This article analyses the strategies of adaptation used by highly skilled Latvian migrants to make the best of their situation abroad. As empirical data, 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with highly skilled Latvian nationals in finances, management, IT and the health sector are analysed. The study reveals how migrants negotiate the value of their cultural capital in the new country’s labour market. Different adaptation strategies are typical for the pre-migration phase, the phase of transition and initial settlement and of establishment in the host country. The main conclusion of the study is that pre-migration cultural capital (education, work experience, language knowledge and general and specific skills) is important but not sufficient to be successful in new country’s labour market – in the UK, Germany, Norway and the USA. The labour-market outcomes are a result of the interplay between migrants’ individual resources and decisions on extensive investments in country-specific human capital and structural constraints – such as typical recruitment patterns in a particular occupation and host country.

This article investigates the post-return experiences of highly skilled Belarusian professionals. I con-centrate on the socio-cultural aspects of highly skilled migration and view returnees as carriers of new experiences, ideas, and practices by studying the ways in which they apply various socio-cultural re-mittances to the different spheres of their lives. In particular, I argue that the formation and transmission of socio-cultural remittances are strongly heterogeneous and selective processes, which manifest them-selves to varying degrees not only in different people, but also in different aspects of people’s lives. The analysis of several socio-cultural remittances in private and public spheres shows that in some cases the socio-cultural remittances display strong gender differences. Moreover, the highly skilled returnees appear to be proactive remitters: some of them re-interpret and transform the socio-cultural remittances before transmitting them. The research draws on the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews with highly skilled professionals who returned to Belarus after long periods of time spent abroad.

The aim of this article is to analyze both the motivations of foreign scholars to come to work in Poland – specifically Kraków – and their ways of adapting to this significant Polish academic center. Most studies on highly skilled migrants (HSMs) concentrate on the flows between developing and highly developed countries. We concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe. This paper, based on in-depth interviews with 23 foreign scholars working full-time at four universities in Kraków, is a follow-up to a study presenting a 2015 analysis of websites of universities from Kraków. We look closely at barriers to and facilitators of foreign scholars’ adaptation to Poland and their perceived image of Poland and Polishness, their national identification and international contacts. We propose a typology comprised of “cosmopolitans”, “status seekers”, “enthusiasts”, and “commuters”. Our investigations reveal who decides to move to a semi-peripheral country such as Poland, and why. Certain parts of the narratives can be used in building a strategy of attracting more international scholars to academic centers such as Kraków.