaus or terrains of decision-making under entrepreneurial, policy and scientific conditions of risk and inadequate knowledge. Singapore's Biopolis partakes in general cultural shifts towards biological and ecological sensibilities as responses to fears of pandemics, climate change, destruction of biodiversity, and toxicities produced by industrial agriculture and manufacturing. The issue is learning about biorepair mechanisms and creating new ecologies of knowledge involving not only interest in infectious or chronic diseases but also stem and iPS cells, cancers and regenerative medicine. Using the Genome Institute of Singapore's first ten years as a partial focus, this article suggests metrics of success (beyond merely money, jobs, patents) which lie in three arenas: infectious diseases, cross-national science diplomacy and regenerative medicine. In October 2010, Biopolis underwent a sudden shift towards 'industrial alignment', raising ethical questions about the nature of future biologies, bioeconomies and bioecologies that have been spliced into the messenger RNA of different social networks and technical platforms of emergent twenty-first century biological sensibilities.
The brain drain that Taiwan experienced from the 1950s to the 1970s has worked in reverse since the 1980s. The increase in the number of returning Taiwanese has been accompanied by a growing demand for non-indigenous global talent to work in various professional positions. The author offers a macro-level analysis of the global economy and the roles that the Taiwan government and Taiwanese firms have played in global recruitment efforts. Although the Taiwan government has been very effective in establishing successful economic policies and creating a sense of prosperity that is attractive to global talent, it has restricted its recruitment efforts mainly to overseas Taiwanese. Furthermore, Taiwan's peripheral position in the global power structure and the obsession of Taiwanese companies with controlling costs has created sharp ethnic divisions within the labour force.
Significance
New data reveal that in the past three decades, China has become a major contributor to science and technology. Four factors favor China’s continuing rise in science: a large population and human capital base, a labor market favoring academic meritocracy, a large diaspora of Chinese-origin scientists, and a centralized government willing to invest in science. These factors may serve as an example to other nations aspiring to advance their standing in science. However, China’s science also faces potential difficulties due to political interference and scientific fraud.
Student migration is a key component of knowledge migration. However, as knowledge becomes a central part of migrant selectivity, labour and family migrants too are involved in knowledge acquisition, both prior to and after migration. At the same time, student migrants are involved in work and family, just like other migrants. What then is distinctive about student migrants? This paper attempts to address this challenge. It begins by reviewing how migration theories have analysed student mobility. It then suggests that migration theorists need to extend existing analyses, which have primarily focused on the spatialities of migration, to take account of the spatialities of knowledge. It is argued that knowledge institutions need to reach out to people in different parts of the world and to produce in prospective students a desire to circulate. This is necessary if the institutions are to obtain a global presence and to maintain their legitimacy as knowledge brokers. An analysis of student migration where the inducements that the Higher Education Institutions offer to prospective students and the subjective responses of such students to these invitations will throw light on how the spatiality of knowledge is achieved and also highlight the distinctiveness of student migration in a knowledgeable migrant world. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This paper highlights the importance of international students to the United States by discussing their impact and necessity to U.S. universities. International student enrollment is a major industry of importance to the U.S. economy and despite arduous visa processes and diminished job prospects their enrollment numbers continue to grow. The Institute of International Education (2012) reports that a lack of funding to public universities has increased their reliance on the revenue provided by international students while private universities also seek to bolster their position in the face of increased international competition. The importance of international students in under-enrolled majors, their necessity as a vital revenue stream for universities and the challenges faced by both student and host university are also discussed. The author provides recommendations for improving the educational experience of international students through improved relationships with university constituents in order to maintain the attractiveness and competitiveness of the U.S.
A growing body of migration scholarship has highlighted the inadequacies of a single‐origin‐single‐destination model for thinking about international migration in our globalizing world. Several terms – onward, stepwise, serial, secondary, triangular, multiple, and transit migration – have been coined to describe these multiple moves within a single migratory lifetime, but the lack of consensus on the terminology to describe these migrations is indicative of the lack of theoretical clarity on this emergent phenomenon. We therefore propose to introduce a new umbrella term, ‘multinational migrations', to capture the varied movements of international migrants across more than one overseas destination with significant time spent in each country. The articles presented here bring together researchers investigating multinational migrations across a range of migrant categories and between various migration hubs. They highlight how individual imaginations, aspirations, capabilities and subjectifications interact with multinational migration infrastructures (in the domains of education, tourism, labour, and citizenship) to lead to the adoption of complex multinational migration trajectories.
