REINTEGRATION OF HIGHLY SKILLED RETURNEES TO MONTENEGRO - CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
REINTEGRATION OF HIGHLY SKILLED RETURNEES TO MONTENEGRO - CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Author(s): Marija Cimbaljević, Dženita Brčvak
Subject(s): Economy, National Economy, Migration Studies, Human Resources in Economy, Socio-Economic Research
Published by: Grupa 484
Summary/Abstract: Many highly skilled people from the Western Balkan countries emigrate to EU countries or the Unites States for different reasons: employment, further education, better living standards. According to the UNESCO report Science, Technology and Economic Development in South-Eastern Europe, some countries in the Western Balkan region, have lost almost 70% of their skilled professionals, due to external migration of highly qualified personnel. The report states that 79% of engineers, 81% of masters, and 75% of PhDs left Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995. At the same time, Tirana University recorded a decrease in academic staff by 40%.63 It is still unclear how many students study abroad or how many of them have stayed in the country of emigration. However, the survey conducted by the King Baudouin Foundations showed that very few Western Balkan students, only 26 of 2,137, who study abroad, want to come back to their home country (Besic, 2009). The economic and financial reasons which forced them to leave the country then, are still the most important cause of many young professionals to leave the Balkans. Many of them want to return, but their country of origin does not have policies to reintegrate them into the system and provide them with good living conditions. They have no guaranties, whatsoever. Speaking of Montenegro, this is a country which was faced with the great migration problem twenty years ago, when many of the highly skilled people left the country in order to find better living conditions in the Western European countries (Besic, 2009). Based on the insight into literature dealing with migration of Montenegrin population, we can conclude that this is a theme still waiting to be explored. Scientific work (Gluščević, 2000, Pejović, 2003) from this area, which has been published up to now, certainly is the pioneer work in researching Montenegrin population migration and represents a solid foundation for future research.

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