Fuente: Imagen creada con IA.
Año 2, núm. 13, agosto de 2026
ISSN 3122-3583
tendencia
Spatial and Social Mobility among Skilled Migrants: Towards a Trajectory Perspective
Mustafa Aksakal y Enrique Martínez Curiel *
Skilled migration is often celebrated as a “triple win.” Yet crossing borders does not always lead to upward mobility: qualifications may lose value, careers may stall, and professional success may become a long, uneven trajectory.
Nota de la redacción: este texto se publica en su idioma original, el inglés, en el que fue escrito y presentado por sus autores. Forma parte de la vocación internacional de El Diluvio, que incorpora contribuciones en la lengua en que fueron concebidas cuando así lo considera la revista.
Around 40 % of employed non-EU citizens with tertiary education work below their qualification level. Mobility can open borders while closing professional opportunities.
Skilled people have always moved. What is recent is not the mobility itself, which reaches back to the nineteenth century, but the intensity of the attention it attracts, in policy and media alike, across the industrialised West and, increasingly, the emerging economies. Indeed, mainstream political discourse frequently highlights a ‘triple win’, in which migrants, sending countries and receiving countries alike benefit from the mobility of skilled people. From a critical, migrant centred perspective, however, there are reasons not to generalise such conditions and outcomes. They call instead for weighing the unfavourable factors, especially for migrants themselves, against the purported benefits, and for attention to how these unfold over the course of migrants’ trajectories. Two questions guide the discussion that follows. In which ways have post migratory processes and spheres been studied so far? And why do migrants’ trajectories matter for the link between spatial and social mobility?
Highly skilled migration: a context of conflicting interests
Highly skilled migration involves three actors whose rationalities differ: sending countries, receiving countries and migrants themselves. Starting with the first of these actors, many emerging countries are increasingly able to offer young people an internationally recognised education, yet their labour markets often remain unprepared to absorb such well qualified workers. Moreover, these states also have a strong interest in the employment of their citizens abroad, so as to benefit from remittances, which generate foreign currency and tax revenue. Labour market conditions are a key driver, but socio economic and cultural factors matter too. Many highly skilled migrants have a migration history of their own, such as a period of study abroad, which has risen steadily with the worldwide growth of the resource rich middle classes. The internationalisation of higher education has made it easier for young people to study and live abroad. In the course of such educational periods abroad they accumulate social capital, observe different lifestyles and acquire skills that serve later plans to move. These flows also foster a ‘culture of migration’ among educated individuals, whereby spatial mobility becomes a realistic strategy of life transition for many young people. Western receiving countries, for their part, face demographic change, skills shortages and intense competitive pressure, for which foreign skilled workers and their families offer a short-term remedy. Against this backdrop it is unsurprising that political actors in the Global North fuel the global race for the most talented through their discourses and policies, that actors in sending countries do little to counter these outflows, and that educated people migrate abroad in growing numbers.
Migration is not a single leap from departure to arrival, but a continuous process in which careers, identities, networks and social positions are repeatedly reshaped
Statistics reflect these trends. OECD data record an increase of more than 100 per cent in highly skilled migrant stocks between 2000 and 2015,(1) while World Bank(2) figures show an important rise in North-South flows of financial remittances over the same period. Yet researchers from the Global South have stressed growing brain drain. In the Mexican case, the number of emigrants with tertiary education rose ninefold between 1990 and 2018, from 161,000 to 1.48 million(3, p. 81). Other data indicate how skilled migrants fare after arrival in terms of occupational mobility. Eurostat(4) records a substantial rate of deskilling for 2023, that is, a mismatch between migrants’ qualifications and the jobs they hold: around 40 per cent of employed non-EU citizens with tertiary education work in positions below their qualification level. Thus, a considerable number are likely to experience downward mobility or to remain trapped in unfavourable occupational positions.
