Social constraints and the decision to leave: Emigration from Greece at times of crisis

The SEESOX Blog: Social constraints and the decision to leave: Emig...: Manolis Pratsinakis’ presentation, his inaugural as SEESOX/Onassis fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, focuse...

New knowledge comes home: Highly-skilled Greek migrants’ aspirations for, realities of, and barriers to knowledge transfer

Over the last decade, Greece has been one of the hardest-hit countries by the global economic crisis – a crisis which not only affected Greece economically, but which provoked many political and social changes. One of the major consequences of the crisis – and rarely discussed in-depth – is the increasing and continuous loss of human capital through the emigration of the highly skilled. Qualified Greeks from 2008 onwards are increasingly seeking employment in other European countries or overseas according to their qualifications and skills (Labrianidis and Pratsinakis 2016). While both the existing literature on Greek brain drain and the media try to determine the size of this emigration, less attention has been afforded to the experiences of skilled emigrants and their potential contribution to development, ‘back home’ (Cavounidis 2015).