Abstract:
Turkey provides rich evidence for the current international migration trends
given its economic and demographic dynamics. The number of people moving overseas to
settle permanently has been following an increasing trend in the recent decades, particularly
remarkable for skilled and female groups. However, given the micro-level data limitations the
migration outlook of Turkey is still quite bleak. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and
analyze the relationship between migration and human capital in the context of Turkish
immigrants. First, aggregate trends of the Turkish emigrants in the 20 OECD destination
countries by gender and educational level over the 1980-2010 period are examined using the
IAB Brain Drain dataset. Next, a random effects panel estimation is applied to scrutinize the
underlying dynamics of observed migration patterns adopting economic size, unemployment,
demographic profile, urbanization and proximity as explanatory variables. The results reveal
that gender, time and education are found as significantly related to international mobility
trends, and the substantially left-skewedness of the distribution of Turkish emigrants along
educational level is gradually fading away over time.
