Viewpoint: Europe should turn researcher mobility into a development strategy

For decades, talent mobility in southeast Europe and the Western Balkans has been framed almost exclusively through the lens of brain drain. Highly educated individuals leave and their home countries are seen as losing the human capital needed for development. While this remains partly true and continues to pose challenges across the region, this narrative no longer reflects how contemporary research and innovation systems actually function.

Mobility today is not an anomaly. It is a defining feature of academic and research careers. The real challenge is therefore not how to prevent people from leaving, but how to transform mobility into circulation, ensuring that knowledge, skills and networks flow back into domestic systems in meaningful and sustainable ways.

Across Europe, international mobility has become a prerequisite for academic career progression. Doctoral training, postdoctoral positions and early-career research roles increasingly take place across borders. Universities in EU member states attract a significant number of students and researchers from the Western Balkans, often serving as entry points into the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area.

A survey conducted among students from the Western Balkans at the University of Ljubljana illustrates this dynamic. Students cite academic quality, institutional stability, living conditions and career prospects as the primary reasons for choosing Slovenia. Decisions about staying after graduation, however, are driven far more by employment opportunities and predictable career pathways than by education alone.

In this context, mobility is a rational response to structural differences between national systems, not a lack of attachment or loyalty. Treating it as a problem to be solved, rather than a reality to be governed, risks overlooking the most effective policy levers.

Why talent does not return

If leaving is rational, so too is not returning. Across the Western Balkans, the reasons are consistent: a shortage of stable, high-quality jobs; weak links between education and labour markets; political instability; institutional nepotism; and low trust in public institutions. In research and higher education systems, a critical obstacle is the widespread perception that experience gained abroad is neither formally recognised nor genuinely rewarded at home.

These factors reinforce one another. Even where return incentives exist, they are frequently undermined by opaque recruitment procedures, limited research funding and fragile institutional governance. Under such conditions, returning becomes a personal risk rather than a strategic career decision.

Yet not returning does not mean disengagement. The Western Balkan diaspora represents a substantial reservoir of scientific expertise, international networks and institutional knowledge. Many researchers based abroad remain professionally connected to their home countries through joint research projects, doctoral supervision and participation in international consortia.

What is often missing are structured mechanisms to make this engagement systematic rather than incidental. EU-funded initiatives and regional platforms can support diaspora networks, short-term visits, joint grant applications and cotutelle doctoral programmes leading to double degrees. These instruments allow knowledge to circulate without requiring permanent relocation and help transform mobility from a perceived loss into a shared European asset.

Making return a rational career choice

While diaspora collaboration helps sustain scientific ties, long-term system strengthening requires credible return pathways. Two policy tools are frequently discussed, namely employment policies and grants for returning scientists, but they remain underused, not because they are ineffective, but because they are too often implemented in isolation.

For highly mobile researchers, the decisive question is not whether they want to return, but whether returning makes professional sense. Transparent recruitment procedures, merit-based promotion and stable employment conditions matter far more than symbolic incentives. Experience gained abroad must be formally recognised rather than informally tolerated. Without predictable career paths, return programmes risk deepening frustration rather than reversing mobility trends.

Targeted grants for returning scientists can help offset short-term risks, support the establishment of research groups and reconnect institutions with global networks. Yet grants alone cannot compensate for systemic weaknesses. They are most effective when linked to long-term employment perspectives, embedded in institutional strategies and supported by adequate research infrastructure.

Returning researchers should be seen not as exceptions, but as agents of institutional change, capable of introducing new standards and practices into domestic systems.

The EU’s role in enabling talent circulation

EU instruments can play a crucial enabling role in this process. Structural funds, Widening measures and accession negotiations provide not only financial resources, but also leverage for reform. When return schemes are aligned with EU-level conditionalities, such as transparent employment practices and institutional accountability, they gain credibility, continuity and scale.

For Western Balkan countries, whose national budgets alone cannot sustain globally competitive research careers, this alignment is essential. EU support linked to reform transforms return from an individual gamble into a systemic investment. It also reframes the role of destination countries, not as passive beneficiaries of brain drain, but as active partners enabling circulation between neighbouring regions and the wider European Research Area.

To translate this shared responsibility into effective action, mobility policies must be grounded in a realistic understanding of why researchers do, or do not, return, and in a differentiated set of measures that address structural constraints over different time horizons.

Towards a policy framework

Evidence from surveys conducted within the Rectors’ Forum of Southeast Europe and the Western Balkans shows that the main barriers to return are predominantly socio-economic and political. Accordingly, policies to transform one-way emigration into genuine circulation can be structured across three complementary levels.

First, long-term socio-economic development is essential, though also the most difficult to achieve. Without sustained improvements in living standards, public services and economic opportunities, return will remain unattractive for highly skilled professionals.

Second, medium-term measures should focus on political stability and institutional reform. Merit-based recruitment, transparent career progression and formal recognition of experience gained abroad are achievable with sufficient political will. These reforms are critical for restoring trust in public institutions and making return a professionally viable option.

Third, short-term policies can deliver immediate impact. These include building structured diaspora networks and providing grants and instruments for joint research projects, supporting short-term academic visits, enabling collaborative international research projects and, where feasible, also joint appointments and positions. Diaspora researchers should also be involved in training younger researchers, preferably through joint programmes and cotutelle arrangements to reduce further outflows of young talent. 

While limited in scope, such measures can play an important catalytic role by contributing to longer-term socio-economic development and by reinforcing political and institutional reforms, thus addressing the first two issues.

Mobility will continue to shape research and innovation systems across Europe. The key question is whether it remains a one-way flow that deepens regional disparities or becomes a governed system of circulation that strengthens research capacity, institutional trust, and long‑term development across southeast Europe and the Western Balkans. 

Aligning mobility with structural reform, regional cooperation and EU support is essential if talent circulation is to become a driver of cohesion rather than a source of fragmentation and will strengthen Europe as a whole.