The domination of Brahmin and the upper caste scientists have given a Brahmanical identity to science in India. They have been perceived to be the natural inheritors of scientific practice, an assertion reaffirmed by scientists and researchers during my fieldwork in Bangalore, India. Furthermore, merit and passion for doing science was reinscribed and calibrated to denote the alleged castelessness and objectivity of science, obfuscating the deep hierarchies of caste in the practice of science in India. By using ethnographic methods, the article attempts to demonstrate how Indian scientists constructed their identities as casteless beings. The article calls for a public understanding of caste in Indian science, and suggests that public engagement has the potential to democratise the nature of science by addressing the question of exclusion and discrimination in Indian scientific institutions and universities.
In recent years universities have been taken by a new wave of entrepreneurial activities. Originally universities engaged with entrepreneurship mostly in terms of commercializing innovations based on research in the sciences. The new initiatives are instead focused on students and recent alumni, and encompass a much wider set of entrepreneurial initiatives, including student work spaces, accelerators programmes, or industry partnerships. This paper examines these emergent entrepreneurial activities in and around universities, and then asks what the role of government policy is. It argues that any policy approach will have to understand the multi-faceted nature of these new initiatives, and be sensitive to the porous nature of the boundaries between university and private-sector activities.
Many studies highlight the macro-level dissemination of global culture and institutions. This article focuses on social remittances – a local-level, migration-driven form of cultural diffusion. Social remittances are the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities. The role that these resources play in promoting immigrant entrepreneurship, community and family formation, and political integration is widely acknowledged. This article specifies how these same ideas and practices are remolded in receiving countries, the mechanisms by which they are sent back to sending communities, and the role they play in transforming sending-country social and political life.
The segmented assimilation theory offers a theoretical framework for understanding the process by which the new second generation – the children of contemporary immigrants – becomes incorporated into the system of stratification in the host society and the different outcomes of this process. This article examines the issues and controversies surrounding the development of the segmented assimilation theory and reviews the state of recent empirical research relevant to this theoretical approach. It also highlights main conclusions from recent research that bear on this theory and their implications for future studies.
This article is based on the analysis of a pair of cross‐national parallel surveys on Chinese students, respectively inside the People's Republic of China and in the US. Specifically, it makes comparisons between two cross‐sectional groups: 1) Chinese students in a PRC university who intend to study abroad (with a subset that stated that the United States is their top destination), versus 2) Chinese students already at a US university. Building on a “motility” concept while using an “Intellectual Migration” conceptual framework and chi‐square and logistic regression analyses, it demonstrates that Chinese students' possibly returning to the PRC are significantly influenced by their gender, college GPA, family finance, assessment of China's current and future development. The results on outmigration or return migration intentions are presented, and it concludes with some policy implications and future research directions.
This paper breaks new ground in its comparative analysis of two international student migration (ISM) streams, one from the Global South to the Global North (India to developed Anglophone countries), and the other within the Global North (UK to North America, Europe and Australia). These two ISM movements reflect different positionalities within the global system of international student movements, and hence necessitate a critical perspective on the assumptions behind such a comparison, which questions the dominance of ‘knowledge’ about ISM that derives from ‘the West’ as a theoretical template. Two methods are employed to collect data: an online questionnaire survey of UK and Indian students who are, or have recently been, studying abroad; and in-depth interviews to UK and Indian international students. Motivations for studying abroad are remarkably similar in the questionnaire results; more subtle differences emerge from the interviews.
Taiwanese students are featured as having high academic achievement but low motivational beliefs according to the serial results of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Moreover, given that the role of context has become more important in the development of academic motivation theory, this study aimed to examine the relationship between motivational beliefs and science achievement at both the student and school levels. Based on the Expectancy-Value Theory, the three motivational beliefs, namely self-concept, intrinsic value, and utility value, were the focuses of this study. The two-level hierarchical linear model was used to analyse the Taiwanese TIMSS 2011 eighth-grade student data. The results indicated that each motivational belief had a positive predictive effect on science achievement. Additionally, a positive school contextual effect of self-concept on science achievement was identified. Furthermore, school-mean utility value had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between utility value and science achievement. In conclusion, this study sheds light on the functioning of motivational beliefs in science learning among Taiwanese adolescents with consideration of the school motivational contexts.
