Chapter 2: Global Talent Flow: International Graduate Students’ Career Decisions After Graduation

Globalization has influenced individuals, organizations, and societies both positively and negatively (Marquardt, 2007). One of the prominent phenomena resulting from globalization is the global mobility of highly skilled or educated people, so-called talent. Academic discourse on talent mobility and its impact has existed for several decades mainly with two contrary views. First, it is regarded that talent mobility leads to negative consequences for individuals through underemployment or unemployment (Fan & Stark, 2007; Moorhouse & Cunningham, 2010) and for home countries by a lack of human capital in organizations and society (Lianos, 2007). Another viewpoint focuses on the positive impact of talent mobility, such as individual career development (Donnelly, 2009), the good use of a migrant’s remittance (Le & Bodman, 2011), and contributions to both home and host countries through knowledge sharing (Beine, Docquier, & Rapoport, 2008).