European researchers mobility: the italian case

We present the results of a survey of the foreign presence in the Italian public research institutions, trying to understand the actual push and pull factors that originate the migration. The Italian institutes are chosen as a place for the completion of research training by many young academics from EU countries, particularly from France, Germany and Spain. In addition, there is a significant inflow of mature academics, mainly from East Europe, who come to Italy for the prestige of some of our research institutes and the availability of quality instrumentation. However, the number of foreign researchers intending to permanently settle down in Italy is low. This fact could be ascribed to the low salaries and to the unlikelihood of permanent or long term contracts in Italian institutes, the same reasons provoking the outflow of Italian researchers, much higher than the foreign researchers immigration. The MDS technique shows that we can group push factors into one indicator, representing the migration push in total. About pull factors, the results suggest two different indicators: the first represents the quality of research, the second is linked to political aspects. We conclude that foreign researchers are attracted to Italy, especially for our research quality, while push factors are less important for highly skilled migrants.