Returned Skilled Labour Migrants : from the United Kingdom to Slovakia, 2003

The specific objectives of the project were: <br> <li>to explore the scale, motivations, skills and lifetime mobility of different types of skilled labour mobility to the UK from Slovakia;</li><br> <li>to evaluate the 'total' human capital acquired by individuals participating in different types of skilled labour mobility;</li><br> <li>to evaluate the direct economic implications for sending and receiving countries of different types of skilled labour mobility: what are the direct gains/losses in terms of skills, the social costs of the development of skills, production and taxation;</li> <br> <li>to analyse longer term economic implications by exploring the employment, capital transfers, and future mobility plans of returnees;</li><br> <li>to assess the economic use made of the broader human capital (language, cultural knowledge, etc.) acquired through working abroad.</li><br> <br> Given the lack of reliable official data on Slovakian migration to the UK, it was not possible to obtain a representative sample of returnees. Instead, the emphasis of the research was on differences between the three groups of migrants, and their individual experiences. The findings of the project make a contribution to the deconstruction of human capital as a concept in migration studies, and to understanding the economic impacts of new forms of European mobility.