Reversing Brain Drain from Autocracies: How Autocratic Incentives, Regime Change, and Hostile Conditions Shape the Return of Political Emigrants

• In Event: The Political Diversity of the New Russian Migration since February 2022: Demographics, Attitudes, Dynamics over Time

Abstract

Autocratic regimes often rely on emigration as a safety valve to ease domestic dissent, but this strategy comes at the cost of brain drain. Can such regimes entice politically motivated emigrants to return through selective incentives or improved economic opportunities, or is comprehensive regime change the only pathway to reversing such a brain drain? We argue that these efforts interact with conditions migrants encounter in host countries, which may themselves be experiencing democratic backsliding—or, as is often the case for Russian emigrants, already be autocratic. Under such circumstances, how do host-country political, legal, and economic conditions, combined with changes in the autocratic homeland, shape migrants’ decisions to return, relocate elsewhere, or remain abroad?

Authors

• Emil Kamalov, European U Institute (Italy)

• Ivetta Sergeeva, George Washington U