Singapore's vision is to be the Biopolis of Asia, a leading international biomedical sciences cluster advancing human health, through the pursuit of excellence in research and development, manufacturing and healthcare delivery. To achieve this, Singapore has built up world-class capabilities across the entire value chain from drug discovery, development and clinical research, to manufacturing and healthcare delivery. In the year 2000, Singapore's Biomedical Sciences (BMS) initiative was launched to establish a focused effort on the development of this sector as the fourth pillar of Singapore's industry cluster, alongside electronics, chemicals and engineering. The BMS initiative covers the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Medical Engineering and Technology and Healthcare Services industries. An integrated strategy was adopted for the development of the BMS sector, focusing on Human Capital, Intellectual Capital and Industrial Capital, or 3 Cs in short. The first phase of the BMS initiative (2000–2005) put in place key building blocks by establishing core capabilities in biomedical research, and introducing important human capital and industrial capital development initiatives. For the next phase (2006–2010), we will build on this foundation and strengthen our capabilities in translational and clinical research to bring discoveries from the bench to the bedside and the marketplace, and ultimately improve human healthcare.
Gender relations in organisations are a function of the socio-cultural
and institutional context. This study analyses the perceptions of men
and women scientists in India with respect to their work environment.
It indicates that the twin aspects of Indian culture, patriarchy
and hierarchy, contribute to a masculine environment at the workplace.
Idealisation of women’s family roles as part of ‘Indian culture’ depresses
women’s position as scientists. The hierarchical culture affects junior
women scientists particularly through structural inefficiencies and
gendered methods to subvert hierarchy. Since the Indian social milieu
is in transition, changes are slowly taking place within organisations,
offering hope for a change in gendered work environments. In exploring
solutions to gender problems and understanding gender relations, the
specific national context needs to be highlighted.
Major reform of education in India should encourage original thinking to boost the nation's research, argues Anurag Chaurasia.
Post-1965 immigration to the United States has given rise to a vigorous literature focused on adult newcomers. There is, however, a growing new second generation whose prospects of adaptation cannot be gleaned from the experience of their parents or from that of children of European immigrants arriving at the turn of the century. We present data on the contemporary second generation and review the challenges that it confronts in seeking adaptation to American society. The concept of segmented assimilation is introduced to describe the diverse possible outcomes of this process of adaptation. The concept of modes of incorporation is used for developing a typology of vulnerability and resources affecting such outcomes. Empirical case studies illustrate the theory and highlight consequences of the different contextual situations facing today's second generation.
Culture shock tends to be an occupational disease of people who have been suddenly transplanted abroad. Like most ailments, it has its own symptoms, cause, and cure. Many missionaries have suffered from it. Some never recovered, and left their field. Some live in a constant state of such shock. Many recover beautifully. As will be clear from the implications of Dr. Oberg's article, the state of culture shock in which a Christian lives will have great bearing on his temperament and witness.
Program officers direct government research funding priorities. This column gives a personal perspective on life as a program officer focused on security and privacy at the US National Science Foundation, explaining the value of such service to the community and the individual.
Oceanography, brain science and stem cells among research fields that look set to grow.
In this end piece, I comment on and connect the six preceding substantive articles about inequality in the years of austerity following the financial crisis and link their arguments to my own work on youth. I argue that the long decades of deindustrialisation and the more recent post-crisis austerity climate may be reshaping the old sexual/gender contract that defined the Fordist era.
China's economic boom is mirrored by its similarly meteoric rise in high-quality science.
A shortage of scientifically trained manpower in India today is largely due to the fact that fewer and fewer students are being attracted to pursue higher studies in basic science, as current science enrolment data reveal. Ultimately, because of this shortage, developments in science and technology and science-based industry are slowing down, and the basic qualities of material life are continually being compromised. Several other countries are also contending with this problem, but India’s case has largely remained underrepresented in current research. To improve the situation, a number of competitive scholarship programs have been started in India to attract young students to pursue higher studies in science in greater numbers. For one such program, using a sample of more than 8,600 high-school students, we examine how a number of socioeconomic factors govern students’ decision to pursue science higher studies in the country. We find that student age, gender, family income, exam scores, use of computers and the internet, travels, and possession of modern consumer goods at home contribute to students’ increased mobility in search of better educational facilities needed for the preparation of a career in science. Our results have implications for schools and teachers, globalization, scientific literacy, and the general prosperity of life in the country.
