International mobility of scientists and engineers: a study on brain drain and obstacles to mobility

The paper presents some results of a study on the international mobility of highly skilled personnel, funded by the European Commission, Directorate General on Research. The study focused on the analysis of barriers to mobility as perceived by the scientists surveyed during the research activity. The obstacles encountered and the importance given to them was coincident in many aspects in two surveys conducted on two different samples of mobile researchers. This suggests that policy initiatives to dismantle the barriers may follow similar paths in countries that differ in structure and organization of science.