Migration Decisions of Skilled Migrants: International degree students in an offbeat destination

This paper discusses the position of international students in the research on skilled migration based on interview data from Helsinki, Finland. The literature tends to depict students as gainers of human capital, and their role as skilled workers has received less attention. However, the findings of this study challenge the conceptual separation of student and labour migration. Moreover, much of the literature on international student migration focuses on popular, English-speaking destination countries such as the United States. This paper enhances the understanding of student mobility in exploring the migration motives of international students in the case of a less common destination.