Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Nour, Samia
Author-Email: samiasatti@yahoo.com
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Khartoum, and UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University
Title: Migration of higher education students from the North Africa Region to the 
	 United Kingdom
Abstract: This paper uses both the descriptive and comparative approaches to 
	 provide an overview of migration of higher education students from North 
	 Africa to the United Kingdom (UK). We fill the gap in the African 
	 literature and present a more comprehensive and recent analysis of 
	 migration of higher education students from the North Africa region to 
	 the UK using UNESCO recent secondary data on international students 
	 mobility in tertiary education. We provide an interesting comparative 
	 analysis of migration of higher education students from the North Africa 
	 region to the UK. A novel element in our analysis is that we examine 
	 migration of higher education students from the North Africa region to 
	 the UK from both national and regional perspectives; mainly we discuss 
	 migration of higher education students for each individual country in 
	 the North Africa region (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and 
	 Tunisia) and then discuss the total for the entire North Africa region. 
	 Therefore, we provide an extremely valuable contribution to the 
	 increasing debate in the international literature concerning the 
	 increasing interaction between migration and increasing 
	 internationalisation of higher education. Our findings support the first 
	 hypothesis that from a national perspective, the pattern and size of 
	 migration of higher education students from the North Africa region to 
	 the UK increased substantially over the period (2000-2017/2018) but the 
	 distribution showed considerable variation across North African 
	 countries. Our results corroborate the second hypothesis that the 
	 increasing trend of migration of higher education students from the 
	 North Africa region to the UK is caused by several push-pull factors 
	 (e.g. economic, social, political, cultural and educational). Our 
	 results support the third hypothesis that migrations of higher education 
	 students from North Africa to the UK lead to mixed positive and negative 
	 impacts (e.g. transfer of knowledge, brain gain and skill acquisition 
	 for returned migrant students, but weak capacity to retain talents and 
	 brain drain for non-returned migrant students). Our findings corroborate 
	 the fourth hypothesis that skills of migrant higher education students 
	 from the North Africa region can be better mobilised in their countries 
	 of origin by addressing the push-pull factors that determine migration 
	 of skills from the North Africa region.
Classification-JEL: J60, J61, I23, I25
Keywords: Migration, higher education students, International student mobility,
	 Internationalisation of higher education, Africa, North African region,
	 the United Kingdom
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20200421
Number: 2020-016
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2020/wp2020-016.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2020016