Theoretical accounts on highly skilled migration
Several approaches explain the causes of migration, skilled migration among them. Neoclassical macro accounts treat regional differences in access to jobs and income as a key driver.(5) At the micro level, the human capital approach construes education, skills and training as an investment that raises productivity and lifetime earnings.(6) Potential migrants are assumed to regard their qualifications in these terms, to deploy them as profitably as possible,(7) and therefore to weigh costs against benefits before departure. Outmigration is accordingly most pronounced among the younger and better educated, who command both a longer horizon over which to recoup the investment and the assets to make it. This lens aligns with meritocratic views of advancement through ability and effort. In response, the brain drain approach held that the emigration of publicly educated workers transfers resources from poorer to richer countries: the origin bears the costs of education, the destination reaps the fruits.(8) These approaches were later extended to take account of return migration and cross border activity, yet their capacity to explain post migratory dynamics, namely incorporation into society and its institutions and migrants’ social mobility trajectories, remained weakly developed. Alongside these perspectives on the drivers of outmigration stand classical theories of assimilation and integration, as well as sociological theories of stratification and mobility developed in Europe and the United States. With respect to assimilation and integration theories, migration sociologists have examined immigrant incorporation for more than a century, with initial studies focused on Europeans in the US. Park and colleagues, for instance, defined assimilation as a process of interpenetration and fusion.(9) Later models introduced multiple integration dimensions,(10) differentiated between systemic and social integration,(11) or combined such elements into new frameworks.(12) Across this lineage the labour market occupies a privileged position, since placement in the occupational structure serves as the principal indicator of systemic integration and, over time, of social mobility. On stratification and social mobility, an abundant literature scrutinises how national stratification systems, including social and political categorisations, shape outcomes,(13) alongside comparative work on class-related mobility.(14) Such lenses focus chiefly on the industrialised host country, and the success or failure of integration is often attributed to migrants’ capacity to adapt. The transnational perspective provides an alternative. It foregrounds cross-border ties and practices as a strategy from below, through which migrants and their immobile relatives counter economic and political constraints in origin and destination countries alike. Although the transnationality of social actors has been examined for its effects on inequality, which is captured in the notion of the ‘transnationalised social question’,(15) its bearing on social inclusion and mobility requires further theoretical reflections.
This discussion could be extended further, yet the present contribution confines itself to a single but crucial argument: migration studies remain an under-theorised field in which established approaches are applied, at times uncritically, to new migratory circumstances. The relationship between spatial and social mobility among highly skilled migrants is an interesting case in point, since few substantive studies address it in depth. A notable exception is the seminal work of Portes and Rumbaut,(16) who examined migrant integration and social mobility more than three decades ago and drew the contexts of reception and exit, as well as transnational ties, into their analysis, though without a systematic theoretical account of these dimensions.
This observation suggests a broader conceptual shift. Rather than a further analytical dimension, migrants’ trajectories may be understood as an integrative and longitudinal perspective through which the relationship between spatial and social mobility becomes more visible in the course of time. While spatial mobility refers to geographical movement and social mobility to changes in occupational or socioeconomic positions, a trajectory perspective, as discussed in detail below, makes it possible to examine how these processes intersect, diverge, or come into tension across migrants’ lives. Migrants’ trajectories thus provide the framework through which these different spheres of social life can be understood in relation to one another, and reveal migration not as a single transition but as a continuous process of social reconfiguration. Within migration trajectories migrants may incorporate and leave again societies and its labour markets, which also affects their social mobility paths. Therefore, this perspective invites to consider several spatial spheres and contexts of interaction relevant for migrants’ life courses. In this view, migration and integration policies, forms of discrimination and ethnic communities corresponding to the reception context have been widely debated. Transnational activities, such as entrepreneurship and practices of social protection have received less attention with respect to pathways of incorporation and mobility. Equally underexplored are class backgrounds, which give rise to particular forms of family and school socialisation and habitus.(17) These dispositions also shape people over the course of migration, not least in how political barriers and discrimination are experienced and navigated. The next section underlines how a focus on migrant trajectories can provide fresh insight into long-term dynamics, migrants’ life worlds and social inequalities.
The crucial question is no longer only why skilled people migrate, but how their lives and opportunities are transformed before, during and after migration.
Post-migratory dynamics from migrant trajectory perspective
Adopting a trajectory perspective has several implications for the study of highly skilled migration. First, it implies a conceptual and epistemological shift that links migrants’ trajectories with spatial and social mobility as interconnected processes unfolding over time. Migration is no longer understood as a discrete event that begins with departure and ends upon arrival, but as a dynamic trajectory that encompasses pre-migratory conditions, mobility itself, post-migratory incorporation and, where relevant, onward or return migration. From this perspective, migrants’ experiences are not linear but subject to (dis)continuity, interruption and reconfiguration over time.
