Latvian students abroad, evolving cultural capital and return intentions

This paper visualises tertiary-level students who study abroad as simultaneously both international students and members of an emerging diaspora. Coming from a country (Latvia) which is small, peripheral and relatively poor by European standards, students go abroad for multiple reasons not necessarily directly connected with study (eg. family reasons, labour migration); yet their evolving diasporic status is instrumentalised by the Latvian government which wants them to return and contribute to the country’s development. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with Latvian students and graduates who have studied abroad, our analysis focuses on three interlinked dimensions of inequality: access to education at home and abroad; the varying prestige of higher education qualifications from different countries and universities; and the inequalities involved in getting recognition of the symbolic and cultural capital that derives from a non-Latvian university. Within a setting of neoliberal globalisation and conflicting messages from the homeland, students and graduates are faced with a challenging dilemma: how to balance their materialistic desire for a decent job and career with their patriotic duty to return to Latvia

Between a ‘student abroad’ and ‘being from Latvia’: inequalities of access, prestige, and foreign-earned cultural capital

This paper visualises tertiary-level students who study abroad as simultaneously both international students and members of an emerging diaspora. Coming from a country (Latvia) which is peripheral and relatively poor by European standards, students go abroad for multiple reasons not necessarily directly connected with study (e.g. family reasons, labour migration); yet their evolving diasporic status is instrumentalised by the Latvian government which wants them to return and contribute to the country’s development. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with Latvian students and graduates who have studied abroad, our analysis focuses on three interlinked dimensions of inequality: access to education at home and abroad; the varying prestige of higher education qualifications from different countries and universities; and the inequalities involved in getting recognition of the symbolic and cultural capital that derives from a non-Latvian university. Within a setting of neoliberal globalisation and conflicting messages from the homeland, students and graduates are faced with a challenging dilemma: how to balance their materialistic desire for a decent job and career with their patriotic duty to return to Latvia

Beyond remittances: knowledge transfer among highly educated Latvian youth abroad

Young, tertiary-educated emigrants see themselves, and are seen by their home country’s government, as agents of economic and social change, especially if they can be incentivized to return home. In this paper we examine whether this hypothesized positive impact is realized, taking the case of Latvia, a small peripheral country in north-east Europe, formerly part of the Soviet Union but since 2004 a member-state of the European Union. We build our analysis on data from an online questionnaire (n=307) and from narrative interviews (n=30) with foreign-educated Latvian students and graduates. In moving beyond remittances, which are the main element in the theory and policy of migration’s contribution to development, we examine knowledge transfer as a form of “social remittance”, breaking down knowledge into a range of types – embrained, embodied, encultured etc. We find that students and graduates do indeed see themselves as agents of change in their home country, but that the changes they want to make, and the broader imaginaries of development that they may have, are constrained due to the limited scale of the market and the often non-transparent recruitment practices in Latvia. Policy should recognize and respond to various barriers that exist to knowledge transfer and return