THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF STUDENT INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION: EUROPEAN AND LATIN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC

Abstract

By means of a structured survey that analyses the attitudes of European and Latin-American students to migration and their comparison with the official international statistics, this research attempts to acquire better knowledge about of both economic and non-economic factors that determine features of student migration, i.e.  their motivations to migrate abroad, duration and intention of a  stay, reasons for selecting a country of migration and the main  preferred countries for migration. The results have shown  that 1) economic factors are the most important reasons in the case of academic migration, 2) the family is rather  important to support these processes; therefore, the incomes per capita becomes the main indicator for this kind of migration, 3) scientific literature has confirmed that higher economic returns, associated with international studies, are highly valued by students, 4) students from Latin-America and Europe have similar preferences and attitudes to  migration, but in the case of Latin-Americans culture, factors and the language are a bit more important than to Spaniards, 5) and regarding the destination, Spaniards prefer the United Kingdom and the United States, whereas Latin-Americans choose  between the United States, Spain, Germany and Australia as host countries

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.18.2.4326