This perspective also redirects attention from outcomes towards processes. Rather than examining integration, occupational mobility or social incorporation as isolated results, it seeks to understand how these processes evolve and interact over time. Trajectories therefore provide an analytical framework because they connect processes that are usually analysed separately, allowing the analysis of how evolving migrants reconstruct, among other their professional careers, family lives, institutional relationships, citizenship practices, social networks, experiences of discrimination, senses of belonging and transnational ties. The analytical value of this perspective can be illustrated through the previously introduced phenomenon of deskilling. Conventionally treated as an indicator of unsuccessful labour market incorporation, deskilling may instead be understood as one possible phase within a broader trajectory. This shift raises new questions concerning its timing, duration, reversibility and consequences, as well as the strategies migrants develop to overcome it. In this sense, deskilling ceases to represent a final outcome and becomes part of the dynamic processes through which highly skilled migrants negotiate their occupational and social mobility over time. Ultimately, a trajectory perspective broadens the analytical horizon of highly skilled migration research by shifting the central question from why people migrate to how their trajectories are shaped, transformed and reconfigured before, during and after migration.
Final remarks
Highly skilled migration has been studied primarily from the perspective of the causes of mobility and its economic effects. However, a systematic understanding of post-migratory trajectories requires shifting the analysis toward the processes through which migrants (re)construct their professional, family, social and transnational lives in interaction with multiple institutional contexts. Rather than representing a final state of integration, these trajectories frequently constitute open-ended processes whose understanding calls for a longitudinal perspective capable of connecting the social processes that shape migrants’ lives before, during and after migration. In this sense, a trajectory perspective also provides a conceptual framework for analysing how multiple processes in different spatial and social spaces interact across migrants’ trajectories, thereby offering a new way of understanding post-migratory dynamics. Such a perspective can contribute not only to advancing the theorisation of highly skilled migration but also to providing a more comprehensive understanding of post-migratory trajectories among highly skilled migrants.
* Investigadores de la Bielefeld Universität y de la Universidad de Guadalajara, respectivamente.
References
(1) Butticè, V. & Useche, D. (2024). Editorial. Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 51(3), 541-549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-024-00322-3
(2) World Bank (2026). Personal remittances, received. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT
(3) Delgado Wise, R., Chávez Elorza, M. G., & Gaspar Olver, S. (2021). La migración mexicana altamente calificada de cara al siglo XXI: problemática y desafíos. CONACYT.
(4) Eurostat (2024). Migrant integration statistics — over-qualification. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Migrant_integration_statistics_-_over-qualification&oldid=640929#Overview_of_the_over-qualification_rate
(5) Harris, J. R. & Todaro, M. P. (1970). Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two Sector Analysis. American Economic Review, 60(1), 126-142.
(6) Becker, G. S. (1993). Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
(7) Sjaastad, A. H. (1962). The costs and returns of human migration. Journal of Political Economy, 70(5), 80-93.
(8) Bhagwati, J. & Hamada, K. (1974). The Brain Drain, International Integration of Markets for Professionals and Unemployment: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Development Economics, 1(1), 19-42.
(9) Park, R. E. & Burgess, E. W. (1921). Introduction to the Science of Sociology. University of Chicago Press.
(10) Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins. Oxford University Press.
(11) Lockwood, D. (1964). Social Integration and System Integration. In G. K. Zollschan & W. Hirsch (Eds.), Explorations in Social Change (pp. 244-257). Houghton Mifflin.
(12) Esser, H. (2009). Pluralisierung oder Assimilation? Effekte der multiplen Inklusion auf die Integration von Migranten. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 38(5), 358-378.
(13) Massey, D. (2007). Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. Sage.
(14) Erikson, R. & Goldthorpe, J. H. (1992). The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies. Clarendon Press.
(15) Faist, T. (2019). The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and the Politics of Social Inequalities in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press.
(16) Portes, A. & Rumbaut, R. G. (1990). Immigrant America: A Portrait. University of California Press.
(17) Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14-25.