The concept of the migration system, first popularized in the 1970s, has remained a staple component of any review of migration
theory. Since then, it has been cast somewhat adrift from its conceptual moorings; today in the literature migration systems
are generally either conflated with migrant networks or elevated to the heights of macro-level abstraction which divorces
them from any empirical basis. At the same time, by taking on board more sophisticated notions of agency, emergence, and social
mechanisms, the broader concept of the social system has moved on from the rather discredited structural−functionalist marina
where it was first launched. In recent years, having been rejected by many social theorists, the social system has been subject
to major reconstruction prior to its relaunch as a respectable and valuable area of social enquiry. This article argues that,
for the most part, these developments in systems theory have been ignored by those applying the concept of systems to the
analysis of migration. It addresses the question of how the concept of the migration system can be reformulated in the light
of these theoretical advances and what implications this may have for our research and analysis.
The politics of meritocracy at the Indian Institutes of Technology illuminates the social life of caste in contemporary India. I argue that the IIT graduate's status depends on the transformation of privilege into merit, or the conversion of caste capital into modern capital. Analysis of this process calls for a relational approach to merit. My ethnographic research on the southeastern state of Tamilnadu, and on IIT Madras located in the state capital of Chennai, illuminates claims to merit, not simply as the transformation of capital but also as responses to subaltern assertion. Analyzing meritocracy in relation to subaltern politics allows us to see the contextual specificity of such claims: at one moment, they are articulated through the disavowal of caste, at another, through caste affiliation. This marking and unmarking of caste suggests a rethinking of meritocracy, typically assumed to be a modernist ideal that disclaims social embeddedness and disdains the particularisms of caste and race. I show instead that claims to collective belonging and to merit are eminently commensurable, and become more so when subaltern assertion forces privilege into the foreground. Rather than the progressive erasure of ascribed identities in favor of putatively universal ones, we are witnessing the re-articulation of caste as an explicit basis for merit and the generation of newly consolidated forms of upper-casteness.
The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.
High cost barriers and immigration policy restrictions prevent many low-capital migrants from realizing their destination preferences. However, interviews with 95 Filipino domestic workers in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore reveal how these low-capital migrants can intentionally follow a stepwise international migration trajectory, working their way up a hierarchy of destination countries and accumulating sufficient migrant capital in the process so as to eventually gain legal entry into their preferred destinations, often in the West. Such a trajectory differs from more frequently studied migration patterns in its number of stages, duration, intentionality, hierarchical progression, and dynamic nature.
It is a widely held belief that culture is a factor that influences creativity. The influence of culture on creativity is, however, relatively understudied and the majority of creativity research focuses on creativity at the level of the individual or organization. In this article, the relationship between Hofstede's cultural values (individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance) and national level scores on two separate creativity indexes—the Global Creativity Index (GCI) and the Design and Creativity Index (DCI) was examined. A multivariate multiple linear regression analyses showed a strong positive relationship between individualism and national ranking on the GCI and DCI. No significant relationship was found between the creativity measures and Hofstede's power distance and uncertainty avoidance. The positive relationship between individualism and creativity suggests that autonomy, independence, and freedom—beliefs associated with individualism—are needed for a nation to be creative.
ABSTRACTA recurring question with regard to international student mobility/migration is why students go abroad. Most often, this question is answered by pointing out different factors, such as the students' stated reasons for going abroad, specific psychological traits, or differences in economic and social capital. This paper, however, takes a processual perspective by asking how students become geographically mobile, thus perceiving studying abroad not as the result of a one‐time choice but as the outcome of different long‐term biographical and social processes and events. The analysis is based on narrative biographical interviews with German degree mobile students who went abroad to another European country. By focusing on how previous mobility experiences, the students' social embeddedness, and the structuring force of the order and timing of events all further the occurrence of student mobility, this paper highlights crucial aspects of this process. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.